Basic HTML Version
By STEPHEN ALEXANDER
The Tribune
When the Portland Tim-
bers won 2-0 against the
Houston Dynamo and cele-
brated their first victory of
the season, it was proof of ev-
erything coach Caleb Porter
has been saying for weeks:
The side was playing well
even if the results had not
showed it.
“It’s big,” Porter says. “It re-
inforces the hard work we’ve
done in training, and it reinforc-
es that we have a very good
team.”
Still, it is just one victory. And
while it put the Timbers (1-1-3,
six points) back in the thick of
things in the MLSWestern Con-
ference, Portland will have to
duplicate the performance if it
wants to be a playoff contender.
“We have to do it again and
again and again,” Porter says.
“We have 29 games left. It
doesn’t matter unless we keep
doing it.”
Throughout the first five
matches, the Timbers have
grown more cohesive.
“We’re starting to realize
each other’s tendencies more
and more,” midfielder Jack
Jewsbury says. “Through the
early part of the season, you’re
going to see some of those
growing pains. But, as you saw
(Saturday), the whole team
I
t has been nearly 15 years
since Marian Hossa was
the No. 1 act on the Win-
terhawks team that
claimed the Memorial Cup at
Spokane.
Hossa was the elite star for
the Portland crew that beat the
Guelph Storm 4-3 in overtime in
the 1998 title game to claim su-
premacy of North American ju-
nior hockey.
It’s no surprise to those who
watched him play in his lone
Western Hockey League season
that the Slovakian winger has
reigned as one of the best for-
wards in the game through a
sterling NHL career.
“Everybody knew how good
he was,” says Brent Peterson,
head coach on that Winter-
hawks teamwho moved on to a
long career as an assistant
coach with Nashville and is now
a hockey operations adviser for
the NHL Predators.
Hossa is a mainstay for the
Chicago Blackhawks, who
earned a piece of history by be-
ginning the 2012-13 season with
a 24-game unbeaten streak. Af-
ter back-to-back victories over
Peterson’s Predators and a
Tuesday victory at Minnesota,
Chicago has the league’s best
record at 30-5-4.
Hossa’s 14th goal of
the season beat Minne-
sota 1-0 Tuesday night.
“It’s been a lot of fun
so far,” says Hossa, 34,
a five-time All-Star
who became the first
player in history to
play in consecutive Stanley Cup
finals with three teams — Pitts-
burgh, Detroit and Chicago.
Hossa’s Blackhawks won the
2010 Cup, and they’ll be the fa-
vorites to do it again this
spring.
“I feel really confident with
this team,” says the 6-1,
210-pound Hossa, “We hope we
can go all the way. But it’s a
great challenge. We know how
tough it’s going to be.”
The Blackhawks were in the
center of the hockey universe
for more than a month with
their unprecedented beginning
to this work stoppage-short-
ened NHL campaign. They
were 21-0-3 before a 6-2 loss at
Colorado on March 8.
“We wanted to start the sea-
son strong, but 24 straight with-
out a loss ... nobody was expect-
ing that,” Hossa says. “And
we’re still playing great hockey
right now.”
Hossa also has 10 assists in
31 games, having recently re-
turned to duty after missing six
games with a shoulder injury.
He has five game-winning
goals, and on Feb. 2 against Cal-
gary he found the net with 2.3
seconds left in regulation to
force overtime in a game the
Hawks won in a shootout.
In more than 1,000 career
NHL regular-season games,
Hossa has scored 431 goals and
has 928 points. Soon he will join
the 1,000-point club that has 79
players to date.
“Marian is still one of the
best forwards in the league,”
Peterson says. “In the NHL, you
have to do things at a higher
speed, in smaller spaces, in less
time. He does everything so
well.”
Hossa was perhaps the most
dynamic player in the WHL
during the 1997-98 season, scor-
ing 45 goals with 40 assists in 53
regular-season games, then
adding 13 goals and six assists
in 16 WHL playoff contests dur-
ing the Hawks’ unforgettable
ride to the top.
As an 18-year-old, Hossa was
sent to Portland after playing
the maximum seven early-sea-
son games with the NHL Otta-
wa Senators.
“We got very fortunate,” Pe-
terson recalls. “He could have
made Ottawa easily, but they
had a pretty good team and de-
cided he needed to go down and
play with his own age group.”
Hossa joined a Portland team
with such standouts as Brenden
Morrow, Todd Robinson and
Andrew Ference.
“He was the missing piece for
us,” Peterson says. “He was so
strong and talented.
We had him only the
one year, but it was a
perfect year for us.”
Hossa recalls the ti-
tle season with fond-
ness.
“What a great year,”
he says. “My roommate
was Brenden. Our billets were
great, and Portland was a good
city to play in. That team had
great chemistry on and off the
ice. To finish it by winning the
Memorial Cup ... what memo-
ries.”
