Chiefs Mow Over Kamloops, Earn First-Place Tie

Here’s how good it’s going.

The Kamloops Blazers - THE Kamloops Blazers, the reigning champions of junior hockey - went up by a goal in the first period Saturday night and Mike Babcock hardly noticed.

What the coach of the Spokane Chiefs was seeing at the time was domination, a one-sidedness from the start that marked the Chiefs’ 4-1 win before 10,528 at the Arena.

It was Spokane’s third straight win and fifth in five games with the Blazers.

The Chiefs left for Calgary this morning for a five-game tour of the Western Hockey League Central Division with a share of the West Division lead.

Kamloops came in without scoring leader Hnat Domenichelli and captain Nolan Baumgartner, who had the weekend off as compensation for their efforts in the World Junior Tournament.

Babcock was careful to point that out.

But it’s beginning to sink in that, even with a full deck, the Blazers don’t match up. The Chiefs have outscored them in five games 26-13 and, on this night, mounted a 41-28 advantage in shots on goal.

As they do so often at home, where they’re 18-4-2, the Chiefs painted this one by the numbers.

Joe Cardarelli scored a pair of goals. Darren Sinclair ran his goal-scoring streak to four straight with the game-winner. Jason Podollan came back from a week off with a key assist. John Cirjak assisted on both Cardarelli goals. David Lemanowicz continued to lower his already league-low goals-against average.

The Chiefs (27-13-3) fell behind 1-0 when Jarome Iginla dug the puck out of the right corner and fed it to Bob Maudie in the slot for the shot that put Kamloops (28-13-1) up 6:53 into the game.

“I thought at that point we were really dominating the game,” Babcock said. “We kind of missed our guys on the line change (just before the opening goal). We didn’t have our matchup (Sinclair and Leonov against the Blazers’ top line). It was a good move by Dempsey (Ed, Kamloops coach), but I don’t know how those kids (Iginla in particular) keep playing that much. They just keep coming and coming. Iginla must have played 40 minutes, banging and going.”, Even with Iginla tearing all over the place in all situations, the Blazers saw their season-high five-game win streak fall by the wayside.

The Chiefs tied it at 1-1 after Randy Favaro took a timely pass from Podollan and, with his backhand, slid the puck under goaltender Randy Petruk’s blocker at 10:31 of the first period.

Sinclair made it 2-1 at 13:19. Cardarelli ran the score to 3-1 just 82 seconds later.

Cardarelli and Cirjak teamed up later, at 2:24 of the third period, for the final goal, Cirjak passing from behind the net for Cardarelli’s one-timer.

, DataTimes