The Portland Winterhawks and Edmonton Oil Kings continue to peak.
Major junior hockey is cyclical as players are scouted, drafted, developed and graduated within a four-year span. It’s difficult to sustain a powerhouse team more than two years before having to rebuild.
But the Winterhawks and Oil Kings will meet in the Western Hockey League championship series for a third straight year. The best-of-seven series opens Saturday at the Moda Center in Oregon.
The Winterhawks are the defending champions having beaten the Oil Kings in six games in 2013. The Oil Kings downed Portland in seven games to take the Ed Chynoweth Trophy in 2012.
A hockey coincidence kicks in with this third consecutive meeting between the same two clubs. The last and only time that happened was from 1969 to 1971 when a previous incarnation of the Edmonton Oil Kings thrice faced the Flin Flon Bombers.
That Oil Kings franchise left Edmonton and became the Portland Winter Hawks in 1976.
Another historical tidbit is Derek Laxdal, the head coach of the current Oil Kings, played his rookie season with the Winterhawks in 1982-83 and won a Memorial Cup with them.
Fun facts aside, each team has about a dozen players who experienced at least one of the previous two championship series and half a dozen who played in both.
“They know how to play in the big situations and so do we,” Winterhawks defenceman Derrick Pouliot says. “Playoff experience is huge the further in you get. It’s going to help out a lot for both sides.”
Divisional alignments limit the Oil Kings and Winterhawks to one regular-season meeting. Portland played at Rexall Place on Dec. 6 and lost 5-4 in a shootout to the host club.
Pouliot, the league’s defenceman of the year and a Pittsburgh Penguins prospect, will graduate from the WHL never knowing what it’s like to not play in the championship series.
The Winterhawks will actually appear in their fourth straight WHL final, having lost to the Kootenay Ice back in 2011. The only other teams to play in four straight were the aforementioned Oil Kings (1969-72) and the New Westminster Bruins (1975-78).
“It’s pretty special,” Pouliot says. “For myself, I’ve been there four years straight and three of them against Edmonton. It’s very unusual, but it’s exciting too.”
The WHL winner advances to the Memorial Cup in London, Ont., to join the Ontario and Quebec league champions and the host Knights in the tournament May 16-25. The Winterhawks lost 6-4 to the Halifax Mooseheads in last year’s Memorial Cup final in Saskatoon.
The highest-scoring team in the Western Conference for three seasons, Portland continues to play a dashing style under head coach and general manager Mike Johnston.
Oliver Bjorkstrand, Brendan Leipsic, Pouliot, Taylor Leier and Nicolas Petan are all averaging over 1.5 points per game in the post-season.
Pouliot and Mathew Dumba, acquired from Red Deer midway through the season, generate offence from the back end. Dumba played 13 games for the NHL’s Minnesota Wild before he returned to the WHL.
Pouliot, Petan, Leier and Dumba were Canadian junior teammates this year of Edmonton forward Curtis Lazar and defenceman Griffin Reinhart.
This year’s Oil Kings are “more will and less skill,” says their coach of four seasons. That doesn’t mean the Oil Kings don’t score, but Edmonton relies on a defence that gave up the fewest goals in the league this season.
“We’ll go to the net harder, get more pucks on net, shot volume and that’s what we have to do,” Laxdal said.
“We are a defence-first team and once we defend fast we want our team to go on offence. Portland is built a lot the same way. They defend fast and then they’re gone on offence.”
Lazar, a first-round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators, and 17-year-old Brent Pollock lead Edmonton’s offence with 17 points apiece in 14 games.
Oil Kings goaltender Tristan Jarry was a finalist for the WHL’s goaltender of the year award and is another Penguins prospect. Jarry has carried a stingy 1.86 goals-against average in the post-season.
Portland goalie Brendan Burke is the son of former NHLer Sean Burke, who is now the goaltending coach for the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes.
Both clubs will have had a week’s rest between their respective conference final victories and the final. The Oil Kings had just two days to rest and prepare for Portland last year after their conference win over Calgary.
“I think the team last year is the (one) we thought would make a run at it and it’s pretty ironic that it was the year before we were able to win it,” Lazar says. “That’s junior hockey for you.
“This year, we don’t feel we have as much skill as we’ve had in the past, but we have that grit and that character. We can grind out those one-goal games and the high-pressure situations. We just play for each other.”
Both clubs have capitalized on initial success and built a culture of winning in their dressing rooms. Portland has done that magnificently, but a time of reckoning is coming.
On Nov. 28, 2012, the WHL disciplined the Winterhawks for player-benefit violations that included flights for players’ families and paying for the captain’s cell phone. Johnston was suspended for the balance of the season and assistant Travis Green coached the ‘Hawks to their WHL title last year.
But the Winterhawks will feel in the coming years the impact of the league also taking away their first five draft picks in the 2013 bantam draft as well as their first-round selections from 2014 to 2017.
The Winterhawks had a first-round selection in Thursday’s bantam draft because of a trade with the Calgary Hitmen.
The Ontario Hockey League championship series between the North Bay Battalion and Guelph Storm got underway Thursday night. The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League final between the Val-d’Or Foreurs and Baie-Comeau Drakkar opens Friday.
