Chiefs regain strut

If the Spokane Chiefs were looking to make a statement, they delivered the message loud and clear on Wednesday night.

It was almost as if they were saying: This is how it should look when the league’s best team meets the league’s worst.

The Chiefs scored four times in the opening period, killed 7 of 8 power-play opportunities and rolled past the struggling Port- land Winter Hawks in a 7-1 Western Hockey League victory in front of an Arena crowd of 3,838.

After Spokane narrowly escaped Portland (5-26-0-1) on Sunday with a 5-4 shootout victory, and after a couple of uncharacteristically substandard games played in the past two weeks, the Chiefs finally looked like themselves again.

Well, according to Chiefs coach Bill Peters, they almost looked like themselves again.

“We need to get our game back in order, right from start to finish,” said Peters. “It’s still not there, but it’s at least showing signs of coming around, and that’s the deal. Usually when you slump you lose – we got away with slumping a little bit and still manufacturing some wins, so that’s a sign of a good hockey team.”

The Chiefs finished with a well-balanced score sheet, led by two goals and an assist from first-line center Mitch Wahl. Ondrej Roman also had two goals, and David Rutherford and Drayson Bowman each had two helpers.

“Sunday’s game, we were up and then we let them back in, so that was disappointing, but we won the shootout and we’ll take the two points,” said Wahl, who leads the Chiefs (25-5-1-2, 53 points) with 32 assists and is second in scoring with 43 points. “Tonight I think we did what we needed to do and proved a point.”

First to strike for Spokane was Roman.

The import forward, fourth in scoring for Spokane with 28 points, took possession from Portland forward Chris Francis in the offensive zone and finished 1-on-1 with Winter Hawks netminder Kurtis Mucha to put the Chiefs on the board 3 minutes and 19 seconds into the game.

Two minutes later, defenseman Justin Falk – a Minnesota Wild prospect – found Wahl open on the low post as the Chiefs took a 2-0 lead.

The Chiefs went on their second power play at 8:17 when Portland right-winger Victor Sjodin was sent to the sin bin for holding. It took overage forward Judd Blackwater 11 seconds to net a behind-the-net pass from Rutherford for his 11th goal of the season and a 3-0 Chiefs lead at 8:28.

A Blackwater roughing penalty after the goal resulted in Portland’s lone goal on the night – a backhanded score from Jason Grecica on assists from Kevin Undershute and Francis.

Richland native Seth Compton scored his fifth goal of the season, short-handed at 17:30, to give the Chiefs a 4-1 lead after the first 20 minutes.

Spokane netminder Kevin Armstrong turned away 32 of 33 Portland shots and is third in the league with a 2.08 goals-against average.

“I thought we had a good practice (on Tuesday),” said Peters, “and we’re going to have another good one (today) and that will lead into the weekend.”

A very important, tone-setting weekend.

The Chiefs resume their three-game homestand on Friday when they host the Seattle Thunderbirds (14-10-5-1) and Saturday when they welcome the rival Tri-City Americans.

The Chiefs have a six-point lead over the Americans (23-7-1-0) in the U.S. Division.

Notes

Roman scored his second goal in the second and captain Chris Bruton scored in the third period on assists from Chris Langkow and Jared Cowen. Wahl netted his second goal in the third. … Stefan Ulmer and Team Austria improved to 3-0 on Wednesday with a 7-4 win over Ukraine in the IIHF Division IA U-20 World Championships in Bad Tolz, Germany. Ulmer was the Chiefs’ lone selection in the 2007 CHL import draft.