Portage Terriers

The Portage Terriers annual Rookie Camp was the main event at Stride Place this weekend. Over 100 young hockey players took to the ice in hopes of impressing the Terriers staff and trying to earn a shot at coming to training camp in the fall. Angus Moar, the Terriers' Head Scout, describes the process of finding these young players.

Tayem Gislason has become the second Portage Terrier from this season to announce his commitment to college hockey. He shares where he'll be playing.

"I just committed to Ontario Tech University. It's a USPORTS school here in Canada, so I'm pretty excited."

Gislason had previously explained he hoped to have his decision "very soon." He'll join a Ridgebacks team that finished their season with a record of 14-15-0. The team also saw their captain, Sean Ross, sign a professional contract in the East Coast Hockey League.

Another former Portage Terrier has committed to a post-secondary school while pursuing hockey. However, he's not from the group you might be expecting.

Brock MacDonald committed to Elmira College today, after splitting this past season between the Colorado Grit and Kenai River Brown Bears of the North American Hockey League. 

The Portage Terrier have eight players graduating from junior hockey this season, and PortageOnline caught up with all of them to discuss their time spent in the city.

Daniel Siso, Jayden Catellier, Slade Stanick, Parker Korman, Ashton Fishley, Gabriel Laflamme, Aidan Brook, and Tayem Gislason all aged out from the squad at the end of this past season. Four of the players had spent at least parts of three seasons with the team.

The 2023-24 season is over, but Blake Spiller isn't sitting around and taking time off. He's already working on off-season activities, including scouting young talent for the draft this summer.

"There's always things happening. There's a TELUS Cup regional this weekend in Winnipeg, so our scouting staff and I will attend and then we have our Spring Camp on May 2nd and 3rd."

Spiller said the year that just ended was a tough one, largely due to inconsistency and also struggles the run at the Centennial Cup in 2022-23.

The Portage Terriers' season has concluded after a tough first round matchup with the Winkler Flyers. Off the ice, the team was active all year in the community, with many players taking part in volunteer opportunities in the region. Grant Dardis was named the Community Spirit Award winner by the team at their awards night, and says it feels good to be recognized.

The Portage Terriers’ season came to a close Saturday night when they lost 6-3 to the Winkler Flyers.

The Flyers continued their strong physical style of hockey in game 5 and used their home crowd to their advantage. They scored three unanswered goals in the first period from Brady Craik, Trent Penner, and Jakob Jones. All of the momentum was in Winkler’s favour as they outshot Portage 17-5. This was the first period in the series where not a single penalty was called.

A late surge couldn’t get the Terriers back into Game 4, falling 3-1 to the Winkler Flyers. Portage had a hard time generating offence and ended the game getting outshot 34-22.

The Terriers started the game slowly by taking a pair of back to back penalties. After killing them off, they weren’t able to capitalize when they got power plays of their own in the second half of the first period. Winkler got on the board off a turnover in the Terrier end and Jakob Jones fired it past Gavin Renwick to make it 1-0 Flyers.

A tough loss to the Winkler Flyers on Wednesday has the Portage Terriers down 2-1 in the first round playoff series.

Winkler's Jayce Legaarden scored a hat trick, including one short-handed to finish the 5-3 victory, which saw Terrier netminder Jayden Catellier exit early due to injury.

The two teams return to action tonight at Stride Place for Game 4, with the Dogs wanting to even the series.

The series has been a penalty-filled affair, with the last two games both reaching over 60 minutes in penalties.

The Portage Terriers couldn’t complete a late game comeback against the Winkler Flyers on Wednesday night and lost 5-3. The Flyers thrived on home ice playing a heavy physical brand of hockey.