Chiefs Work Overtime To Prepare For Americans
Mike Babcock spent a few minutes of a busy Sunday reviewing the factors of a classic week.
The Spokane Chiefs eliminated the Tacoma Rockets here on Friday night, 24 hours after knocking off the Tri-City Americans on the road. Both games went into overtime.
The Chiefs are in Kennewick tonight to meet Tri-City in Game One of the Western Hockey League West Division semifinals - the 395 Series.
The teams will spend a lot of time back and forth on Highway 395.
How they drove from fifth place after 72 games of the regular season to the division semifinals is a story that had Babcock sounding off the names of practically everyone on the Chiefs’ roster.
In winning three of four first-round games, the Chiefs outshot their opponents 45-39 on the average. They killed off 22 of the opposition’s 28 power plays. Fourteen Spokane players have at least one point. Jarrod Daniel had a 3.16 goals-against average against goal-scoring teams.
The Spokane-Tri-City series is a matchup of the masses against the stars. The Chiefs are a blend of checkers and finishers, which brought Babcock to his group salute before Sunday’s practice.
“John Cirjak, Joe Cardarelli, Hugh Hamilton and Greg Leeb, as 17-year-olds, have been excellent,” the coach said. “Mike Haley has played well. Jay Bertsch is a factor. Dmitri Leonov has been fantastic.
“The regular guys who’ve been there most of the year stepped up. Sean Gillam. Daniel. You can’t say enough about Jarrod Daniel. You can go right through the list and talk about everybody.”
Tri-City’s success is pegged to WHL scoring champion Daymond Langow and his linemate Terry Ryan. How Langkow goes often dictates how well the Americans go.
Spokane center Darren Sinclair has had some success in dealing with Tri-City’s formidable line of Langkow, Ryan and right wing Boyd Olson.
Langkow can’t score from the penalty box. He and Sinclair went to the box twice together at different times of the third period Thursday night. Langkow was also sent off in overtime for high-sticking that put the Chiefs on a game-winning power play.
If this series is up to the quality of last week’s first round, the fans will count themselves among the winners.
How good Friday night’s win proved to be is reflected in Spokane’s power play. The Chiefs didn’t score in nine power-play opportunities against Tacoma’s penalty-killing units, but “our puck movement was as good as it’s ever been,” Babcock said. “Their goaltender, (Todd) MacDonald, stood on his head a couple of times to stop excellent chances.
“The pace of Friday night’s game was so high for so long,” Babcock said. “There’s no way that game could have been played earlier in the year. It was a playoff game. After going to overtime the night before (to beat Tri-City 4-3), our guys found a way to pick it up in overtime against Tacoma.”
There was no surrender in the first round. Round Two - Tri-City and Spokane in a best-of-seven series - carries the same promise.
“We’ve played 17 times,” Babcock said, “once in exhibition, 14 times during the season and twice in the playoffs. They’ve won nine, we’ve won eight. Now it comes down to who has the most between the ears and who plays hardest.”