Courtesy of TheCarillon.com
In a battle of the top two teams in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League Saturday night at Portage, the first place Portage Terriers eked out a 4-3 shootout victory over the Steinbach Pistons.
A huge crowd of 1,625 wre on hand in Portage, including a large contingent of Pistons’ fans as there always is when these two teams face-off in Portage.
With the Pistons trailing 3-1 after two periods, defenceman Connor Martin scored 4:45 into the third and then Denis Bosc tied it with seven minutes remaining. Quinton Lisoway scored for the Pistons in the first.
For Martin, becoming a veritable sniper, it was his second goal in three games for the Pistons after not having scored in 96 regular season games prior to that over the past two seasons. Lisoway’s goal was his 16th in only 21 games this year while the equalizer by Bosc was his 13th.
Brad Bowles, Chase Brakel and Michael Knaub were the Portage goal scorers. Bowles, who leads the league in scoring with 41 goals and 97 points, also scored the lone goal in the shootout.
Shots were surprisingly low as the Terriers outshot the Pistons 22-20 as Jeremy Wik stopped 19 in the Steinbach net.
The Terriers now lead the league with 100 points on a record of 49-6-2, 16 points ahead of the second place Pistons, who go to 40-10-4.
Elsewhere in the MJHL on Saturday: OCN doubled Wayway 4-2, Winkler blanked Dauphin 5-0 and Selkirk beat Swan Valley 3-2 in overtime.
The Pistons hit the road again on Sunday as they travel to Neepawa to take on the last place Natives in a 6:30 p.m. start at the Yellowhead Centre.