After striking first, Vancouver Giants went on to lose 7-2 to the Portland Winterhawks on Saturday night, Dec. 7 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in a contest where Portland erased a 2-1 leads by the vicitors by scoring six unanswered goals between the second and third periods.
The loss drops Vancouver's record to 12-11-4 this season, while the Winterhawks improve to 14-11-2.
The game turned in the second period, when the Hawks scored four of their seven goals.
Kyle Chyzowski and Diego Buttazzoni each scored a pair, while Tyson Yaremko, Alex Weiermair and Alex McDonough each had a goal for the home side. Portland's power play went 3-for-5.
Colton Roberts and Mazden Leslie provided the offence for the Giants, each with a power play marker.
Giants associate coach Adam Maglio called it "disappointing for sure because the start was quite good."
"You've got to manage [pucks] really well against this team because they're so fast," Maglio said.
"They get above you quick and counter on you. So I thought [in the first period] with our management, we were aggressive, we were pursuing it hard. We just weren't disciplined in our game tonight through 60 minutes. Penalty trouble. We were getting undisciplined with our sticks. And then even within our game, it just seemed like they get a couple and we just couldn't sustain what we were doing early on."
Giants scored the first goal 4:58 into the contest, off a point shot from Roberts that found its way through traffic to the back of the net.
Vancouver built off this early momentum to generate chances and offensive zone time, until Yaremko of the Winterhawks tied the game with 5:09 remaining in the period.
Just 1:26 into period two, Leslie put Vancouver back out in front, where he snapped a shot from the left circle past the glove side of goaltender Ondrej 艩t臎bet谩k.
The Winterhawks responded quickly, with Chyzowski making it 2-2 less than two minutes later, when he was uncovered deep in the Giants zone and roofed it on the backhand.
Several minutes later, Buttazzoni would give the Hawks their first lead of the night at 3-2, before Chyzowski extended the lead to 4-2 just a few minutes later.
Buttazzoni made it 5-2 on his second of the night with 2:13 left in the second period.
In the third, Weiermair notched his first WHL goal in his first WHL game on a power play to make it 6-2, before McDonough added one more tally to make the finals core 7-2.
Sunday, Dec. 8 at 4 p.m. both teams are back at it in Portland.
