Hollett shines, but Tigers fall

By None on November 30, 2017.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com @MHNMcCracken

Jordan Hollett gave the Medicine Hat Tigers everything they needed on Wednesday night at the Canalta Centre but the Portland Winterhawks made sure it didn’t matter.

Hollet turned aside 33 shots to keep his team in the contest against the U.S. Division-leading Winterhawks, but the Tigers were unable to find an equalizer on Portland goaltender Cole Kehler and settled for a 5-2 loss.

“He was definitely unbelievable back there,” Tigers centre Max Gerlach said of his goaltender. “They have arguably the best top line in the league, all three are really good players and he wasn’t fazed by them. He was able to shut them down the whole night.”

The Winterhawks boast the Western Hockey League’s second-best power play unit with a 33.3 per cent rate of success, and they put it on display early in the first. Portland’s leading point-getter, Cody Glass, was credited with his 18th of the season after tipping a shot past Hollett with Dylan MacPherson in the box for hooking.

“That was huge,” said Winterhawks forward Skyler McKenzie, a Medicine Hat product. “It was a really good play by (Joachim Blichfeld) there and Cody buried it with the tip.”

While Medicine Hat answered in a hurry when Gary Haden finished off a loose puck in the Portland crease two minutes later, the Winterhawks re-established a lead at the end of 20 minutes thanks to Jack Gricius’ fourth of the year.

“They’ve got some very intelligent players so if there’s a guy left open of if there’s a breakdown they’re going to find the open guy right away,” said Hollett. “Against the top teams you can’t afford to make as many breakdowns as maybe against a middle-of-the-pack team. I think that was probably the biggest difference.”

Hollett kept the Tigers in the contest with 12 stops in the middle frame — including a handful off highlight-reel saves on odd-man rushes. The performance opened the door for Max Gerlach to tie up the game on the power play with two minutes left in the period. The 19-year-old Texan deflected a David Quenneville point shot past Portland netminder Cole Kehler to steal away the momentum and carry it into the intermission.

But the Winterhawks regained the lead just over a minute into the third when Blichfeld pickpocketed a Tigers defender and immediately fired a shot through Hollett for his own 10th of the year.

While the Tabbies pressured for an equalizer, throwing eight pucks at Kehler in the final frame, Glass and Mason Mannek iced the game with a pair of empty netters to hand Medicine Hat their third straight loss.

“It’s definitely disappointing. I felt like we skated with them and outplayed them for the majority of the game so it’s definitely unfortunate,” said Gerlach. “We had a power play late in the game that we had to capitalize on. We spent half the power play in the neutral zone.”

Kehler locked up the victory with a 29-save effort to push Portland to 20-4-0-1 on the season, while Medicine Hat slipped to 15-10-0-0 with the setback.

“That’s a really good team that we battled until the end,” said Hollett. “If we can play just a little bit better we can play with any team.”

The Tigers return to the Canalta Centre Friday to host the Victoria Royals (18-9-1-0) at 7:30 p.m.

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