Portland it is.
For the third time in four seasons the Prince George Cougars will be playing the Portland Winterhawks in the WHL playoffs when they open the first round at home next Friday.
The Victoria Royals ended the suspense when they clinched their first BC Division title in nine years Friday with a 6-3 win over the Cougars at CN Centre.
Teydon Trembecky crushed the Cougars’ hopes of hanging a BC Division banner for a second consecutive season with a four-point performance, scoring his 45th and 46th goals put it out of reach for hometown Cats.
The Cougars started the weekend needing back-to-back wins over the Royals to lock up the second seed in the Western Conference as division champs. The Royals were playing their third game in four nights at the tail end of a five-game trip and showed no signs of fatigue.
“Kudos to the guys, that was one of their goals at the start of the year,” said Royals head coach James Patrick. “Tonight was a game where they did a lot of coaching from the bench, they were saying the things that I would say as far as getting pucks deep, getting on the right side of the puck, getting in shot lanes.
“We knew coming in that this was a playoff game. I can’t speak for both teams but I do think it’s the same for both teams and we’re fortunate it came down to this last series because we got to have a playoff game before the playoffs. The intensity, the crowd, a packed building on the road, this is a great experience for our guys. This is what we’ll be facing next week.”
The Royals have been the class of the WHL on the road this season (23-8-1-1) and they beat a Cougar team that has just five regulation losses on home ice (23-5-3-2), tied with Calgary for tops in the league.
“I think we’ve really bought into our systems, we’ve got consistent goaltending and I do think the strength of our team is playing strong defence,” said Patrick. “Obviously, you get (Kenta) Isogai and (Brandon) Lisowsky at the deadline and that added to the offence, but if you look back at the year we harp on playing good in the neutral zone, playing good in our D zone and we have four defencemen with long reaches that helps us defend and keeps opposing guys to the outside.
“When you play real good defence and play your systems it gives you a real chance on the road.”
Cole Reschny had a goal and two assists and Markus Loponen, Nate Misskey and Logan Pickford also scored for the Royals (40-17-3-7. Riley Heidt led the Cougar cause with two goals and Carson Carels also scored.
Johnny Hicks won his 10th game of the season in goal for the Royals, stopping 26 shots.
It was a disappointing night for the Cougars, who looked bewildered in the early going and dug themselves a big hole, falling behind 3-1 after one period.
“We didn’t start on time at all, way too many easy turnovers and gave them easy goals and we were chasing the game the whole game and just didn’t have enough at all,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb.
“It’s just individuals, you’ve got to make the right play at the right time. It certainly wasn’t good enough. It’s a real tough lesson. Every loss is a lesson and to lose like that is just unacceptable.”
Friday’s outcome means the Cougars (40-21-4-2) will finish fourth in the West, setting up a best-of-seven playoff matchup with fifth-place Portland.
Both teams traded Grade-A chances in the first five minutes and the Royals made one of them count for the early lead, 5:29 in. Trembecky took a drop-pass from Reschny and got everything into his shot from the top of the circle, zipping the puck in over Josh Ravensbergen’s shoulder.
The Cougars’ fourth line evened it up just before the midway mark of the period. Evan Groening took the puck from linemate Lee Shurgot and pivoted a pass into the slot for defenceman Carels, who got in behind Caleb Matthews and finished with a slick backhand-forehand deke on goalie Hicks.
But it didn’t take long for Victoria to strike back. Winnipeg Jets fifth-rounder Lopenen took the puck at neutral ice and let go a long low shot wrister for an unassisted goal.
The Royals set the tone early with an aggressive forecheck that led to turnovers and a bad giveaway from Kaden Lemire resulted in another Victoria goal less than five minutes before the first intermission. Lemire’s clearing pass up the gut was picked off in the slot by Pickford and he wired in a high shot for a 3-1 lead.
Victoria had a glorious chance to pad the lead 5:42 into the second period when forward Brayden Boehm was awarded a penalty shot when Bauer Dumanski was forced to use his stick from behind to try to slow his progress on a breakaway. Ravensbergen then came up with a huge pad save to keep it a two-goal game.
At the other end, Hicks was unflappable when he got in the way of Koehn Ziemmer shot on at the end of a 2-on-1 with Borya Valis and he made another great save soon after that to deny Ben Riche on a Cougar power play.
Heidt got the big crowd of 4,754 back into the game at 15:23 of the second when he got to his own rebound and banked the puck in off the skate of defenceman Justin Kipkie.
Less than a minute later, Aiden Foster got a pass in the slot and let one rip that Hicks stopped with his arm, one of the best saves of the night for the 19-year-old Kamloops native, who joined the Royals at midseason from the BCHL Brooks Bandits.
“It’s a pretty good feeling to win a banner with this team, it’s pretty special,” said Hicks. “Even though I came in halfway though the season I’ve gotten really close to this team and I can feel how special it was to these guys tonight.
“We worked really hard for it on the ice and they made some huge plays out there and made my job easy by scoring a lot of goals.”
The Royals finished the second period with goals 34 seconds apart late in the period to make it a 5-2 game and their top scoring line was in on both of them. Reschny gained the zone and the puck came to Isogai standing below the goal line who spotted Trembecky in the slot and fed him a perfect pass and he blasted in his 47th of the season.
Then, after a face-off win, Kipke let go a point short that Reschny tipped in for his first goal in 10th point against the Cougars this season.
Misskey made it a 6-3 count early in the third period and it stayed that way until Heidt snapped in his second of the night on a quick feed from Koehn Ziemmer. But there wasn’t much more offence from the Cougars after that. The Royals continued to block shots and locked it down.
LOOSE PUCKS: The rematch at CN Centre starts at 6 p.m…. Cougars winger Terik Parascak missed his fourth game with a concussion. The Washington Capitals first-round pick in 2024 likely won’t play Saturday… Now with 46 goals, Trembecky has more than tripled his 12-goal output last season… Isogai, the Royals’ third-leading scorer with 32 goals and 78 points, was sent to Victoria Jan. 1 in a trade from the Wenatchee Wild. Isogai, a native of Sapporo, Japan, moved to Russia with his family at age 11. He also played in Austria before he moved to the United States to play in the USHL in Youngstown, Ohio. The 19-year-old speaks Japanese, Russian, German and English… The Cougars were sporting retro maroon jerseys like the ones they wore in the early 2000s. They’ll be wearing another jersey set in Saturday’s game and both will be distributed in the Off Their Backs raffle to Cougar fans… Saturday’s game will bring a Mega 50-50 draw with a guaranteed jackpot of $50,000.
