Tuesday notes . . .

There doesn’t appear to be anything new out of Portland concerning the Winter Hawks, although you can bet their situation came in for at least some discussion Tuesday night as the WHL’s executive committee met. . . . Jason Vondersmith of the Portland Tribune reports that the WHL hopes to have its audit of the Winter Hawks completed this week. However, no one in the WHL office is talking about it at this point in time. . . . Winter Hawks president Jack Donovan told Vondersmith that, despite earlier comments to the contrary by principal owner Jim Goldsmith, Ken Hodge is staying on as the general manager and his responsibilities will continue to include player personnel and scouting. Hodge was at the Alberta Cup in Lloydminster over the weekend.
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Yes, the WHL holds its bantam draft on Thursday in Calgary. You won’t find coverage of it here because the best coverage is available on Alan Caldwell’s blog, Small Thoughts at Large. There is a link to it over on the left. It you’re a draftnik, it’ll be well worth your while to check out Alan’s site on Thursday during the draft. . . . The draft begins at 8:15 a.m. Calgary time and should conclude around 3:30 p.m. . . . The WHL will run the draft in real time at whl.ca. . . . Eligible for the draft are 1993-born players who reside in Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North West Territories, Yukon, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. . . . Haven’t heard yet just which scouts got to go to Hawaii. . . .
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The stage finally is set for the WHL’s championship final for the Ed Chynoweth Cup. It will feature the Lethbridge Hurricanes against the Spokane Chiefs. . . .
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WHL FINAL
Friday: Lethbridge at Spokane, 7 p.m.
Saturday: Lethbridge at Spokane, 7 p.m.
Tuesday: Spokane at Lethbridge, 6 p.m.
Wednesday, May 7: Spokane at Lethbridge, 6 p.m.
Friday, May 9: x-Spokane at Lethbridge, 6 p.m.
Sunday, May 11: x-Lethbridge at Spokane, 7 p.m.
Monday, May 12: x-Lethbridge at Spokane, 7 p.m.
x — if necessary.
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In Kennewick, Wash., on Tuesday night, F Judd Blackwater scored twice, giving him five goals in the last three games, as the Spokane Chiefs beat the Tri-City Americans, 4-1. . . . The Chiefs won the Western Conference final, 4-3, by breaking a 1-1 tie with three third-period goals. . . . The Chiefs got the game’s first goal when F David Rutherford, at 12:50 of the first period, scored from his knees as he was being hauled down by D Tyler Schmidt. It was Rutherford’s seventh goal of the playoffs and was the sixth time in the series that the Chiefs had scored first. . . . Tri-City pulled even at 6:59 of the second period when LW Colton Yellow Horn, the league’s leading regular-season goal scorer, notched his 10th playoff goal on a backhander out of a scramble. It was his 21st point of the playoffs. . . . Spokane took a 2-1 lead just 16 seconds into the third period when Blackwater was credited with his seventh goal of the spring. . . . Spokane LW Drayson Bowman upped the lead to 3-1 on the Chiefs’ first PP of the game at 8:29 of the third period. It was his eighth goal of the playoffs. . . . Blackwater closed out the scoring with an empty-netter. . . . Spokane G Dustin Tokarski, the series MVP, stopped 31 shots. Tri-City Chet Pickard, who finishes with 57 regular-season and playoff victories this season, stopped 16 shots. . . . The Americans had forced a Game 7 with a 2-1 overtime victory in Spokane on Monday night. Tickets for Game 7 went on sale in Kennewick bright and early Tuesday morning and fans were lined up well before 7 a.m. Yes, the Toyota Center was sold out — 5,907. . . . Five of the first six games went into overtime with the teams playing 74 minutes 20 seconds of extra time. Through 434:20 of play in the first six games, one team — the Chiefs — held a two-goal lead for 11:01. That was in the third period of Game 3, which the Chiefs won 2-0. . . . Spokane set a franchise record with its sixth overtime game of these playoffs. The Chiefs had played five OT games in 2002. . . . In 2003, the Kootenay Ice ousted the Kamloops Blazers in six games in a series in which three games went to OT. In those three games, the teams played 134:50 of OT, including a league-record 76:56 in Game 3. . . . The OT winners in this series came from Spokane F Ondrej Roman (Game 1), Tri-City F Drew Hoff (2), Tri-City F Kruise Reddick (4), Spokane F Judd Blackwater (5) and Reddick (6). . . . The Chiefs last were in the WHL final in 2000 when the fell in six games to the Kootenay Ice. The Hurricanes were last there in 1997 when they swept the Seattle Thunderbirds. . . . "It's unbelievable, I don't even have that emotion of elation, it's just relief to be honest," Spokane head coach Bill Peters told Jessica Brown of the Spokesman-Review. “Just the closeness of the series, the emotions that are involved in the series, just how hard it was to get this thing looked after — 10 or 11 days of some of the best hockey I've been a part of. When people look back on this series over time, it's going to be a classic. It probably should be an instant classic already."