Chiefs Shut Out Seattle Spokane’s Stingy Defense Limits Thunderbirds To 12 Shots On Goal

The Spokane Chiefs broke a pair of impressive club records Saturday night in pursuit of a championship that to them is only a prelude.

The Chiefs shattered a team record for fewest shots allowed, holding the Seattle Thunderbirds to 12 in a 4-0 Western Hockey League win before 7,339 fans at KeyArena.

The previous club mark came on Jan. 11, 1992, when the Victoria Cougars put only 17 shots on goal against Spokane.

That was a smorgasbord of opportunity compared to this.

On the way to outshooting Seattle 32-12, the Chiefs mounted a 12-1 shot advantage in the first period when they set this blowout in motion. The rebuilding T-Birds lost for the seventh time in eight meetings with the Chiefs, who came home early this morning in sole possession of first place in the Western Hockey League West, two points up on the second-place Kamloops Blazers with 10 games left.

The T-Birds have only a 2-2 tie on Dec. 10 to show for their season series with the streaking Chiefs, who won their fourth straight on the road on the strength of two Darren Sinclair first-period goals and David Lemanowicz’s third shutout of the year and sixth of his career.

Lemanowicz’s shutout total - his first came three years ago as a 16-year-old in his first game in the league - also is a club record. He had been tied with Scott Bailey.

“That’s a credit to our team defensively,” Lemanowicz said. “If you look at my shutouts this year, I haven’t had more than 20 shots. These games seem easy from the stands, but you have to keep your concentration. It was basically a night off.”

The Chiefs (40-18-4) are in the Arena tonight for a 7 o’clock date with the Kelowna Rockets, their last home game for a week and a half. Although they’ve never won a division championship, finishing second to Kamloops in 1991, the year they won the Memorial Cup, finishing best in the West is only a means to an end.

“Our goal is to win in the playoffs - that’s our primary goal,” Chiefs coach Mike Babcock said. “If we don’t achieve the short-term goal (of a division title), who cares? It’ll be nice if it happens, but it isn’t a big deal for us.”

What is a big deal is the home-ice advantage through the division finals.

Should Seattle (22-31-6) wind up in sixth and the Chiefs in first, the two would be matched in the first round.

Babcock was careful with that kind of talk.

“The real deal starts in 10 more games,” he said.

Still, with both Kamloops and third-place Tri-City yet to make their annual swing through the East, the Chiefs have the scheduling advantage after winning for the 40th time for only the second time in their 11-year history.

Friday, Sinclair’s 28th and 29th goals of the season put the Chiefs up 2-0 after their most dominant period of the season. The gamewinner came after Sinclair took a hit from Greg Kuznik, muscled by him along the right wall and used a screen by Mike Haley to shoot through goaltender Doug Bonner at 11:50 of the first.

Sinclair made it 2-0 by scoring on Jay Bertsch’s rebound at 18:26.

Meanwhile the T-Birds were launching their only shot of the period - from Chris Schmidt on the power play - with just over 5 minutes left.

Trent Whitfield scored his 31st goal of the season, assisted by Jason Podollan and Jan Hrdina, at 15:29 of the second period. Joe Cardarelli scored unassisted in the third period to complete the rout.

Babcock didn’t deny that the Chiefs wanted to put an exclamation point on the Seattle series, with the possibility that his team will be back here in the playoffs.

“We tried to play with four lines all night and, sometimes when you play with four lines, it’s hard to get into a rhythm,” the coach said. “We just felt that with a game (tonight) that it was important to do that. There were lots of things to like about the game as a coach, including great scraps by Whitfield and Bertsch. We didn’t play the type of high-energy game that we can really play, but yet I thought we were good.”

Chiefs 4, Thunderbirds 0

Spokane 2 1 1 - 4

Seattle 0 0 0 - 0

First period-1, Spokane, Sinclair 28, 11:50. 2, Spokane, Sinclair 29 (Bertsch), 18:26. Key penalties-Kuznik, Sea, :31; Schmidt, Sea, 6:41; Favaro, Spo, 9:01; Belter, Sea, 12:23.

Second period-3, Spokane, Whitfield 31, 12:42. Key penalties-Lane, Spo, 7:45; Favaro, Spo, 13:56; Cerven, Sea, 14:30; Palmer, Sea, 15:54.

Third period-4, Spokane, Cardarelli 22 (Podollan, Hrdina), 15:29. Key penalties-Cirjak, Spo, 3:41; Tompkins, Sea, 12:09.

Power-play opp.-Spokane 0 of 6; Seattle 0 of 4.Saves- Spokane, Lemanowicz 1-6-5-12. Seattle, Bonner 10-11-7-28.A-7,339.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WILD WEST Western Hockey League West W L T Pts GF GA Spokane 40 18 4 84 272 202 Kamloops 40 19 2 82 291 216 Tri-City 38 19 2 78 278 209