The Kelowna Rockets took a two-goal lead into the final period and held on to defeat the Portland Winter Hawks 2-1 in front of 5,211 at the Memorial Coliseum on Sunday night.
Kyle St. Denis and Lucas Bloodoff scored for the Rockets, once in the first and once in the second. Bloodoff’s goal was a power play goal and turned out to be the game winner. It occurred when Tyson Barrie’s dump-in from center hit a notch in the glass and the puck kicked into the slot area giving Bloodoff an open net to tip it in.
Portland’s goal came late in the third period, on a power play, when the Hawks pulled goaltender Kurtis Mucha to give them a two-man advantage. Chris Francis found Tristan King at the bottom of the left face-off circle and King slid it home just inside the post to cut the lead to one goal, but the Hawks could not find the equalizer.
The goal was the sixth goal of the season for Portland when they have had the goaltender on the bench for the extra-attacker.
Mucha stopped 35 of 37 shots in net for Portland while Kristofer Westblom stopped 16 of 17 shots for Kelowna.
On the night, Portland went 1 for 4 on the power play while Kelowna finished 1 for 7.
The loss was the 20th in a row for Portland.
Next up, the Hawks will travel to Spokane to take on the Chiefs on Wednesday night, game time is 7:00 PM.