Story by Jared Thiessen (Portageonline.com)
Another tight game went down between the Portage Terriers and Neepawa Titans in a season-opening home-and-home series. This time it was the Terriers coming out on top 3-2 in a shootout.
The Titans scored the game’s opening goal in the dying seconds of a powerplay, as Caden Hegarty found some room in the slot and put a shot past Mitchell Kathler to make it 1-0 Neepawa.
The second period provided more of the same, with Mason Hartley scoring early in the period to make it 2-0 in the Titans favour. Both teams exchanged chances, but were unable to add or cut into the lead.
The Terriers would narrow the deficit early in the third period with a goal from Decker Mujcin putting a goal away just past the five minute mark to narrow the gap to 2-1, and drawing an assist from Daine Dellezay.
Cam Bullinger played the hero role with under eight minutes to play, with a nice goal to knot the game up.
He says that seeing the team battle back to tie the game feels really positive.
“It felt really good, we battled some adversity with a couple injuries, and felt really good to get two points, first home game of the year and get the fans into it.”
The rest of regulation was back and forth, but solved nothing, and the teams went off to overtime.
The Terriers were a team prepared in overtime, and controlled the puck very well in the extra frame. A powerplay 39 seconds into the period allowed Portage to set up and get some good chances, but were unable to capitalize and sent the game to a shootout.
Blood pressures were high as the shootout started with Logan Paquette scoring on the first shot, but Mitchell Kathler stopped the next seven shots. He describes how it felt going into the third period down two goals.
“I wasn’t really nervous going into the third, I knew the boys were going to bring it back, so it was good.”
Owen Witt scored in round three, sending the shootout to extras. Five rounds later, Tristan Gravenor skated in from the bench side of the rink, faked a shot, and then went upstairs on the glove-hand side of the Titans netminder to end the game.
Gravenor notes that he was just listening to instruction on his goal.
“I was seeing lots of dekes and not many goals, and the coaches were saying, ‘shoot high, deke, shoot high, shoot high, shoot high.’ So, I was up, got some speed, and shot high.”
With the shootout win, the Terriers move to 1-1-0-0 and will play their next game on Friday night when they welcome the Northern Manitoba Blizzard to Stride Place. Puck drop in that game will be at 7:30 p.m.