The Last Team Anyone Wants To Meet Now

So maybe the Spokane Chiefs truly are, as they imagine, the team nobody wants to play right now.

Healthy and whole, on a roll, a hot goalie between the poles. A team versed - make that wedded - all season to hockey in the “playoff” style: tight-checking, lowscoring, high-stress, one-goal affairs in which the smallest of mistakes are magnified.

Just like Friday night’s Western Hockey League playoff opener at the Coliseum. Playoff hockey at its … oh, never mind.

Sheesh. Spokane 9, Tri-City 5. From now on, everybody check their preconceptions at the door.

There’s nothing in the rules - even the unwritten ones - that says there can’t be a blowout just because it’s playoff time. But nine goals? There was a stretch in December when it took the free-wheeling Chiefs six games to score nine goals. Of course, the free wheel seemed to be coming off at that point, too.

The atmosphere in the Coliseum back then was cheerless, funereal. Fans booed. They booed Friday night, too, but only when the attendance - 4,502 - was announced.

That guess-the-attendance contest must be more competitive than we thought.

This is not to say that the night was without playoff tension - just that it burned itself out after maybe 17 minutes.

The Chiefs certainly did their part - killing back-to-back-to-back penalties in the early going before Hugh Hamilton scored the first of what seemed like a dozen 35-foot slap-shot goals.

“But that really got us started, to tell you the truth,” said Chiefs coach Mike Babcock. “You hate to be short-handed at the start, to put yourself in a position to fall behind, but when you’re successful in killing the penalties, it can really give you a lift.”

Just don’t expect to see it in the game plan anytime soon.

But it was shortly after the Chiefs had taken a 2-1 lead that they pulled the plug on Tri-City, which has never won a WHL playoff series in six tries and is in an 0-1 hole in No. 7.

Americans defenseman Ryan Brown was trying to gather the puck and himself near his own blue line when he staggered backward and lost it, allowing Spokane’s Greg Leeb to swoop in, snag the puck and whisk in front of T-C goalie Brian Boucher unchecked.

After that, you had to figure that just about anything the Chiefs did was going to turn to goal. After all, it’s one thing to be one of the hottest teams in the league. It’s quite another when your snipers for the night are Hamilton and Jay Bertsch, eighth and 14th, respectively, on your Chiefs’ season scoring list.

You wonder, then, if the Chiefs’ toughest opponents right now aren’t the Americans or the Rockets, who wait in Tacoma to play Spokane in tonight’s second game, but the whoopee-cushion format of the Western Division’s first round.

They love their playoffs in hockey, and no league has ever been as inventive in that department as the WHL.

This league has toyed with best-of-fives, best-of-sevens and, memorably, the endless best-of-nines in which players can undergo knee surgery after Game 1 and be recovered in time to score the seriesclinching goal. Then, on occasion, they have tossed in threeteam round-robins to eliminate one team before plunging into the best-ofs. In 1984, the East Division actually staged an eight-game round-robin that eliminated NO teams but merely seeded the three participants for more best-of-sevens.

This series isn’t that useless - but the Chiefs have little use for it.

“The vote in our division was 5-2, with Kamloops and ourselves the only ones voting against it,” reported general manager Tim Speltz. “Too many things can happen. You can be in a position where you have to play a meaningless game at the end - and worse than having a game that’s meaningless for both teams is one that’s meaningless for just one of them.”

It isn’t just the format that bothers the Chiefs right now, it’s the schedule. Their two opponents, both seeded higher, each have two home games before Spokane plays again in the Coliseum. If the home-ice advantage holds each time, Spokane would have to win next Friday to merely force a tiebreaker - on the road.

“It’s almost like sudden death,” said Babcock. “Tonight’s game was so huge because it could put you behind the eight ball so bad. Of course, if we’d lost, I’d be downplaying how important it was.

“I think, in a seven-game series, the team with the best depth finds a way to win. I’m not convinced in this format that the best team wins.”

And right now, Spokane’s depth appears to be the match of any team (see Hamilton and Bertsch, above).

There is something else, too - the experience factor. The Chiefs have relatively little of it, and that’s good, because it’s overrated. They had talented, high-scoring veterans in the lineup a year ago and went nowhere in the playoffs.

“It’s funny,” said Speltz. “Players are always playing for different motivations. Last year at this time, Maxim Bets had signed a contract and he knew he was leaving - I don’t think we were his No. 1 priority. Brantt Myhres knew he was going to the next level as soon as we lost out. Valeri Bure had an opportunity at the World Championships.

“Those were our key guys. But when they’ve got other things to think about, it makes it tough. This year, our guys are more on the same page.”

Echoed Hamilton, “It was a tough situation last year. This year, we didn’t want to get swept three straight. We’re younger - we’re hungrier. We want to see, what? What it feels like, I guess you’d say.”

What it feels like to be the team nobody wants to play.