Sexsmith a Giant in goal

At High Noon Arena back in old Dodge City, they didn’t peddle many tickets for the gunfights matching two guys with empty holsters.

In the quick-draw culture, blocking bullets was not only bad duty, it was bad theatre.

Then.

Good theatre now.

Sure, you can argue whether people thrill to the shot or the stop, but the tension already prevailing in the Spokane Chiefs’ playoff series with Vancouver is a notch above just about anything seen here this hockey season. That includes even the beloved showdowns with Tri-City, which have disintegrated into wipeouts more often than they’ve gone to shootouts.

Of course, the tension is considerably greater for the Chiefs this morning.

They’re down a game in the Western Hockey League conference semifinals after a 4-1 loss to the Giants, at a time when it’s especially inconvenient to be so. For after Sunday’s 6 p.m. rematch at the Arena, the teams adjourn to Vancouver for the next three scheduled games.

You do the math.

If the momentum doesn’t swing back for the Chiefs pretty quickly, the Arena’s configuration crew won’t be sweating any ice-to-turf-to-ice turnarounds the rest of the spring.

“We’ll be much better Sunday,” said Spokane coach Bill Peters. “We’ll have to be just to be in the game.”

The problem for the Chiefs is margin for error. There virtually is none.

When the Giants managed to pop in a power-play goal in the last three minutes of the second period Friday night for a 2-0 lead, it was as good as holding pocket jacks and catching another on the flop. Yes, there was always the chance Spokane could find queens on the turn and the river, but what were the odds?

Not much, with Tyson Sexsmith dealing.

The dominant – that is to say, only – story line in advance of this splendid semifinal was the presence of the WHL’s two best regular goaltenders: Sexsmith and Spokane’s Dustin Tokarski, backstops of the league’s two stingiest defenses.

Such a pairing isn’t rare in the playoffs and especially in the Western Conference, where the defensive mentality seems to have become a staple in recent years more so than on the prairie. But it does ratchet up the stakes on each scoring opportunity – and on each breakdown or mistake.

Thus, the Chiefs appeared to have grabbed a huge momentum wave early when they were hit with back-to-back penalties just 5 seconds apart barely a minute into the game – and survived a long and harrowing 5-on-3.

Tokarski did catch a break when Vancouver’s Jonathan Blum banged one off the post, but was mostly terrific during the stand, finally gloving a hard shot by R.J. LaRochelle just as the first minor expired.

But there was a lot of game left – and there was no sag in the Giants even after the squandered advantage.

“It was exactly the start we wanted,” said defenseman Craig Schira. “If we scored a goal, great, but we just wanted to get pucks on net and show we were ready to play.”

There was indeed a poise to Vancouver’s game that could be expected from the defending Memorial Cup champions, especially against a club that hasn’t been this deep in the playoffs in five years – meaning before any of the current Chiefs were Chiefs.

“We weren’t a very intelligent hockey team tonight,” Peters complained. “We had some adversity and then got a little individualistic.”

And that’s no way to beat Sexsmith.

In the Tri-City Herald’s annual Best of the West poll of players, team officials and radio personnel, Sexsmith was voted the conference’s most overrated player and – perhaps even worse – only the fifth-best goalie.

With all due respect to those far more knowledgeable about the game, such a consensus is, well, incomprehensibly stupid.

Vancouver’s team defense is, of course, outstanding. But Sexsmith was unflappable as a 17-year-old in the Memorial Cup run and even better as the Giants retooled the rearguard without several NHL draft picks.

He showed it Friday night in turning away Spokane’s two best chances – short-handed breakaways by Levko Koper and Jared Spurgeon, who emerged from the penalty box to find the most serendipitous deflection on his stick.

“We’ve got to do a better job of not letting that happen,” Sexsmith said. “But that’s my time and I’ve got to step up.”

But in some respects, the Chiefs didn’t make him step up enough. Tokarski surrendered his first goal because his mates simply couldn’t get the puck out of their zone, and Spokane’s offense was fitful all night, at best.

“I didn’t think we attacked their ‘D’ with much wide speed,” said Peters, “or drive to the net. We were caught in between – are we going to get it deep or are we going to make a play and gain the zone with possession? But by that time, our feet had stopped moving – and it resulted in a turnover more often than not.”

Surely, the Chiefs will be more mindful Sunday.

“We had the mindset that whoever cracks first, you have to take advantage of it,” Sexsmith said. “Because there probably aren’t going to be a lot of mistakes in these games.”

Not many in goal, in any case.