There is something about this Winterhawks team... They must love playing on the road. Usually it is the older, veteran teams that have the ability to go on the road and step it up... but not this team, not this year. For the 5th time in 5 road play off games, Portland has stepped it up, shut down teams and won. On the other side, they have been beaten at home 5 out of 5 times, and a couple of times, flat out almost run out of the building beatings.
So, what is the big differences? I see two things...
1 - Portland is packing it in and playing tough defense all over on the road. The fore check is much heavier, guys are back checking and the scores are lower. Remember these two teams had 26 goals combined in games 1 and 2, last night... 5 total. Big change...
2- Since Portland does not have the last change, it seems that Portland is doing a better job making first Spokane and now Vancouver match up with them, as opposed to Portland matching up with the opponent. This seems to be working...
Portland is still in this series and 7 games are all about making changes. Portland and Vancouver are both not down making changes, and this series is a long ways from being over...
Next up, game 4 Friday. Nice to see Portland get a win, now gotta win game 4. Interesting side note, both Vancouver and Brandon lose for the first time in the 2010 playoffs on the same night, both at home...
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