Painting the WHL’s final stretch of the regular season by the numbers

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With the WHL regular season winding down, here are some numbers to know.

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The last league games will be played Sunday, April 17. Sixteen of the league’s 22 teams advance to the post-season. As of Wednesday morning, there were three playoff spots up for grabs in the Western Conference and two in the East.

The Vancouver Giants, Victoria Royals, Spokane Chiefs and the Prince George Cougars, who were separated by a single point as of Wednesday morning, are vying for those last three spots in the West.

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Portland Winterhawks vs. Vancouver Giants

7:30 pm, Langley Events Centre. Radio: Sportsnet 650 AM

Vancouver has six games left, Victoria has four. Prince George was meeting the Kelowna Rockets and Spokane was taking on the Everett Silvertips on Wednesday, and both the Cougars and the Chiefs would have three games left after that.

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3-0-0-0 Giants’ record this season against the Portland Winterhawks.

The teams wrap their four-game season series Friday when the Winterhawks visit the Langley Events Centre. Portland (43-16-3-2) is third in the West. Vancouver (23-35-4-0) started Wednesday in sixth spot, making the Winterhawks-Giants a possible first-round playoff matchup.

4-5-1-1 Giants’ record over the last five seasons against the Winterhawks.

30-5-0-1 Portland record since Dec. 27, which is the best mark in the WHL over that time.

That’s the day they acquired goalie Taylor Gauthier from the Prince George Cougars for defenseman Jonas Brondberg and three WHL draft picks. One of their losses since then was to the Giants, who took a 6-5 decision in Portland on March 12. Gauthier, who turned 21 in February, has a 21-4-0-0 record to go with a 2.14 goals against average and a .933 save percentage with the Winterhawks. In 191 career regular-season games, he has a 3.04 GAA and a .909 save percentage.

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0 times that the Giants have taken part in a shootout this season.

They’re the lone WHL club that’s yet to experience the penalty-shot tiebreaker. The Winterhawks (6-2) and Rockets (3-5) led the way as of Wednesday morning with eight appearances each. The Rockets’ 1-0 overtime win Tuesday over the Cougars marked the 16th time they’ve gone past regulation time, which gave them the league-high for the season. Portland has been past regulation time 15 times. Vancouver is 3-4 in OT this season.

4 seasons since the WHL’s five BC teams produced a 100-point scorer.

Matthew Phillips, a forward who was in his third and final campaign with the Royals, had 112 points, including 48 goals, in 2017-18. Kamloops Blazers center Logan Stankoven is at 96 points, including 42 goals, with four games left. Stankoven is also looking to become the first Blazer to post a 100-point season since forward Colin Smith had 106 in 2012-13.

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5 game-winning goals from forward Lukas Svejkovsky in the Seattle Thunderbirds’ past 15 victories.

Seattle picked up Svejkovsky, a former Giant and the son of Abbotsford Canucks skills coach Yogi Svejkovsky, in a Dec. 27 trade with the Medicine Hat Tigers. Medicine Hat received three draft picks, highlighted by a 2022 first-rounder. Svejkovsky has 19 goals and 43 points in 31 games with Seattle and leads the club with six game-winners. Svejkovsky, 20, signed his entry-level contract this week with the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team that picked him in the fourth round of the 2020 NHL Draft.

7 players in the QMJHL who had more goals as of Wednesday morning than the 34 that forward Bailey Peach has scored for the Victoria Royals.

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Peach, who’s from Falmouth, NS, played his first four major-junior seasons in the QMJHL. He was waived through the league after getting released by the Charlottetown Islanders after last season, which allowed Victoria to pick him up. Peach, who turned 21 in March, leads the Royals in scoring with 74 points in 62 games. He had seven goals and 17 points in 24 games with Charlottetown last season.

12 times this season that the Winterhawks have scored seven or more goals in a game.

That’s tops in the league. Kamloops and the Winnipeg Ice both have done it 11 times.

13 goals by Rockets forward Colton Dach against the Blazers this season in 12 games, the most tallies by one player against a single opponent.

Dach had 25 goals in 56 games going into that Wednesday matchup against the Cougars. The Blazers (46-16-2-0) had a 12-point lead on the Rockets (38-19-1-5) as of Wednesday morning, but Kelowna finished 8-4-0-2 against Kamloops this season.

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22 points by Everett Silvertips forward Michal Gut — three goals, 19 assists — in nine games against the Tri-City Americans.

That’s the most points for one player against a single opponent on the campaign. The Silvertips and the Americans meet twice more this season. Gut had 15 goals and 66 points in 48 games going into Everett’s matchup Wednesday against the Chiefs. Everett is 7-2-1-0 against the last-placed Americans (18-41-5-0). Seattle is 13-0-0-0 against Tri-City, with one more game between the clubs to be played.

23 seasons since the Blazers have had a winning percentage better than their mark so far this season.

With four games to go, the Blazers are playing .734 hockey, thanks to that 46-16-2-0 record. That’s the best winning percentage they’ve had since going 48-11-0 in 1998-99 for a .757 mark. Remember that the WHL cut teams’ schedules from 72 to 68 games for the 2018-19 season, so it makes it difficult to compare point totals.

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33 points for Justin Sourdif in 24 games with the Edmonton Oil Kings since joining the club in a Jan. 17 trade-deadline day deal with the Giants.

That includes 14 goals. He had 32 points in 24 games with Vancouver before the swap. That included nine goals. Tanner Brown, a Vancouver defenseman traded to the Winnipeg Ice at the deadline, has three goals and nine points in 29 games with Winnipeg. He had three goals and 14 points in 34 games with Vancouver. Winnipeg sent Vancouver a 2022 first-round pick for Brown, while they received forward Jacob Boucher, a 2022 first-rounder and a 2025 first-rounder from Edmonton in exchange for Sourdif.

50-point jump from his previous career high that Red Deer Rebels forward Arshdeep Bains has made so far this season.

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Bains, a Surrey native who recently signed a free-agent deal with the Vancouver Canucks, went into Wednesday leading the WHL in scoring with 101 points, including 38 goals, in 64 games. His best production of him going into this year had been the 51 points, including 18 goals, he totaled in 63 games with Red Deer in 2019-20. Bains, who turned 21 in January, had eight goals and 21 points in 23 games in the abbreviated season last spring. Red Deer has four games remaining. Bains is trying to become the first player born in BC to win the WHL scoring title since Kamloops product Casey Pierro-Zabotel pulled it off for the Giants in 2008-09 with his 115 points, including 36 goals. Bains was followed on the scoring list Wednesday by his Red Deer teammate, Ben King, who’s from Vernon, and Stankoven, who’s from Kamloops.

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120 career regular-season wins for Saskatoon Blades netminder Nolan Maier going into a Wednesday game for the Blades against the Lethbridge Hurricanes.

That ties Maier for the all-time WHL lead with Corey Hirsch, the former Canucks backstop turned radio analyst who set the mark from 1988-92 with the Blazers, and with Tyson Sexsmith, who tied it during his 2004-2009 run with the Giants . It took Hirsch 181 games and Sexsmith 173. Maier, who turned 21 in January, had seen duty in 213 games in his career going into Wednesday. Saskatoon has two more games left on its schedule after Wednesday.

199 power-play opportunities on the season for the Rockets ahead of their Wednesday game.

That was a league low. Vancouver is next with 218. The Swift Current Broncos led with 279, followed by Tri-City at 278.

204 times the Blazers have been short-handed this season, which is a league-low.

The Oil Kings, who like the Blazers have played 64 games, are the league-high for times short-handed with 302.

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