Jess Brown

Around this time last year, the Spokane Chiefs and Tri-City Americans were preparing for their final meeting of the Western Hockey League regular season. There was one major difference between then and now.

Perseverance usually has a way of paying off, but even Dustin Tokarski couldn’t have predicted that his resolve to succeed in hockey would come together this well during the past 13 months. Especially since the Spokane Chiefs’ starting goalie was overlooked so much early in his career.

They’ll just have to chalk it up to a missed opportunity – or rather, several missed opportunities. The Spokane Chiefs – just three points behind the Tri-City Americans at the beginning of the night for first place in the U.S. Division standings – couldn’t use a big advantage on the shot clock and fell short in a 3-1 Western Hockey League loss to the Seattle Thunderbirds at the Arena.

Things often have a way of coming full circle. Last January, in one of those bittersweet moments life can sometimes throw a person’s way, Justin McCrae was involuntarily relieved of his team captain duties with the Saskatoon Blades.

With a Canadian Hockey League interleague game out of the question until the postseason, Wednesday night’s matchup was a more than satisfying second-best way to bounce back. Chiefs coach Hardy Sauter said time will tell how important the victory ends up being, but after having lost five of their last seven games the Spokane Chiefs needed this one. And after facing the CHL’s second-ranked team – the Calgary Hitmen – and coming up with a 4-3 shootout victory in front of an Arena crowd of 3,817, the Chiefs avoided tying their longest losing streak of the season.

If coach Hardy Sauter is thankful for something recently, it’s the way his Spokane Chiefs wrapped up their six-game swing throughout the Canadian Provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. “Out record should have probably been 4-2,” Sauter said of Spokane’s longest road trip of this Western Hockey League regular season.

The rich got richer Wednesday night. Already the Spokane Chiefs’ top two scorers, Levko Koper and Mitch Wahl each found the net to improve their individual numbers.

Whatever shell Levko Koper lived in during his 15-year-old A-league days in Edmonton, Alberta, has seemingly been shattered. The 18-year-old Spokane Chiefs forward broke out last season, earning a starring role on Spokane’s hard-checking, two-way line with Tyler Johnson and Justin McCrae and the trio became a key component to Spokane’s Memorial Cup run in May.

Court was in session Tuesday night. That’s when perennial volleyball rivals Mead and Lewis and Clark met for their annual Greater Spokane League showdown for regular-season supremacy.