Chiefs Should Repeat Rivals Favor Spokane To Win Whl Division

Only a year ago it was business as usual in the Western Hockey League West.

Coming off a championship season, the Kamloops Blazers were expected to win yet another division title on the way to yet another Memorial Cup.

The consensus also held that the Spokane Chiefs - fifth the previous season - were only good enough to repeat that finish.

A funny thing happened on the way to fifth place. The Chiefs won a franchise-record 50 games, outlasted Kamloops and Tri-City in a wire-to-wire division race, then played all the way to May before finally caving in to the Brandon Wheat Kings in the WHL finals.

It was a monumental surprise.

As the cartoon character says, nothing ever changes and then you wake up one day, and everything’s different.

The Blazers no longer glitter with can’t-miss stars. At the other end, the perennially awful Prince George Cougars are finally determined to build a foundation with the hiring of general manager Dennis Polonich to a four-year contract.

In the middle, there’s stability and ammunition enough for Portland, Tri-City or Seattle to steal the division race.

“Parity in the league is phenomenal,” Spokane Chiefs coach Mike Babcock says.

Parity, big change and the role

Although parity is at hand, those creatures of habit known as the experts still see it one way. Coaches, general managers and beat writers in the seven-city WHL West Division all agree the Spokane Chiefs will make it two in a row.

Babcock doesn’t duck the favorite’s role (“Somebody has to have the anchor tied to him,” he says), but he does make a case for an unpredictable chase.

“Nobody lost more than we did,” Babcock points out. “We lost the No. 1 goaltender in the league (David Lemanowicz), probably our hardest worker (Dmitri Leonov), our most skilled player (Jason Podollan), our captain (Sean Gillam), our tough guy (Jay Bertsch), our most valuable player (Darren Sinclair), our best body checker (Randy Favaro) and one of the premier players in the league (Jan Hrdina).”

With so many skates to fill, the Chiefs probably won’t win 50 this season, but they probably won’t have to. Forty-five wins should be enough. From top to bottom, the West is more balanced than ever.

“This is the tightest pack I’ve seen in the six years we’ve been in the league,” Kelowna Rockets general manager Bruce Hamilton said, “but the favorite is right there in your city (Spokane).”

So, Chiefs by 20?

Portland Winter Hawks coach Brent Peterson buys into the parity angle but says Spokane “should be 20 points ahead of everybody, with the rest of us grouped. They’ve got the firepower. After Spokane, we could finish second or we could finish seventh.

“Spokane loves their big guys,” Peterson adds. “With them, a lot depends on how the referee calls the game. If he calls it a certain way, Spokane has a big advantage. This is junior hockey. You never know from night to night how it’s going to be (called).”

The Chiefs mix it up. They take penalties - although under Babcock not a lot of dumb ones - and rely on aggressive special teams to bail them out of odd-man situations. They’ve come a long way with quickness, depth and commitment.

“The class in our division is Spokane,” Seattle Thunderbirds coach Don Nachbaur confirms. “They’ve got a (potential) 100-point man in Trent Whitfield and the experience of playing in the league finals. That’s invaluable.”

The picture takes clearer shape in the days to come when veterans return from pro camps. Many WHL stars with remaining eligibility won’t be back. Others will hang on with the NHL teams that drafted them into the WHL season before trickling back to their junior teams.

Who returns and when are always key factors.

Eighteen players with ties to the Chiefs went to NHL training camps, an uncommonly high exodus that speaks of Spokane’s terrific scouting and successful recruiting.

“You hope the players who were good last year take another step,” Babcock said. “Is that going to happen? I think so. I think we provide the opportunity, but nobody knows for sure. Nobody has hit anybody yet.”

There are questions, starting with what effect Babcock’s absence as coach of the Canadian team at the World Junior Tournament will have.

How many Chiefs will the coach take to Switzerland for the WJT, a commitment that consumes much of December through the first week of January? How long will it take them to come down after playing in a premier TV sporting event?

A year ago, Marcel Comeau left the Kelowna Rockets to guide the Canadiens to a second straight undefeated run through the WJT. Comeau had a gold medal in January and a new job in March.

Babcock - the West’s Coach of the Year - is on firmer ground with his bosses, but jolts like that convince Babcock that in his profession “you can never let up. You can never allow yourself to be outworked.”

Kamloops dropping out of the sky

The Kamloops Blazers have played in an incredible 14 straight division championship finals. The Blazers have won 40 or more games for seven straight years.

“That’s a run that will be very hard to match,” Blazers GM Stu MacGregor says. “I don’t know how far you can go on tradition. I guess we’ll see.”

As Hamilton in Kelowna puts it, “You don’t have the success they’ve had and fall off the map.” Still, like nearly everybody gearing up for the chase that starts for real a week from Friday night, MacGregor likes the Chiefs, although he wouldn’t be surprised by a surprise.

“There isn’t one team you look at and say, ‘They’re going to run away with it and win the Memorial Cup,”’ MacGregor said. “Spokane starts ahead because they have excellent 19-year-olds - Greg Leeb, Whitfield, Hugh Hamilton, John Cirjak, Joe Cardarelli - who assume the leadership and scoring roles (that Leonov, Podollan, Gillam, Hrdina et al filled).

“But this is a tight division,” MacGregor adds. “By the end of the year, we might be surprised who’s on top.”

The best of the rest …?

