Chiefs Overwhelm Ams After Glass Shatters, Spokane Wins Clearly
The Spokane Chiefs picked up two points in the Western Hockey League West standings Saturday night.
Better yet, nobody in the Arena was killed by flying glass.
The Chiefs exploded about 6 minutes after the glass in front of section 115 did.
The game a 5-1 Chiefs’ win over the Tri-City Americans was held up 14 minutes for repairs after players from both sides went into the boards 4 minutes into the game. The hard but routine hit blew out a section of Plexiglas.
Fans in the lower rows of seats next to the Tri-City bench were showered with glass. Some suffered what club officials said were minor cuts that required Band-Aids.
The Americans could use more than a Band-Aid. The Ams - no great shakes to begin with - are a hurting hockey club.
Rookie sniper Scott Gomez is still out with a shoulder injury. Veteran defenseman Chris Anderson, slashed in last week’s Seattle game, is sidelined with a broken jaw.
Right now, the three essentials in Tri-City are the Columbia River, atomic energy and great goaltending.
Without goaltender Aaron Baker, who stood out for two periods, the Ams and the crowd of 10,455 might still be listening to the Italian tarantella, the jaunty music that accompanies each Chiefs goal.
Baker turned away 18 of 20 shots in the first period. Spokane fruitlessly fired 21 more at him in the second.
It was still 2-0 when Baker finally caved in.
Whitfield knocked in his second goal of the game and 14th of the year through the goalie’s pads inside the first minute of the third period, rendering the final 19 minutes meaningless, including the six fights that broke out in the 60 seconds.
The two goals the Chiefs picked up in the first period - the first by Whitfield, the second by Brandin Cote - were more than enough.
Goals have become as scarce as trees in the Tri-Cities. The Ams lost their fourth straight game to remain in the WHL West basement.
“That’s ridiculous,” Chiefs coach Mike Babcock said after one more Spokane-Tri-City game deteriorated into a brawl-o-rama. “I don’t think it does them any good. It doesn’t do us any good. You want to say to the guys, ‘We don’t need this.’ Down the stretch, it seems to be a little thing we got going with them. I don’t know why.”
The Chiefs return to the Arena Wednesday night when former captain Joel Boschman comes in with his new club, the Red Deer Rebels.
Whitfield - the newly appointed captain who earned Babcock’s nod as player of the game - scored on the rebound 6:38 after the new section of glass was in place.
Three minutes later, persistence paid for Cote, who came off the wall alone, banged a shot off Baker’s pads, picked up the rebound and flipped a backhander at the goaltender, who again gave up the rebound. Cote launched a third shot, again with the backhand, and that found the back of the net to give the Chiefs their two-goal first-period lead.
“To their credit, they were able to slow the game down,” Babcock said. “We dominated, even though we lacked finish and intensity in front of their net. Instead of burying them early it kept them in the game longer than they should have been in it.”
Baker’s 44 saves had something to do with that.
“He was outstanding but in saying that, we had opportunities that we have to put in the back of the net,” Babcock said. “But we got the points, we needed the points (to keep pace with co-leaders Portland and Prince George in the West). We weren’t very good last night and wanted to bounce back from it.”
Tri-City’s Mike Hurley scored on a slap shot on the power play to cut the lead to 3-1 at 10:51 of the third period, but Marian Cisar and Kris Graf answered for the Chiefs, now 22-9-1.
, DataTimes