Chiefs face must-win situation after Friday loss
The Vancouver Giants raised on Friday night, now it’s time for the Spokane Chiefs to go all-in.
Coming off a four-game sweep of the Everett Silvertips in the Western Hockey League playoffs, the Chiefs were admittedly undisciplined in a lackluster effort in a 4-1 loss to the Giants on Friday in the best-of-7 Western Conference series opener at the Arena.
“I think we’re pretty realistic about how we played,” Chiefs coach Bill Peters said. “You’ve got to give (Vancouver) credit. They played a very good road game overall and we had a less-than-stellar effort from some guys and not a very good team game in place.”
One glaring area for the Chiefs was their lack of aggression on the forecheck, which is uncharacteristic for Spokane. That’s one area Peters hopes his team will improve on tonight.
“We chipped the puck in, and usually we go and forecheck or we go and get it and take it to the net or go apply forecheck pressure – we didn’t do that tonight,” he said.
There were also a high number of Spokane turnovers from the offensive blue line.
“That’s the first time we’ve done that in a long time,” Peters said. “I don’t know how many times we turned it over and how many times we went offsides. Just a little bit of either indecision or trying to force something that’s not there. We’re usually a pretty good team through the neutral zone about recognizing what’s there and what we need to do with the puck.”
They find themselves in essentially a must-win situation tonight at the Arena.
“Yeah, we’ve got to get this one with the 2-3-2 format,” said veteran defenseman Trevor Glass, who played for the Medicine Hat Tigers last season when they beat Vancouver for the WHL championship before the Giants went on to win the Memorial Cup. “I know from last year how hard it is to go in and play in their barn. They kind of feed off their crowd.
“There’s no question, we need to win this game.”
If they don’t, they’ll be down 2-0 as the series heads north to Vancouver for three games. That brings up the possibility of tonight being Spokane’s final home game of the season. The potential for that exists even if they do win tonight, adding more pressure to the Chiefs.
“To beat them at home, now we can go for two,” Giants defenseman Craig Schira said. “If we win (today), we go back to our barn with two wins under our belt and three games to go at our house. That’s what we (want).”