The preliminaries are done, exhibition season is long gone and the Prince George Cougars are still winning hockey games. Carson Carels opened the scoring at 10:58 of the first period finishing off a broken play that started inside the Portland blueline. Nathan Free evened the score for the Winterhawks as his one-time blast beat Cougars goalie Alexander Levshyn. Portland outshot the Cougars 32-28 but went 1-for-4 on the power-play while PG was 2-for-6. Portland was also without a few important cogs, which included the likes of Alex Weiermaier, Carter Southran, Max Psiencka and Tyson Yaremko.