{"id":33007,"date":"2018-02-11T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/thunderbirds-fall-just-short-to-winterhawks\/"},"modified":"2018-02-11T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T05:30:00","slug":"thunderbirds-fall-just-short-to-winterhawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/thunderbirds-fall-just-short-to-winterhawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunderbirds fall just short to Winterhawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Portland Winterhawks defeated the Seattle Thunderbirds 5-3 Sunday night at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Portland.<\/p>\n

The Winterhawks swept the two-game, home-and-away series, beating the T-Birds 4-1 on Kent ice Saturday night.<\/p>\n

The T-Birds are tied with the Tri-City Americans for the first wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference. They are three points behind the third-place Spokane Chiefs.<\/p>\n

Seattle (27-20-6-2) took a 1-0 lead at 4:48 of the first period. Noah Philp passed the puck up the left wing to a streaking Dillon Hamaliuk, who had a partial breakaway, skated into the left circle and snapped the shot over the left shoulder of Portland goalie Shane Farkas.<\/p>\n

Portland (35-18-1-3) tied the game 1-1 on a shorthanded goal by Joachim Blichfeld at 13:16 of the first.<\/p>\n

The T-Birds took the lead back on the power play at 19:11 of the first. Austin Strand had the puck at the right point. Strand passed the puck to Turner Ottenbreit at center ice. Ottenbreit took a slap shot with traffic in front of Farkas. Ottenbreit’s shot beat Farkas low on the blocker side. Donovan Neuls had the second assist on Ottenbreit’s seventh goal of the season.<\/p>\n

Both teams had 10 shots on goal in the first period.<\/p>\n

The Winterhawks tied the game 2-2 at 15:30 of the second period on a goal from Lane Gilliss. Jake Gricius and Dennis Cholowski had the assists.<\/p>\n

Seattle took the lead back with one minute to go in the second with a power-play goal. Ottenbreit had the puck at center ice and he passed it to Strand in the left circle. Strand one-timed the pass. Matthew Wedman’s tipped Strand’s shot past Farkas for his 13th goal of the season.<\/p>\n

Portland outshot Seattle 9-8 in the second period and led 19-18 in shots after two periods.<\/p>\n

Ryan Hughes tied the game 3-3 for Portland at 8:48 of the third period on assist from Gricius and Cholowski.<\/p>\n

The Winterhawks took a 4-3 lead when Alex Overhardt got a rebound from a Blichfeld shot past Seattle goalie Dorrin Luding.<\/p>\n

Seattle killed a late Portland power play and then pulled Luding with 45 seconds left in the game to try and get the tying goal. Blichfeld was able to chase down a loose puck and score an empty-net goal with 20 seconds left to seal the win for Portland.<\/p>\n

Luding made 31 saves on 35 shots and his record is 8-12-1-0. Farkas made 19 saves on 22 shots and his record goes to 9-5-0-0.<\/p>\n

Back home<\/strong><\/p>\n

The T-Birds’ next game is 7:35 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16, against the Everett Silvertips at the accesso ShoWare Center.<\/p>\n

For tickets, order on the T-Birds website<\/a> and at the ShoWare box office.<\/p>\n

SCORING SUMMARY<\/strong><\/p>\n

First period<\/strong> – 1, Seattle, Hamaliuk 13 (Philp), 4:48. 2, Portland, Blichfeld 19, 13:16 (sh). 3, Seattle, Ottenbreit 7 (Strand, Neuls), 19:11. Penalties – Kaluski, Sea (roughing), 8:16. MacLean, Sea (roughing), 8:16. Gilliss, Por (roughing), 8:16. MacKenzie, Por (slashing), 11:36. Ottenbreit, Sea (roughing), 14:40. Hughes, Por (roughing), 14:40. Gilliss, Por (high-sticking), 17:29.<\/p>\n

Second period<\/strong> – 4, Portland, Gilliss 4 (Gricius, Cholowski), 15:30. 5, Seattle, Wedman 12 (Strand, Ottenbreit), 19:00 (pp). Penalties – Strand, Sea (hooking), 8:50. Newkirk, Por (high-sticking), 18:38.<\/p>\n

Third period<\/strong> – 6, Portland, Hughes 11 (Gricius, Cholowski), 8:48. 7, Portland, Overhardt (Blichfeld), 13:02. 8, Portland, Blichfeld 20, 19:40 (en). Penalties – Katzalay, Sea (charging), 2:05. Blichfeld, Por (hooking), 2:54. Huo, Sea (hooking), 17:22. Ottenbreit, Sea (10-minute misconduct), 20:00.<\/p>\n

Shots on goal<\/strong> – Seattle 10-8-4 22, Portland 10-9-17 36. Goalies<\/strong> – Seattle, Luding 35 shots-31 saves (8-12-1-0); Portland, Farkas 22-19 (9-5-0-0). Power plays – Seattle 2-4; Portland 0-4. A – 6,122. Referees<\/strong> – Adam Griffiths, Jeff Ingram. Linesmen<\/strong> – Adam Brastad, Mark Heier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hamaliuk, Ottenbreit and Wedman score in 5-3 loss at Portland <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-33007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33007"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}