With Pizza On The Line, Cisar Delivers For Chiefs

It’s a Pizza Hut promotion but this delivery came from Little Cisar.

With four goals in a 7-1 win over the Tri-City Americans Saturday night, Marian Cisar sent 10,455 Spokane Chiefs fans home happy, with ticket stubs worth free pizza.

The pizza promo kicks in whenever the Chiefs score seven or more goals.

After a scoreless first period, Cisar fed the Arena faithful with a power-play goal in a decisive second period and three more strikes in the runaway third.

It was a timely outburst. It kept the Chiefs two points up on fourth-place Kelowna - a 5-3 winner over Seattle Saturday night - in the scramble for third and home-ice advantage in the first round of the Western Hockey League West Division playoffs.

With the possible exception of the third period - when four fights broke out in the last 1:11 the second period had to be the longest of any 20-minute set in the 15 games of this interminable Highway 395 series.

It was a pilgrimage to the penalty box by both clubs, but when it was over, Cisar, Greg Leeb and John Cirjak had powerplay goals and the Chiefs were back over the .500 mark at 31-30-4, with seven regular-season games left.

Unable to handle the Americans’ usually tame power play in a 5-2 loss Friday night in Kennewick, Spokane stuffed all 10 Tri-City power-play chances this time out while scoring on five of their 10 tries.

So this one belongs to special-teams play, to strong goaltending, to finished checks - Mike Babcock’s pet statistic - and to Cisar’s habit of finding the back of the net.

“He got the first goal to get us going on the power play,” Babcock said of the 19-year-old second-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Kings. “He scored our fourth one, which was big and the fifth, which was nice.

“The last gave the fans their pizza.”

The body checks delivered by Cisar’s line also caught the coach’s eye.

“His line (Cisar, Ty Jones and Derek Schutz) had 22 finished checks and four goals,” Babcock said. “They were excellent.”

So was goaltender Aren Miller, who stopped 23 of 24 shots in his fourth start in five nights.

“Four games in five nights and a lot of travel,” Babcock said. “I thought we used fatigue as an excuse last night. I was proud that tonight we didn’t.”

The Chiefs hit the road for three games this week, starting Tuesday night in Kamloops. Their next home date is March 12.

Shawn Legault scored at 2:40 of the second period to pull the Ams to within 2-1, but Cisar dealt T-C a setback in its bid to vacate the cellar. If they finish last, it will mark the first time in nine seasons the Americans have missed the playoffs.

Chiefs 7, Americans 1

Tri-City 0 1 0 - 1

Spokane 0 3 4 - 7

First period - None. Key penalties - Ference, Spo, 1:04; Cardarelli, Spo, 5:23; Timmons, T-C, 11:51; Flynn, T-C, 14:14; Leeb, Spo, 14: 33; Lapeyre, T-C, 16:58; Cardarelli, Spo, 18:57; Gyori, T-C, 19:46.

Second period - 1, Spo, Cisar 23 (Jones) :19 (power play). 2, Spo, Leeb 23 (Whitfield, Magarrell) 1:42 (pp). 3, T-C, Legault 5 (Waltze, Lapeyre) 2:40; 4, Spo, Cirjak 31 (Magarrell, Leeb) 18:37 (pp). Key penalties - Sachl, T-C, :16; Legault, T-C, 5:13; Cirjak, Spo, 5:51; Reich, Spo,, 7:25; Stahl, T-C, 8:34; Jones, Spo, 9:19; Cisar, Spo, 11:48; Magarrell, Spo, 12:20; T-C bench (too many men on) 13:47; Smith, T-C, 17:37.

Third period - 5, Spo, Cisar 24 (Schutz, Jones) :58. 6, Spo, Cisar 25 (Whitfield, Leeb) 16:46. 7, Spo, Evans 4 (Cardarelli ) 17:49 (pp); 8, Spo, Cisar 26 (Schutz, Miller) 18:08. Key penalties - Brown, Spo, 1:30; Lane, Spo, 6:44; Hurley, T-C, 17:02;

Power plays opportunities - T-C 0 of 11. Spokane 5 of 10.Saves -TriCity, Baker 19-11-7-37-30. Spokane, Miller 8-9-6-23.A-10,455.

, DataTimes