What: a best-of-7 Western Hockey League 1st round playoff series between the Portland Winterhawks (48-15-4-1) and the Victoria Royals (29-30-5-4).
The Winterhawks won all four games of the season series, but the two home games took a shootout and overtime. Victoria came back to tie in one and Portland came back to tie in the other.
Portland is the heavy favorite as the US Division champion and the #2 seed in the Western Conference. Victoria is the #7 seed.
The schedule
Game 1, Friday 3/29: Victoria at Portland, 7pm PDT
Game 2, Saturday 3/30: Victoria at Portland, 6pm PDT
Game 3, Tuesday 4/2: Portland at Victoria, 7pm PDT
Game 4, Wednesday 4/3: Portland at Victoria, 7pm PDT
Game 5, Friday 4/5: Portland at Victoria, 7pm PDT (if necessary)
Game 6, Sunday 4/7: Victoria at Portland, 5pm PDT (if necessary)
Game 7, Tuesday 4/9: Victoria at Portland, 7pm PDT (if necessary)
It’s a 2-3-2 format, instead of the usual 2-2-1-1-1, because they don’t want to deal with the ferry more than they have to.
There’s always a question as to whether the format favors one team or the other more than the usual format would. I tend to think it’s a wash. If the lower-ranked team gets a road split, they can win the series with 3 straight wins at home. But that’s hard to do. And the lower-ranked team can’t win the series at home unless it’s a lopsided one. One tradeoff is about as good as another.
Portland Winterhawks
They come in having points in 11 straight games, 9-0-1-1. That might still be below par for those 11 games, as the opposition wasn’t great. As it turned out, they had to win all 11 to capture the conference’s top seed. It looked like they might do it, but then two consecutive overtime losses to non-playoff teams crashed their hopes. Fatigue probably overran them in the end; they had back-to-back 3-games-in-3-nights weekends, and 7 games in the last 2 weeks overall.
Fatigue probably got the best of goalie Jan Špunar, who played 6 of those games, only sitting out the meaningless season finale, and started 14 games in a row. He struggled in that stretch and has to be regarded as the biggest question mark for Portland starting the playoffs.
To a much lesser extent, Portland’s other worries are Josh Davies and Gabe Klassen. Davies was in the top 20 in the league in scoring before getting hurt in January. Since his return he has only 6 points in 15 games. His role has changed some with the acquisition of Nate Danielson; the Winterhawks have been quicker at time to pull Davies off the top line in favor of Danielson, which hasn’t helped him. Klassen is still at a point per game recently and has 106 points, but a point per game is quite a drop from where he was, and they’d like to get him back on track.
You’d always like a short series if you win, but for Portland, winning it in 4 or 5 might be important for later rounds. The Winterhawks had a pretty packed schedule in the back half of the season, and any extra rest might be helpful.
Victoria Royals
They’re limping into the playoffs. They were 23-13-0-2 on January 1. Since then they’re 6-17-5-2. They were probably lucky up to January 1, they’d won a lot of close games, and since then they’ve been unlucky. They aren’t much better recently, 1-6-1 in their last 8 games.
They’ve been hurt by injuries, and in the three games they played against Portland in the second half, they struggled to get even to 17 skaters. Robin Sapousek, a point-per-game forward, was hurt at World Juniors and hasn’t come back; it seems unlikely now that he will. Defenseman Nate Misskey was out much of January, February, and the early part of March; defenseman Austin Zemlak was out most of February and early March. Victoria struggled badly with them out. They haven’t done any better since they came back, but it’s only four games and two were with Prince George. Those were two of their major contributors; there have been others.
Their strength is their three defensemen, BC Division All-Star Justin Kipkie, Nate Misskey, and Austin Zemlak. They get offense from ex-Winterhawk Dawson Pasternak and acquisition Tyson Laventure.
