Chiefs Avoid Elimination Force Seventh Game With Portland

What better way to celebrate a birthday than with a gift.

Two gifts, just for the record.

The Spokane Chiefs - with a jump-start from birthday boy Brandin Cote - remained in the hunt for the Western Hockey League West Division championship with Tuesday night’s 5-2 win over the Portland Winter Hawks in the Arena.

Their backs are still against the wall, a posture they seem to enjoy, but at least now the Chiefs have company.

The Hawks are up against the same wall with a lot more to lose. This series, tied at three games apiece, will be decided tonight in the Portland Rose Garden, where the winner goes on to play the Brandon Wheat Kings in the WHL championship finals this weekend.

Should the Chiefs come through, they’ll head for Brandon for the series opener on Saturday night. The Winter Hawks, with a victory, will open the best-of-7 league finals with the Wheat Kings in Portland.

Should Portland lose, the Hawks will stow the gear and head home. The Chiefs, of course, will play for the Memorial Cup as the host team win or lose tonight.

The Chiefs will have to come up with a first tonight to stay alive in this series. The Winter Hawks, after 88 hockey games going back to the last Friday night in September, have yet to lose two in a row.

“We opened the door a crack,” Chiefs coach Mike Babcock said of his club’s second Game 6 win in a playoff series. “There are 20 guys on the other side trying to push it shut and a bunch on our side trying to push it open.”

Twice in the playoffs - the first time against Kelowna - the Chiefs have been down three games to two, and twice they’ve come back to force a decisive seventh game.

Cote had the same kind of pucks-with-eyes success in this one that Portland enjoyed in Saturday night’s 9-2 win. You could call his goals gifts, fitting in that Tuesday was his birthday.

Cote is no longer 16 but then he hasn’t played like a 16-year-old for months. On his 17th birthday he was looking for the hat trick in the first period after scoring twice to stake the Chiefs to a two-goal lead at the first intermission.

Both goals took Spokane-favoring bounces to the back of the net.

“The first one, Grimard (Ron) passed it out to me and I tried to shoot it,” Cote said. “It caught (Portland goaltender Brent) Belecki off-guard a bit and it slid under him.

“The second one- the tip - was kind of lucky, also. Lynn Loyns did a great job of getting it up to the point. Perry Johnson shot it on net and I just happened to put my stick up, and it just went in.”

Sandwiched between Cote’s scores was Marian Cisar’s deflection of Rick Berry’s slap shot from outside the right circle gave the Chiefs their second goal.

The Chiefs scored on two of their first three shots. They were up 3-0 just 8:54 into the game.

“When you spot a team like this one three goals, it’s tough to come back,” Belecki said. “They got three quick goals, some of it luck on their part and some of it unlucky bounces for me. It gave them a lot of momentum. They won the game in the first 10 minutes.”

The game, Babcock said, was decided by veteran leadership.

“This was Trent Whitfield’s and Greg Leeb’s 55th playoff game,” he said. “All of our veteran guys know what it takes, and I’m quite comfortable that they’ll respond (tonight).”

Berry explained how Spokane has matched Portland’s desperation, when the Winter Hawks have so much more at stake.

“I think we’re hungrier for a league championship than for anything else,” Berry said. “Why? Why just sit on it (satisfied with the role as host team) when we can go after it?”

Down 3-0, Belecki started making some saves and Brenden Morrow got the Winter Hawks on the board with a power-play goal with 2:29 left in the first period, a goal that was the game-of-inches stuff that got the crowd of 6,610 all over linesman Fotious Alexiou.

The linesman ruled that Portland’s Kevin Haupt had kept the puck in the Chiefs zone with the Winter Hawks on the power play. A heartbeat later it was in the back of the net.

Morrow struck again on the power play early in the second period to pull Portland to within 3-2. And 24 seconds later, when Spokane’s Ty Jones went off for high sticking, the Hawks’ sizzling specialty teams players were back out on the ice with momentum there for the taking.

The Winter Hawks had a shot at tying it on the power play when Todd Robinson shot wide with Chiefs goaltender David Haun down and the net open.

That was as close as the Hawks would come.

Haun, who had another solid night in net, stopping 30 of 32 shots, has a special motivation tonight. He’d love to win, and return to his native Manitoba to take on his hometown Wheat Kings, who traded him to Spokane at the WHL trade deadline on Jan. 23.

Jones restored the Chiefs’ two-goal lead late in the second period with a great piece of stickwork coming out of the corner. Jones skated into the slot, passed to Greg Leeb alone to Belecki’s right for the goal.

Cam Severson made sure the Winter Hawks would not climb back into this one late by scoring early in the third period with the Chiefs on the power play.

WHL WEST FINALS Best-of-7 series tied 3-3. Game 7: At Portland, tonight, 7. Radio: AM-1510.