Chiefs Hold Back Pesky Expansion Team Spokane Gets Comfortable With Early Lead, But Ice Makes Chiefs Sweat Out Victory
The rest of the Western Hockey League can only hope that the Edmonton Ice will mellow with age.
The young, road-weary Ice - at the end of an extended road swing - fell four goals behind Saturday night to a veteran team with championship designs.
With every reason to fold, the Ice went down kicking and screaming 5-3 before 10,455 in the Arena.
Scoring four special-teams goals - two on the power play, two on the penalty kill - the Chiefs melted the Ice and moved two games up on Prince George in the battle for second in the Western Hockey League West.
The Chiefs came to work early, scoring on two of their first three shots, then adding two more the hard way. Leading 2-0, Spokane’s Trent Whitfield and Derek Schutz burned the Ice power play with second-period short-handed goals.
Forechecking hard, Whitfield picked up the puck in the Ice zone. Stick-handling from the right circle, he patiently walked in on goaltender Clayton Pool. Sliding, he stuck the puck under the netminder’s blocker.
Spokane’s penalty-kill unit struck again 3:09 later with Whitfield again the point man. The Chiefs had just killed off a 53-second 5-on-3 Edmonton power play and were skating one man short when Whitfield came up with the puck and fed Schutz, who was crashing the net.
When Schutz nudged the puck across the line before slamming into the net it looked like an insurance goal, tops.
Eventually it stood as the game-winner, the goal that broke the Ice.
When Edmonton’s Brad Tutschev scored with 4:40 left in the second it looked harmless enough, with Spokane still up 4-1.
When Spokane’s Dan Vandermeer made it 5-1 some in the full house began checking their pockets for ticket stubs, hoping to redeem them for free pizza that comes with every seven-goal game. It didn’t happen.
What did was a little bizarre, in a game that until halfway through the final period had meaningless stamped all over it.
It started when Edmonton’s Dean Arsene took Spokane’s Marian Cisar into the boards. The call - a major for checking from behind - was assessed.
But instead of slapping it on Aresene, referee Lowell Dick and his linesmen nailed Steve McCarthy as the guilty party.
McCarthy went off.
With Cisar down on the ice, Spokane’s Ty Jones tore into the nearest Edmonton player, Kris Knoblauch. When the fighting was over and penalties handed out, Edmonton coach Ryan McGill - peeved that the referee got the wrong man for the major penalty and ejection - vented and was himself ejected.
“Steve McCarthy has probably 100 people here to watch him play and he gets picked out of nothing. There’s no excuse for it,” McGill said. “It’s really too bad we can get this level of officiating at this high a league. With three of those guys out there, they should be able to get the right guy.”
Down 5-1, Edmonton’s Jay Henderson scored with the Ice skating on a 4-on-3 power play with 5:41 left and Tutschek scored his second of the night with 3:44 to go to make David Haun sweat a little for his second win in three starts in the Spokane net.
Chiefs coach Mike Babcock chose to take the overview.
“Do you think it would have changed the game if they’d thrown out the right guy?” he said. Still, it’s worth noting that this Edmonton team that lost for the 36th time against only 13 wins and five ties put in a full shift.
“Whether they’re up by two or down by five in the third period, the guys keep working,” McGill said. “We take pride in that.”
Twice the Ice put Spokane on the power play early, and twice they paid. Zenith Komarniski scored on the rebound 3:57 into the game. Whitfield, 1:23 later, drilled a slap shot through the pads of goaltender Clayton Pool.
It was the first of Whitfield’s three points. Rick Berry also registered a three-point night.
That was enough against a club that started the season 0-19-1 and was playing its fourth game in five nights on the road.
Box score on Stat sheet/C12
, DataTimes