Story courtesy portageonline.com
The Portage Terriers were defeated on home ice Friday night by the MJHL’s top team. The Dogs suffered a hard-fought 5-2 loss to the Dauphin Kings.
The scoring began very quickly in this outing as former Terrier Parker Malchuk took a shot from the point that bounced high off a defender’s stick and out of the sight of goalie Jayden Catellier. The puck went up and over Catellier before he had time to realize it had crossed the red line. The goal put the Kings up 1-0 less than two minutes into the contest.
Catellier stood his ground for the rest of the period, making a few big saves, to keep it a one-goal game after 20 minutes.
Early in the second period, Catellier went to go play the puck behind his net, however, Kaden Bryant met him there and snatched the puck away. He tucked it in before the goalie could recover and extended the lead to 2-0.
The Terriers would respond a few minutes later. After Daniel Siso tied up the Kings’ centreman in the offensive zone faceoff, Matt Wisener scooped up the loose puck and immediately fired a backhand shot toward the net. The puck hit Dauphin goaltender Keaton Woolsey’s stick and found its way into the back of the net. 2-1 Kings.
Near the midway point in the game, Brayden Dube got the puck out of a jam against the boards and fired a shot from the top of the circle. The puck beat Catellier high and brought the lead back up to two goals.
With 30 seconds left in the period, the Terriers had a 2-on-1 opportunity. Brenden Holba entered the zone along the boards and drew the defender toward him. Once the defender got close enough, he dished the puck to Mason Smith who was cutting through the slot. He stretched out to try and slide the puck past the goalie but he was denied by Woolsey’s pad.
Malchuk was feeling good against his former squad as he found the back of the net for a second time early in the third on the power-play. This brought the lead to three goals but the Terriers still had some fight left in them.
Less than a minute later, Ashton Fishley dumped the puck into the offensive zone and Woolsey left his net to play it. The puck took an extremely weird bounce off the boards and went right to the slot, finding Riley Borody who tapped it in the empty net.
Unfortunately for the Terriers, this is as close as they were able to make it. They gave up an empty netter with three seconds left to play which brought us the final score of 5-2 Dauphin, snapping the Terriers’ three-game winning streak.
Terrier forward Kyle Grysiuk says they played well, despite the loss.
“I thought we played pretty good tonight,” Grysiuk explains. “We were playing against the top team in the league and we only lost 5-2 with them scoring an empty-net goal. I thought the boys showed up tonight. We didn’t get the win but we battled hard.”
Grysiuk talks about what they’ll have to do to pick up a win in Dauphin tomorrow.
“We’re one of the youngest teams in the league playing against one of the oldest teams in the league. So, we’re going to have to come hard and battle hard because they’re bigger than us,” says Grysiuk.
The Terriers will look to split this set of back-to-back games with the Kings tomorrow night at 7:30 in Dauphin. The game will be broadcast on CFRY with the pregame show starting at 7:20pm.
For the complete box score CLICK HERE.