Hossa has mixed emotions
when he recalls the title game
against Guelph. With less than
five minutes remaining in a
tense struggle, he went down
with a torn ACL knee injury.
“Those things,” he says, “you
never forget.”
Hossa came back to play 60
games with Ottawa the next
season, scoring 15 goals.
“The Senators told me he
worked as hard to rehab as any-
body they’d ever seen,” Peter-
son says. “Normally, it’s a one-
year process. He was back play-
ing in October.”
Does Hossa keep tabs on his
old junior team?
“To tell you the truth, no,” he
says with a chuckle. “But when
I email with my old billets, they
give me updates, so I know they
have a really strong team again.
That would be awesome, so ma-
ny years after our Memorial
Cup, if they have another team
from Portland win it again.”
Hossa says this year’s Black-
hawks remind him in some
ways of the 2010 Stanley Cup
championship club.
“We had four strong lines,”
he says, “and this year, we are
similar, with a lot of different
players. We play short shifts
with four lines. Nobody stays
out there too long, so we main-
tain great energy.
“We have a strong, confident
defense, too, and our goalies
are playing unbelievable right
now.”
kerryeggers@portlandtribune.com
Twitter: @kerryeggers
PortlandTribune.com
Sports
Tribune
Portland
Tribune
Kerry
Eggers
ON S POR T S
PAGE B8
THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2013
Hossa wants
to hoist the
Cup again
Marian Hossa,
former Portland
Winterhawks
star, hoists the
Stanley Cup
after the
Chicago
Blackhawks beat
the Philadelphia
Flyers in the
2010 NHL finals.
COURTESY OF
CHICAGO
BLACKHAWKS
More online
Read other
Kerry Eggers
columns during
the week at portland
tribune.com
Forward Adam De Champlain rushes up the ice for the Portland Winterhawks in their second-round Western Hockey League playoff
series with Spokane.
■
Learning curve includes a few frays as WHL
powerhouse seasons its dozen new additions
Ryan Johnson
scores the first
of his goals in
last week’s
2-0 Portland
Timbers win at
home over the
Houston
Dynamo.
TRIBUNE PHOTO:
CHRISTOPHER
ONSTOTT
Club begins to gel as
schedule brings two
San Jose matches
Timbers hope to stir things
up with more MLS victories
See TIMBERS/ Page 6
A
dam De Champlain of the
Portland Winterhawks
must be really good at what
he does. He can smile, and
display something fairly unusual for
somebody who tussles with the oppo-
nent’s tough guys — a full set of
teeth, thanks in part to the use of a
mouth guard.
“I think I’ve fared decently,” he says
of fights. “Gotta keep in the mouth
piece, so you don’t bite your tongue
and stuff.”
De Champlain has been a valuable
addition to a Western Hockey League
championship-level team — a team
that included a lot of new additions,
12 in all counting emergency goalie
Jarrod Schamerhorn on the playoff
roster.
Defenseman Seth Jones was the
featured addition, but the likes of De
Champlain and fellow forwards Pre-
sten Kopeck, Keegan Iverson and Paul
Bittner were all pleasant surprises for
the Hawks.
To have four or five rookies contrib-
ute would be fantastic on most WHL
teams ... but eight? Nine? Ten?
“We knew we’d have a lot of turn-
over,” says coach Travis Green, whose
team was facing Spokane in the West-
ern Conference semifinals after a re-
cord-breaking regular season. “That’s
the way it is in junior hockey. A lot of
young guys came in and played key
situations.”
Indeed, Jones and European import
Oliver Bjorkstrand have been prime-
time contributors, but several other
first-year players have done their
share in helping Portland become the
top-ranked team in junior hockey.
The Winterhawks are regarded as a
tougher team this season, after back-
to-back WHL finals appearances, in
large part because of the additions of
De Champlain and Joe Mahon.
De Champlain has been in 17 fights
and amassed a team-leading 177 regu-
lar-season penalty minutes. Mahon,
another first-year guy, had a fewmore
fights — “I wouldn’t want to fight
him,” De Champlain says. Clearly, the
pair has helped enforce things on the
ice, where opponents often try to
rough up or intimidate skill players.
Fights often ensue, it’s the nature of
the game.
“He’s not a guy who other teams en-
joy playing against,” Green says of the
6-1, 180-pound De Champlain.
After attending two prior Winter-
hawks’ training camps, De Champlain
played Junior A hockey in Camrose,
Alberta, and then made the team this
Story by Jason Vondersmith
Photos by Christopher Onstott
Presten Kopeck,
a 17-year-old
Portland
Winterhawks
forward, gets
ready to take a
faceoff against
Spokane during
the second
round of the
Western Hockey
League playoffs.
See HAWKS / Page 7
Rookies adding punch
to Winterhawk sucess