15-year-old defenseman Keaton Verhoeff is an intriguing player to watch if he plays. He’s played in 7 of the last 9 games. He looked really good in the last game in Portland where he picked up his first WHL assist. He’s a 4th overall pick, is 6 foot 3 at age 15 and can really skate.
The players
| Team | Pos | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gabe Klassen | POR | Still rates at the top despite recent struggles. |
| 2 | Luca Cagnoni | POR | Top-scoring defenseman in the league, and the highest-scoring one in 30 years in the league. |
| 3 | Nate Danielson | POR | The series’ only NHL 1st-rounder. |
| 4 | James Stefan | POR | 2nd-team US Division All-Star. |
| 5 | Justin Kipkie | VIC | 1st-team BC Division All-Star, and Victoria’s only NHL-drafted player (5th round, Arizona) |
| 6 | Tyson Laventure | VIC | 31 points in 25 games since coming from Swift Current. |
| 7 | Dawson Pasternak | VIC | 72 points in 62 games in his 20-year-old season; played 62 games with the Winterhawks before being traded midseason last season. |
| 8 | Jan Špunar | POR | US Division 1st-team All-Star, but his save percentage has dropped about 15 points in the last month. |
| 9 | Josh Davies | POR | Physical game is always there but he needs his scoring touch back. |
| 10 | Marek Alscher | POR | Portland’s sold defensive defenseman. |
| 11 | Tyson Jugnauth | POR | A point-a-game defenseman since coming from the NCAA in December. |
| 12 | Nate Misskey | VIC | Recently returned after a long stretch missed with injury. |
| 13 | Carter Sotheran | POR | Has played very well the last couple of weeks. |
| 14 | Cole Reschny | VIC | 3rd-leading 16-year-old scorer. |
| 15 | Jack O’Brien | POR | 20-year-old, formerly Portland’s top defensive center, has gone more to the wing since Danielson arrived. |
| 16 | Austin Zemlak | VIC | Another defensemen who missed a lot of games with injury, and has only recently returned. |
| 17 | Kyle Chyzowski | POR | He’s taken shots to the face and elsewhere all season, and the worst was a shot he caught with his face in the first meeting of the season with the Royals. |
| 18 | Marcus Nguyen | POR | A clutch game-tying shorthanded goal against Victoria in the teams’ last meeting. |
| 19 | Tanner Scott | VIC | One of three players in the series who has played all 68 regular season games. |
| 20 | Braden Holt | VIC | 9 of his last 11 games are sub-.900. |
These ranking suggest a big edge for the Winterhawks.
Špunar and Davies are rated lower than they might be because of recent form.
Portland has 236 games of playoff experience, Victoria has 25. All of Victoria’s are with other teams, as they haven’t made the playoffs since 2019. Almost all of Portland’s are with Portland, Nate Danielson being the exception. Josh Davies has played over 200 games without a playoff appearance.
Key to the series: shots and goalies
Portland has the best shot differential in the league (13.7) and Victoria has the worst (-7.6). It would be an upset if Victoria outshot them even one game, and you’d expect Portland to have a big margin. That’s how it went in the season series, except for the first game, where the Royals actually had the shot lead in the 3rd before Portland turned it on. But in that game, Portland played conservatively in front of a 16-year-old goalie in the first game Špunar was missing. So, maybe not reflective.
With a shot difference that big, Victoria will need to win the goaltending battle decisively. The good news for the Royals is that Špunar’s rough stretch, making him a question mark. The bad news is that Braden Holt has struggled just as much recently. With their defensemen back, they might be able to cut into the margin a little, and will probably have to have all three things happen to make the series close: cut the margin, have Špunar struggle, and have Holt play well.
For Portland, if the goalie battle is even, they should win the series easily.
Stefan leads the league in shots per game (5.3). Danielson, who it often feels like should be shooting more, is 2nd. Portland has 7 players average more than 3.0 shots per game. For Victoria, Misskey is the only one over 3.0.