Portland, Seattle and the Tri-City Americans, who play the Chiefs 16 times in the regular season, are the most likely to spring a surprise, should the Chiefs tumble.

The edge in goal is going to lie with Tri-City, where last year Brian Boucher posted an impressive .905 saves percentage when the Americans won a franchise-record 45 games. For the first time since Bob Loucks became coach, the Americans seem deep in defensive potential but short of obvious scoring pop.

And there are those 16 games with the Chiefs staring at them.

“It’s a lot to play against each other, but it’s probably good for the league and the fans,” Loucks says. “It’s no secret there’s no love lost between the two cities and the two teams, and in a lot of ways that’s excellent. We’re here to develop hockey players, but we’re also here to entertain.

“The fans will be entertained.”

Loucks adds, “There’s no question that playing Spokane will force us to get better. The advantage is, if we do well against them - and that’s a big chore - we stand a better chance to get fourth.”

Fourth? How about first?

“We’d have to win a lot of 2-1 hockey games for that to happen,” Loucks says.

Old mo’ smiled on Hawks

If the race goes to a closer, the Portland Winter Hawks could climb all the way from sixth last year to first. The final playoff seed last March, the Winter Hawks picked up momentum in March and nearly knocked off the top-seeded Chiefs before losing the first-round playoff series 4-3.

Brent Belecki returns between the pipes, a season wiser, behind tough defensemen Joey Tetarenko, Kevin Popp and Andrew Ference.

The shortfall is up front. After Todd Robinson and Brad Isbister, the Hawks lack proven scoring talent.

Portland coach Peterson and Nachbaur in Seattle want to play three and possibly four lines a night, test their young guys early and hope the experience pays off late in the season, when legs are heaviest, stakes are highest and sound bodies are at a premium - a practice Babcock instituted in Spokane.

“The only team that used four lines as often as we did last year was Babs (Babcock),” Peterson says. “If we hadn’t done that, Babs, with his depth, would have run over us in the playoffs with physical play.

“One thing I was proud of last year, when they (Chiefs) did get their act together (Portland won the first three games in the series), we didn’t fold and lose 6-1, 6-1, 6-1, 6-1. We played step for step with them.”

T-Birds have the star

If the difference down the stretch is a go-to guy, then the quietly optimistic Nachbaur has an edge in Patrick Marleau in Seattle.

Now that Jarome Iginla and Hnat Domenichelli of Kamloops are moving on, with Daymond Langkow of Tri-City finally out of the way and Podollan certain to play professionally as well, Marleau may be, with Spokane’s Whitfield, the West’s premier threat, a marquee name in the making.

Marleau didn’t squander his summer reflecting on a great rookie year. Nachbaur says he ran, lifted and reported with improved upper-leg and upper-body strength. His physical tests were among the club’s best.

“Pretty good for a 17-year-old,” Nachbaur says.

Rockets take on glare

Hamilton in Kelowna has a new coach (Peter Anholt) and a new look - a bigger, tougher, slower club that may fit better with the Rockets’ cramped surroundings. Their rink, the smallest in the league, seats 1,800.

“It’ll be a test going in there,” MacGregor of Kamloops says.

“We need to get through Christmas with our young guys who are going to play,” Hamilton says. “If they adjust and grow from Christmas on we could make an upward move. In the past, we’ve started strong and split after Christmas. A lot of that had to do with not being very big.

“A lot of our guys peaked too early. We’re bigger. We’re trying to clone what Tim (Speltz, the Chiefs GM) has done in Spokane.”

It’s not just the size

Everybody is getting bigger, but it was the Chiefs who gave the 5-foot-8, undrafted Leeb a shot in this league when everybody else thought he was too small. Leeb brings skill, heart and quickness to the rink.

The Chiefs took the same kind of diminutive player with their second pick of the import player draft, selecting Yegor Mikhailov, like Leeb a left winger who’s big-league quick.

The puck still stops here

Spokane’s Lemanowicz rang up four shutouts last year, posted a franchise-record 2.89 goals-against average with an .892 saves percentage.

It’s hard to imagine a replacement - or two replacements - hanging up those kinds of numbers. But the Chiefs have produced a quality goaltender in Babcock’s two previous campaigns here - Jarrod Daniel preceded Lemanowicz - and the feeling is Spokane will do it again with returnee Aren Miller (23 appearances, 3.11 goals-against average and one shutout as the backup) and over-age Marc Magliarditi, who’s making the transition from college to the every-night grind of major junior.

The keys to a repeat?

“Leeb, Whitfield, Cirjak and Cardarelli have to be dominant for us to dominate,” Babcock says. “Mike Haley, who’s been stuck in the same spot for two years, has to step up.

“Last year’s young guys - Ty Jones, (Brad) Ference, (Derek) Schutz - have to have good years. (Yegor) Mikhailov and (Marian) Cisar have to be the type of Europeans that help you win games.”

For the record, the 18 players with ties to the Chiefs who went to pro camp include Favaro and Jared Hope, both lost to Edmonton in the WHL expansion draft. Add the vets who probably won’t be back - Sinclair, Podollan, Gillam, Bertsch, Lemanowicz, Hrdina - and those expected to return (Whitfield, Hamilton, Cisar, Miller, Magliarditi, Cirjak, Cardarelli, Ryan Berry, Chris Lane and Adam Magarrell).

It’s an impressive pack.

The 10 who are due back aren’t a perfect 10, but they’re close enough.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo