Time to move

The Spokane Chiefs can’t focus on what they don’t have: Yes, they are down to 18 players.

What they do have are three Western Hockey League home games this week that could net them up to six points in the U.S. Division standings.

“I definitely think we can beat both P.G. (Prince George) and Portland,” said center Mitch Wahl. “I definitely think we can get three wins.”

Spokane enters tonight’s Arena game with Prince George tied with Seattle for third place. The Chiefs (69) trail second-place Tri-City by seven points in the fight for first-round, home-ice advantage in the playoffs.

But the Americans also have three games in hand over the Chiefs (three extra to play), making the odds of Spokane catching its rival even longer over its final 11 games – but not hopeless.

“We’re not going to put that out of perspective,” said Chiefs leading scorer Derek Ryan. “It’s been our goal all year long to have home-ice advantage. We just have to win the games that we have. That’s all we can do.”

The Chiefs will have to do it without five injured players and another, Mike Reddington, who is off to the Canada Winter Games.

“I think we just have to look at it game by game,” said assistant captain Chris Bruton. “The next three are huge for us – we should definitely be able to pull some points out of it.”

The five injured players with broken bones were scheduled to see the team physician Monday and more should be known about their conditions and long-term prognoses this week.

“It’s all speculation, but I think J.P. (Szaszkiewicz) will be back (and) I think Bow (Drayson Bowman) will be back before the end of the regular season,” said coach Bill Peters. The other three could return by the start of the playoffs in mid-March.

Before then, Spokane needs to make it as easy as possible on the remaining players.

“It’s going to take a lot of effort to get through it and we’re going to have to stick together and play as a team if we want to win games while we’re short,” said captain Adam Hobson.

Peters said Spokane needs to play improved two-way hockey.

“We’ve got to get back in taking more pride being a good team defensively and just an honest, hard-working team that generates their offense by being good defensively and not spending too much time in our own end,” he said.

The Chiefs will also need to stay out of the box.

“We need to play a simple game – home game, away game, it doesn’t matter,” said Michael Grabner. “With a short bench, you want to play a hard game and not take too many stupid penalties because it wears guys out.”

The Chiefs also will need to rest as much as possible. They had Sunday off, a short practice Monday, and were back hard at things Tuesday.

They are coming off a week in which they earned three out of six points without five injured players. In the final game Saturday with Kootenay, they finished with some brawls despite a 5-3 loss.

“It’s a message to send to them and the league as well that we’re not a weak team and we’re going to fight for every point,” Ryan said.

Peters said he wasn’t troubled at the sight that included the goalies skating out of their nets to tangle before linesmen intercepted them.

“Sure, there was some frustration, but that’s all right,” Peters said. “We’re frustrated and we acted a certain way, but by no means were we just going to think we can’t get it done just because we have a few injuries.

“We just have to find a different formula for success the next little while.”