Tigers punish Chiefs
MEDICINE HAT, Alberta – It’s tough to win a hockey game when you spend most of your time trying to kill penalties.
Even the Western Hockey League’s best team couldn’t do it on Saturday night.
One night after setting a franchise record for the fewest combined penalty minutes in a 2-1 overtime victory over the Calgary Hitmen, the Spokane Chiefs spent most of the night in the box and allowed four power-play goals in a 4-3 loss to the Medicine Hat Tigers.
Chiefs coach Bill Peters summed it up perfectly.
“All I know is if you’re going to take penalties you’d better be prepared to kill them off,” he said. “We took them early and we took them often, and we didn’t kill very many of them – it’s a poor recipe for success.”
Spokane’s five-point lead over the Tri-City Americans in the U.S. Division shrunk to three as the Americans defeated the Seattle Thunderbirds 5-2 on Saturday. The loss snapped the Chiefs’ (20-4-1-2) seven-game winning streak.
“It was us getting in the way of being successful,” Peters said. “The penalties we took were just because we didn’t want to work for body position and we didn’t want to work for puck position.”
It was midway through the first period when things started to go seriously wrong.
It started with a Justin Falk hooking penalty at 10:46 and was made worse when Jared Cowen took a double minor for high sticking a minute later. Skating with a 5-on-3 advantage, Trevor Glass fired a shot past Spokane netminder Kevin Armstrong, who turned away 38 shots.
With Cowen still in the box, the Tigers (16-11-2-0) capitalized again at 13:30 – this time a Tyler Ennis shot making into the Chiefs’ net as Medicine Hat took a 2-0 lead after one.
Things got worse for Spokane in the second before they got better.
Luke Betts took a cross-checking penalty in the offensive zone, enabling Yashar Farmanara to wrist in a centered feed from Tigers’ captain Daine Todd.
“Any time you take penalties in the offensive zone, you really have to – as a player – look in the mirror and wonder what you could have done different,” Peters said. “Overall, I didn’t think we were a very focused team, I didn’t think we were a very desperate team and we didn’t have much continuity in what we were trying.”
The Chiefs finally answered at 9:17 courtesy of a smart feed from Falk to Mitch Wahl. Wide open on the left of the net, Wahl one-touched the pass from the blue line to score the first of three second-period goals for Spokane.
Judd Blackwater scored off a face-off on the Chiefs’ second power play to pull Spokane within one at 3-2, but another Betts penalty – this time for tripping – allowed Todd to find the net from the point and just like that, it was back to a two-goal game.
Drayson Bowman scored the final goal of the game, his team-leading 24th of the season, to pull the Chiefs back within one, but a scoreless third made the goal insignificant.
The Chiefs continue the five-game Central Division swing tonight in Red Deer.