Portage pots power-play pair to advance

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This article was published 19/05/2023 (1209 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE — The Portage Terriers had already suffered the indignity of an early exit from the MJHL post-season.

They weren’t about to accept a premature ouster from the Centennial Cup playoffs — not on Friday night anyway.

Backstopped by a superb 36-save outing from Bailey Monteith, the host Terriers eked out a 2-1 triumph over the Yarmouth Mariners in quarter-final action before 1,340 fans at Stride Place.

The win put Portage into a semifinal showdown at the national junior A hockey championship with the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League champion Battlefords North Stars on today at 7:30 p.m.

Brock MacDonald, in the first period, and Kian Calder, in the middle frame, potted power-play goals to give the hosts a 2-0 lead.

The Maritime Hockey League champions got one back at 16:16 of the second period when Terriers defenceman Parker Scherr inadvertently gloved the puck into his own net.

The goal, which made it 2-1 Portage, was credited to Franco Canevari. Yarmouth, which pulled goaltender Keegan Warren with 75 seconds left, outshot the hosts 14-5 in a frantic third period but were denied by Monteith.

“You probably saw me kind of take a bit of a break when I think they called the timeout,” said Monteith,” I just wanted to kind of gather myself and just calm down. It’s not that I was rattled either, but I was just calming down and just making sure I was ready for the onslaught.”

The 21-year-old from Kamloops, B.C., has a 2.21 goals-against average and .939 save percentage in five tournament starts.

“He’s been real calm and not flying around and making sure he’s solid and has good angles and he’s been blocking everything,” said Terriers assistant coach Paul Harland. “It’s nice to know our back end can rely on him to make some saves where they can be in a different position to take away the higher quality scoring chances. He’s been outstanding through the whole tournament.”

“He’s been incredible all tournament so you know we’re pretty confident in front of him, even in a tight game like that,” said Calder. “That’s the best part of hockey is games like that you know, tight games and celebrating with your team once your guys get the job done.”

Warren stopped 27 shots in the Yarmouth net.

“We couldn’t ask for much more,” said Mariners assistant coach Jared Purdy. “I thought we carried a lot of momentum but a few bounces didn’t go our way. They’ve got a very good hockey team. They played well and I thought they forced pucks very well.

“The plays we drew up at the end, they worked out but the puck just didn’t go in for us. So, really, we’ve got our heads held high. There was no quit in our team.”

Earlier Friday, the Central Canada Hockey League’s Ottawa Junior Senators earned a semifinal berth by beating the Ontario Junior Hockey League’s Collingswood Blues 4-2.

Ottawa faces the still unbeaten Brooks Bandits of the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s today at 3:30 p.m. Brooks and Battlefords won their preliminary round groups, thereby earning byes to the semifinals.

Junior Senators 4 Blues 2

With the game tied 2-2 late in the third period, Ottawa defenceman Wil Murphy circled his own net before rifling a 120-foot pass that hit teammate Mickael Hebert in stride at the Collingwood blue line.

Hebert broke in all alone, beating Blues goaltender Noah Pak through the five-hole to put the Sens up 3-2 with 3:01 left in the game. Hebert added an empty-net goal to ice the game in the final minute.

“We’ve tried that play a ton,” said Sens head coach Kyle Makaric. “We got it to work back when I was coach with the (University of) Windsor Lancers in the Queen’s Cup to score 10 seconds into the game. That’s the only time I’ve seen it work other than today. (It’s) something we work on all the time and for it to work at the biggest stage in a game like this — it’s just incredible.”

Thirty-nine seconds earlier, Carter Diceman’s second goal of the game pulled the Blues even at 2-2.

“It definitely hurts,” said Collingwood GM and head coach Andrew Campoli. “I think especially after tying it up with three and a half (minutes) to play and losing on a set play like that takes the wind out of your sails a little bit. But I think we played only 20 minutes out of the 60-minute game. If we played all 60 the way we played the last third, I think it would have been a different outcome.”

Chase Lammi and Vincent Velocci scored the other goals for Ottawa, which received a 17-save performance from Rorke Applebee. Pak finished with 18 stops.

NOTES: Sunday’s gold-medal game will be broadcast live on TSN at 3 p.m. Portage went 2-for-3 on the power play while Yarmouth was scoreless in its only opportunity.

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14