Playing their first home game in over two weeks, the Portland Winterhawks beat the Brandon Wheat Kings 5-4 in a shootout Tuesday night. Chris Francis had the winner for Portland, notching the only goal for either team during the shootout to extend Portland’s winning streak to four games.

Portland defenseman Troy Rutkowski opened the scoring when he blasted a shot from the point during a power play in the first period at the 2:07 mark with assists from Ryan Johansen and Brad Ross to put Portland up 1-0.

Late in the first period, Winterhawks netminder Ian Curtis had to be removed from the game after suffering a shoulder injury, and Kurtis Mucha took over from there.

Chris Francis then increased Portland’s lead during the second period when he fired the puck past Brandon goaltender Jacob De Serres to put the Hawks up 2-0 at the 6:50 mark with assists from Luke Walker and Brett Ponich.

Brandon answered Portland’s goal with one of its own at 10:03 of the second period when Colby Robak managed to get the puck past Mucha to make the score 2-1, but the Hawks retaliated with a quick goal at the 11:28 mark on a power play when Rutkowski scored his second goal of the game to make the score 3-1.

Portland then extended the lead to 4-1 when Walker notched Portland’s third power play goal of the night at the 14:19 mark with assists from Ty Rattie and Francis. However, Brandon came right back and scored another goal to bring them to within two when Jay Fehr scored the Wheat Kings’ second goal of the night at the 15:15 mark.

Fehr continued to put the pressure on the Hawk defense and pulled the Wheat Kings to within one with his second goal of the evening at 18:16 to make the score at 4-3 going into the second intermission.

Brandon tied the game up at 4-4 when Brayden Schenn fired the puck past Mucha at the 1:10 mark on a power play, which would eventually send the game into overtime.

The Wheat Kings came close to ending the game during overtime when Matt Calvert took the puck down the ice on a breakaway, but Mucha got his left leg pad in the path of the puck, sending the game into a shootout.

“I was just trying surprise him with a poke check, I didn’t think he’d be ready for it,” said Mucha. “There was only four seconds left and I was just trying to be aggressive there and take him by surprise.

During the shootout, Francis slid the puck past a diving De Serres on Portland’s second shot, which would eventually give Portland the win. Mucha stopped all three of the Wheat Kings shots during the shootout to help seal the victory for the Hawks.

Of course, complicating things for Mucha is that by only playing Brandon once a year, he didn’t have the knowledge of their players’ shootout tendencies like he would with a U.S. Division team the Winterhawks play up to 10 times a year.

“I asked the guys on the bench if they knew any of their top end guys and they didn’t really know them, so I just made myself big,” said Mucha. They are really skilled so I knew they would probably try and come in deke, so with the first guy I threw a poke check on him again to be aggressive and the other guys kind of followed him. I just let them make the first move.”

The strategy worked, and helped preserve the win.

Portland hits the ice again Saturday, Oct. 31 when the Hawks head to Spokane to take on the Chiefs.