Chiefs Discover Home No Longer A Safe Haven

The honeymoon with their palatial surroundings may be over.

The Spokane Chiefs - tired, sore and struggling - were beaten 6-4 by the Tri-City Americans, who came to town Saturday night all business after leaving their ace at home.

Playing without star center Daymond Langkow, suspended for missing a Saturday morning team meeting, the aroused Americans erased a 2-1 Spokane lead with a rash of power-play goals that ran the Chiefs out of the Arena in the Western Hockey League game.

Gone are the nights when the Chiefs can just show up and ride four lines of talent and the emotion of a sellout crowd to a happy ending.

Their numbers have dwindled through attrition. The newness of their building has worn off.

Playing without veteran right winger John Cirjak (foot) and defenseman Joel Boschman (ankle), with rookie right wing Ty Jones expected to miss up to six weeks with a separated shoulder, and with center Jared Hope and left wing Joe Cardarelli still among the wounded, the Chiefs suited only 19 players, one under the allowable 20.

Playing their ninth game in 15 nights the stressed-out special teams - the power players and penalty killers - performed like zoned-out zombies.

But realizing that those who are left gave him what they had, Chiefs coach Mike Babcock declared Monday an off-day and expressed no great surprise that his club missed an opportunity to move into a tie with Kamloops for the WHL West Division lead. Spokane remains in third place, a point behind Kelowna and two down in the standings to Kamloops.

“They scored on the power play all night long like we weren’t even there,” Babcock said. “We weren’t. We were two steps away all the time. But I have to give our guys a lot of credit. We’ve been all over the world and they’ve really battled. We’re going to get charged up and come right back at it.”

The Chiefs have the Moose Jaw Warriors at home Wednesday night, when Cirjak returns, as does the question of who Babcock starts in goal. Maybe the question is not who starts but who finishes?

The Chiefs pulled starter David Lemanowicz following Mike Hurley’s power-play goal at 4:28 of the second period that put Tri-City up 4-2. Aren Miller came on and a minute later Tri-City was again lighting up the board on the power play, Jarsolav Svejkovsky scoring to boost the lead to three goals.

The largest crowd in the Chiefs’ brief history in the Arena, 10,526, watched the Chiefs close to 5-3 on John Shockey’s first goal of the season, then cut it to 5-4 on defenseman Sean Gillam’s brilliant move against the Tri-City power-play unit.

Gillam turned the puck around in the defensive zone, avoided a check at the blue line, carried into the slot and scored with the Chiefs skating short-handed.

The goal at 14:34 of the third brought the huge crowd alive for 15 seconds, until Tri-City’s Brent Ascroft shoveled the puck up top and over Miller, with the Americans again on the power play.

“Our power play isn’t working that well, really,” Tri-City coach Bob Loucks laughed. “I thought we kept plugging away. Spokane played OK. Our goaltender played a little bit better than their goaltender early in the game, and that might have been the difference.”

Tri-City 6, Spokane 4

Tri-City 3 2 1 - 6

Spokane 2 1 1 - 4

First period - 1, TC, Gyori 6 (Anneck, Lapeyre), 2:20. 2, Spo, Bertsch 4 (Magarrell, Shockey), 4:47. 3, Spo, Hamilton 3 (Leonov), 6:05. 4, TC, Ma.Hurley 11 (Svejkovsky), 15:15 (pp). 5, TC, Ma.Hurley 12 (Briske, Mi.Hurley), 19:50. Key penalties - Svejkovsky, TC, 6:32; Sinclair, Spo, 6:45; Komarniski, TC, 10:11; Boikov, TC, 12:06; Magarrell, Spo, 14:36; Lapeyre, TC, 16:02; Schutz, Spo, 18:36.

Second period - 6, TC, Mi.Hurley 14 (Ryan, Komarniski), 4:28 (pp). 7, TC, Svejkovsky 25 (Ascroft), 5:28 (pp). 8, Spo, Shockey 1 (Hamilton, Leonov), 13:03. Key penalties - Shockey, Spo, 2:42; Hamilton, Spo, 3:43; Graf, Spo, 5:52; Mi.Hurley, TC, 10:24; Sinclair, Spo, 10:48; Anneck, TC, 11:45; Favaro, Spo, 12:13; Briske, TC, 13:35; Focht, TC, 16:24.

Third period - 9, Spo, Gillam 5, 14:34 (sh). 10, TC, Ascroft 16 (Svejkovsky, Focht), 14:49 (pp). Key penalties - Favaro, Spo, 3:07; Mi.Hurley, TC, 4:27; Podollan, Spo, 9:10; Svejkovsky, TC, 10:02; Sinclair, Spo, double minor, 11:34.

Power-play opp. - Tri-City 5 of 11; Spokane 0 of 10.Saves - Tri-City, Boucher 14-15-10-39. Spokane, Lemanowicz 9-3-x-12, Miller x-8-15-23.A - 10,526.

, DataTimes