A tough second period cost the Flyers in a 4-1 loss to the Terriers in Portage on Friday night as the club began a stretch of five straight games on the road. It was a good, entertaining game for the most part, but the defending league champions managed to find the back of the net four times in a span of just over 10 minutes in the middle period to hand the Flyers their 13th loss of the season.
Playing the Terriers for the first time since beating them 3-1 in Winkler on January 27th, the Flyers were back in Portage still looking for their first road win against the Terriers since 2018. The opening 20 minutes was fast paced with both teams generating good chances but seeing those chances stopped by good goaltending.
After a scoreless first period, the Terriers hit the scoreboard first just past the five minute mark of period two. Nearly three minutes later, Portage doubled their lead with a nice tic-tac-toe passing play that ended up in the back of the Winkler net. With the momentum fully with the home side, the Terriers jumped on a couple of Winkler mistakes and added two more to lead 4-0 with 4:10 to go in the second period.
Winkler found a little bit of a spark right near the end of the period when rookie defenseman Trent Sambrook sent the puck up ahead to Captain Jaden Townsend, who then wired a shot underneath the cross bar with just .3 seconds left on the clock to cut the Terriers lead to 4-1 heading into the intermission.
Unfortunately for the Flyers, the Portage defense shut the door the rest of the way and the score remained the same until the final buzzer.
Dorrin Luding made 20 saves in the loss as the Terriers outshot the Flyers 24-16. Winkler went 0-for-3 on the power-play and 1-for-1 on the penalty-kill. With the win, the Terries jumped over the Flyers into second place in the MJHL Standings.
Winkler (34-13-5) will continue their road trip Tuesday night in Winnipeg for their final regular season meeting against the Blues. Puck drop at the RINK Training Centre is 7:30pm with Matt Friesen’s pregame show live on Country 88.9FM and online at www.pembinavalleyonline.com getting underway at 7:25pm. You can also video stream the game on Hockey TV. The Flyers and Terriers will meet again in Portage on Wednesday, February 12th in a make up game from January that was postponed due to weather.