Chiefs Finish With A Flourish Podollan Just Misses Falloon’s Mark As Regular Season Ends Victoriously

With all the drama drained out of the regular season, the Spokane Chiefs indulged themselves in a personal quest Sunday night in their 6-0 win over the Prince George Cougars.

Jason Podollan needed three goals to break Pat Falloon’s 5-year-old Chiefs career goal-scoring record, and two to tie.

He came up one short of a tie, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.

“We’re going to play him until his legs fall off,” Chiefs coach Mike Babcock promised before the Chiefs won their franchise-record 50th game.

And why not? The Cougars were playing out the string, destined for last in the Western Hockey League West Division. The only goal left to the division-champion Chiefs was erased earlier in the evening when the Brandon Wheat Kings claimed the league’s best record by beating the Prince Albert Raiders 6-2.

Thus Brandon, with 105 points, goes into the playoffs with home-ice advantage as long as it lasts. The Chiefs, with 104 points, will have the home-ice edge through the division playoffs. They head into the first round Friday night in the Arena against sixth-place Portland. Game Two will be here on Saturday night.

The Chiefs will go to Portland, probably the following Tuesday and Wednesday nights, for Games 3 and 4.

Should Spokane be the first team to win four, the Chiefs will sit out the second round and await the West finals.

So what focus there was to Sunday’s anti-climactic final day of the regular season before 8,591 fans - the largest Sunday night crowd in the team’s 11-year history - was individual. Podollan did his best to take advantage of it, snapping off at least 12 of the Chiefs’ first 31 shots and 20 shots for the night.

He finally broke through with Spokane’s fourth goal of a dominant third period, the 145th of his career, one shy of Falloon’s club-record.

But it was Dmitri Leonov who broke the ice, scoring on the first shot of the period to give goaltender Aren Miller a 1-0 lead and all the support he needed for his first WHL shutout.

The Chiefs erupted for four goals in the first 5:19 of the third. They outshot the Cougars in the period 37-4 and outscored them 6-0. For the night, Spokane unloaded an incredible 75 shots on Prince George goaltender Tyler Love, only 10 shy of a 17-year-old league record for shots on net.

Love had 69 saves, 31 in the third period alone.

“In the third period, when I got sat on (after Podollan plowed into the net with 11:02 to go), I got a little cut on my head,” Love said. “It made me a little woozy. About that time, I was just hoping it would end.”

But the shots kept coming as the Chiefs put together an impressive 20 minutes to launch them into the playoffs.

“A lot of teams have one great line - the (Daymond) Langkow line in Tri-City or Hnat Domenichelli’s line in Kamloops - but these guys, each line is like that,” Love said. “It’s hard to stop them. Their defense is great and they have the best goaltending average in the league. Going into the playoffs, they look pretty unbeatable.”

Love, who held Spokane to a 4-4 tie here earlier in the season, was aware of Podollan’s quest.

“He skated by (after he’d scored in the third period) saying, ‘One more. Just one more.’ I’m glad I didn’t let him get it on me. Too bad for him, though.”

Miller, who started in place of David Lemanowicz, had a different kind of challenge. He had moments of action between long minutes of inactivity.

“I’d say they had four quality (scoring) chances,” Miller said. “They didn’t have any in the third but they had a couple good ones in the first two periods. You can expect that against a team that doesn’t worry about defense.”

Chiefs 6, Cougars 0

Prince George 0 0 0 - 0

Spokane 0 0 6 - 6

First period - None. Key penalties - Voltera, PG, 10:30; Podollan, Spo, 14:40.

Second period - None. Key penalties - Hrdina, Spo, 3:48; Berry, Spo, 9:35; Haley, Spo, fighting major-match penalty for head butting, 12:11.

Third period - 1, Spokane, Leonov 37 (Gillam, Schutz), :54. 2, Spokane, Sinclair 35 (Leonov, Gillam), 2:07 (pp). 3, Spokane, Cirjak 23 (Cardarelli, Hamilton), 4:54. 4, Spokane, Podollan 37 (Whitfield), 5:19. 5, Spokane, Leeb 33 (Whitfield), 13:46. 6, Spokane, Leonov 38 (Sinclair, Podollan), 17:08. Key penalties - Brewer, PG, 1:21; Berry, Spo, game misconduct (third fight), 8:47; Mehalko, PG, 9:45; Gillam, Spo, 19:44; Laluk, PG, 19:59.

Power-play opp. - Prince George 0 of 5; Spokane 1 of 4. Saves - Prince George, Love 23-15-31-69. Spokane, Miller 8-9-4-21. A - 8,591.

, DataTimes