Home not the answer for Chiefs

It didn’t take the Spokane Chiefs long to rediscover the comforts of home Friday night.

Or to learn, as well, just how fleeting those comforts can be.

Playing in the Arena for the first time since Nov. 26, the Chiefs scored just 11 seconds into their Western Hockey League matchup against Swift Current and raced to an early three-goal lead.

But in the end, because of a rash of mental mistakes and a major swoon that spanned the better part of the last two periods, they needed a second goal from Chad Klassen late in the game to salvage a 4-all tie with the Broncos.

“I definitely thought those early goals kind of changed our game a little bit,” Chiefs coach Al Conroy said. “Now we start looking for goals instead of just playing our game.”

The Chiefs (10-15-5-1) stunned Swift Current (9-18-5-1) and delighted a crowd of 5,272 with a pair of early goals off the sticks of Klassen and Steve Gillen.

Klassen, after taking a nifty pass from Derek Ryan from the right wing, put Spokane on the board 11 seconds into the game with his team-leading 14th goal. Gillen scored his fifth just 66 seconds later, thanks to the heads-up play of Ned Lukacevic, who chased down a loose puck in the right face-off circle, faked a slap shot to drop a defender and put the puck on Gillen’s stick right in front of the Broncos’ net.

Gary Gladue boosted Spokane’s lead to 3-0 with an unassisted goal, his third of the season, at the 6:46 mark of the period. But after that early surge, the Chiefs’ offense dried up and Swift Current scored a pair of goals just seven seconds apart in the third period to take a 4-3 lead.

Conroy called a timeout shortly after the back-to-back goals by Marc Desloges and Brady Leavold gave the Broncos their first lead of the game at 9:10 of the third period. The Chiefs took what their coach had to say to heart, dominating play the rest of the way.

But the only goal they could muster came on the power play when Klassen slapped the puck past Swift Current goaltender Andrew Leslie from the left wing with just more than 5 minutes left in regulation to force the overtime.

“We’d been preaching all game about shooting the puck from the side,” said Klassen, whose first goal tied a franchise record – originally established by Brad Shell against Portland in March 2002 – for the quickest in a game. “I got the puck out there and decided to shoot it, just like we talked about, and luckily it went in.”

Both teams had a couple of outstanding scoring chances in the extra period but came away with nothing.

“That was a weird hockey game, just in the way it went back and forth,” Conroy said. “One team’s on top, then the other team’s on top. It’s not the way we need to play at all.”

The way the Chiefs need to play is like they did in the opening minutes of the game and in the final stretch of the third period.

“They did respond to that timeout,” Conroy said. “All we talked about was just doing the little things – getting the puck deep, making smart puck decisions. But throughout the game, we had just terrible lapses where we didn’t do that, and they capitalized.”

The Chiefs, coming off a grueling seven-game road trip that included five games in one six-night span, appeared tired at times.

The Chiefs will have little time to rest, however, with the U.S. Division-leading Everett Silvertips (17-8-3-2) scheduled to play at the Arena tonight at 7.

“We did pretty well on the road,” Klassen said of the Chiefs’ 3-3-1 record during its prolonged road trip.

“But it’s always nice to get back to the home crowd here. Hopefully, we can get them the big W (tonight).”

Chiefs 4, Broncos 4 (OT)

First period – 1, Spokane, Klassen 14 (Ryan), 0:11. 2, Spokane, Gillen 5 (Lukacevic, Gladue) 1:17. 3, Spokane, Gladue 3, 6:46. 4, Swift Current, Rumsey 2 (Desloges), 13:50.

Second period – 5, Swift Current, Redenbach 10, 11:55.

Third period – 6, Swift Current, Desloges 5 (Schenderling), 9:06 (pp). 7, Swift Current, Leavold 1, 9:10. 8, Spokane, Klassen 15 (Gillen, Gladue), 14:40 (pp).

Overtime – No scoring.

Power play – Swift Current 1-4; Spokane 1-4. Saves: Swift Current – Leslie (2-3-3) 36 saves; Spokane: Opsahl (1-5-3) 38 saves. A – 5,272.