Praise For Chiefs’ Win Goes To Winger Cisar

The Seattle Thunderbirds, a year older and a lot saltier than last year when they didn’t win a game in eight visits to the Arena, threw some early resistance at the Spokane Chiefs Saturday night in front of 8,503, many of whom came away praising Cisar.

That’s Marian Cisar, the Chiefs’ Slovakian winger and their first pick in the import player draft.

Cisar had a hand in all four goals in a 4-1 win, Spokane’s fourth in five tries and an important one for this early in the Western Hockey League season. With it, the Chiefs kept pace in the loss column with the division-leading Prince George Cougars.

Spokane is back at it tonight in the Arena against Portland. The Chiefs will be without veteran defenseman Hugh Hamilton, who’s out two games with a concussion suffered in Wednesday night’s overtime loss to Kamloops.

Minus Hamilton and defenseman Ryan Berry, traded this week to Calgary, the Chiefs found themselves light on the blue line Saturday. Coach Mike Babcock said before the game that it was time for the offense to take the heat off, and the offense obliged.

“Best player on the ice tonight no question was Marian Cisar,” Babcock said. “I’ve said before he’s more of a North American player. He’s gritty, gets involved and does some good things.”

The first good thing was a goal 3 minutes into the game on the power play. Two impressive second-period assists - the first a no-look feed to Yegor Mikhailov for the game-winner - rallied the Chiefs from a 1-1 tie.

Although Cisar dictated play in the Seattle zone, the Chiefs have goaltender Aren Miller to thank for getting out of the first period with the tie. They were outshot 15-9 in the first 20 minutes.

After the T-Birds answered the Cisar goal with a power-play strike of their own - Paul Ferone got the equalizer, assisted by former Chief Martin Cerven and Tyler Willis - Miller stayed busy keeping Seattle off the scoreboard the rest of the night.

He came in with an average of 19.5 saves in his first two games. He nearly had to match that in the first period alone, rejecting 14 shots to keep the Chiefs even. Miller finished with 35 stops, often a week’s work for a Chiefs netminder.

Without Hamilton to carry the puck, Spokane relied heavily on Adam Magarrell, who played 37 minutes and steadied the youngsters on the blue line - Brad Ference, Kyle Rossiter and Curtis Suter. They performed well enough in a testy, fight-filled game that warns of long nights to come when these two go at it again.

Spokane turned it around in the second period and won going away, the big blow being dealt by Cisar, who worked the puck lose in the Seattle zone, heard Mikhailov shout for the puck and dished it to him for a spinner of a shot that found the back of the net at 8:34 of the second.

Five minutes later, Cisar led Joe Cardarelli with a pass in the slot on the power play. Cardarelli’s shot bounced off Blair out to John Cirjak, who scored on the rebound.

“We got off to a slow start,” Babcock said, “probably because we took so many dumb penalties. It took time to get some momentum. We survived the start through good goaltending, we were better in the second and obviously much better in the third.”

The T-Birds came in with a potent power play, having scored 11 of their 23 goals with the extra attacker. But on this night their power-play was nowhere. Spokane penalty killers snuffed eight of nine Seattle power-play opportunities.

The Chiefs scored on two of their first three with the man advantage but finished only 2 of 8 on the power play.

“Once again our power play continues to amaze me,” Babcock said. “I don’t know how we don’t shoot it in the net instead of always hitting the goalpost, because we’re all over them.”

, DataTimes