by Larry Fisher

Ty Rattie could've had a handful of goals. He settled for a hat trick in pacing the Winterhawks to a 6-3 series-opening win over the Rockets in WHL playoff action.

Rattie scored three times, bringing his season total to a WHL-best 60 goals, as the hosts peppered Rockets goaltender Adam Brown with 55 shots on Friday night at Memorial Coliseum.

The dominance is nothing new - Portland won all four regular-season meetings and also ousted Kelowna from the playoffs last spring, prevailing in six games of that second-round series. Game 1, though, was closer than the score indicates.

"We had a chance to make it 4-4 on a breakaway in the third period, and I think if we would've scored that goal, it might have been a different finish to the game," Rockets head coach Ryan Huska said of over-age forward Cody Chikie's chance that he fired wide. "But once they got the fifth one, it was us on our heels the rest of the way."

Containing Rattie will be crucial if the Rockets hope to salvage a split south of the border. There was no stopping him in Friday's opener, which saw Rattie convert two set-ups from Sven Baertschi, a Swiss import fresh off a stint with the NHL's Calgary Flames.

Those goals erased a 1-0 deficit midway through the second period, and Rattie completed his hat trick to round out the scoring late in the third, sniping from the slot.

"That line, in my mind, was the difference in the game," Huska said. "Ty Rattie is a special player on his own, but when you add Baertschi to the mix, they're hard to play against. At times, our defence struggled a little bit with them, but we'll regroup and we'll be better against them (tonight)."

Despite being outshot throughout, sixth-seeded Kelowna, which finished 30 points behind third-ranked Portland, held its own early on. The Rockets carried the play for much of the first half, leading 1-0 after 20 minutes and recording the first six shots of the second before the momentum shifted in favour of Portland. Once the Hawks found the back of the net, they quickly filled it.

Chikie opened the scoring for Kelowna with a power-play marker off the rush that beat Winterhawks goaltender Mac Carruth over the blocker.

Zach Franko, in similar high-blocker fashion, to even the score 2-2 at 17:08 of the second, and captain Colton Sissons, on a deflection of Mackenzie Johnston's point shot to cut the deficit to 4-3 at 8:06 of the third, also scored for the Rockets. Brown finished with 49 saves and skated off with the puck after the game's final buzzer, to the chagrin of Portland players.

One of the turning points was a controversial buzzer beater by Portland's Joe Morrow to end the middle frame. Morrow, a fleet-footed defenceman and first-round NHL draft pick (Pittsburgh), capitalized on a Kelowna turnover off a poor clearing attempt that he knocked down and fired past Brown, unassisted, with only 1.8 seconds left on the clock for a 3-2 lead. Brown and Kelowna's bench protested to no avail that an icing should have been whistled, and that the play was offside in Morrow's bid to hold the blue-line.

Oliver Gabriel made it 4-2 for the Winterhawks just 2:43 into the third, tallying what stood up as the winner, and Taylor Leier snuffed out any comeback push by potting a rebound off the end boards at 10:53 to restore Portland's two-goal lead, 5-3.

Carruth made 26 saves to preserve the win.

At the other end, Brown robbed Rattie once just before he buried his hat-trick goal, and, on a rare whiff, Rattie missed an open-net chance off another feed from Bartschi earlier in the game.

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