Another tough night for the Winterhawks, as they once again get stunned by a hot goalie. Tyler Brennan, after a 31-for-31 game Monday afternoon, stops 34 of 35 in the Prince George Cougars’ 3-1 win. It’s Portland’s 5th straight loss. In those losses they’ve only scored 4 goals. The biggest difference has been the play of the opposition goaltending. Goalies against Portland in that stretch have stopped 167 out of 171 shots, a stunning . 977 save percentage. In Portland’s last 10 games, where they have scored 20 goals and are 2-6-0-2, opposition goalies have stopped 360 of 380, a . 947 save percentage. In a game that was pretty even or just slightly tilted toward the Cougars, Brennan was the biggest difference, but the Cougars got contributions from a lot of players. Eight different players had points on their three goals. Jaxson Wiebe had the opening goal, Carlin Dezainde had the eventual winning goal from the fourth line, and start 17-year-old Riley Heidt had a big game as a setup man. The Winterhawks now go back to Spokane, where game 1 of this 6-game road trip started. They didn’t expect to be returning for game 5 without yet having a win. Portland had 23 more points coming into the game, but their recent offensive troubles evened up the outlook. They did get Fromm-Delorme back after missing a game. More of the previous 65-minute double-shutout of the previous game, although this period was more defensive and didn’t rely so much on the goalies. PG finally got the breakthrough early on. Portland had a long 5-on-3 that they didn’t do much with and in fact gave up an unsuccessful penalty shot to Ethan Samson. They had chances to score outside of that, but Brennan was very good. Then the Cougars got the 4th line goal that really put the Winterhawks under pressure. The key stretch was Kyle Chyzowski negating Portland’s power play, Brennan stopping Fromm-Delorme’s breakaway, and Dubinsky scoring at the other end. That made it 3-0. Portland made a slight charge late, making it 3-1 and looking like they’d made it 3-2 on Jack O’Brien’s rebound goal, but video review waived it off for a high stick. That finished Portland off. The failure to do anything on the 5 on 3 hurt, but it was mostly about PG’s goaltending and defense. Prince George may have been slightly better; Brennan made that advantage look huge. Aidan Litke missed the game after missing most of Monday’s game. Fromm-Delorme returned from missing the full game Monday. 4th-line forward Eastman had a knee-on-knee with Marek Alscher in the 3rd, called interference, and didn’t return. The Edmonton Oil Kings look to have, by far, the highest opposition goalie save percentage in the league at . 921. The next-highest looks to be about . 910 or so. So that . 977 over 5 games, and . 947 over 10, is not anywhere close to sustainable. It is going to get better. And if that . 977 save percentage was just a little bit worse, Portland would have won two or three of those games. They have the same personnel that was 28-8-2-1 when Chaz Lucius joined them for his 6-game stint. It’s just a bad stretch, the sky is not falling. They’re 3 back of Tri-City with a game in hand, and 1 back of Everett with the same number of games. And they have a very easy schedule the rest of the way. They would have to really fall off to end up in 6th and face Portland in the first round. Friday at Spokane, 7pm Saturday at Seattle, 6pm Saturday 3/4 vs. Tri-City, 6pm Friday 3/17 at Seattle, 7pm.