Giants even it up
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – It was a Giant win for Vancouver – pun intended.
Defenseman Jonathon Blum netted the game-winning goal and Giants captain Spencer Machacek scored into an empty net with 19 seconds remaining in the game on Friday night as Vancouver handed the Spokane Chiefs their first road loss of the 2008 Western Hockey League playoffs with a 3-1 victory in front of a Pacific Coliseum crowd of 8,899.
A victory would have given the Chiefs a stranglehold on the best-of-7 Western Conference semifinal, but instead the series is tied 2-2, with Game 5 tonight in Vancouver. The series will return for at least one game in Spokane, which will be played Monday night at the Arena. If necessary, a seventh game would be played Tuesday night in Spokane.
“I didn’t think we had a complete game by any stretch of the imagination,” said Chiefs coach Bill Peters. “We played with a little more intensity once we were down in the third period and came close a little bit at the end, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
Spokane pulled goalie Dustin Tokarski off the ice with a minute remaining in the game, giving the Chiefs a 6-on-5 advantage in front of Vancouver goalie Tyson Sexsmith, who finished with 27 saves. After Levko Koper hit the crossbar, Machacek got a hold of the puck by the blue line and threw it down the ice for the empty-net goal.
“The goal they got was post and in,” Sexsmith said of Spokane’s lone goal, scored by Koper 3:28 into the opening period. “(Koper’s crossbar shot) was post and out. It was kind of lucky, but we will take it.”
The Chiefs drew first blood when Tyler Johnson and Koper broke away in the neutral zone for a 2-on-1 rush on Blum, a Nashville Predators first-round draft pick last year.
Cruising down the right lane, Johnson crossed the puck to Koper in the left lane and Koper buried the puck past Sexsmith for his fourth goal in eight playoff games. The third-line winger had 12 goals in the regular season.
“He’s been more then pretty good. He’s an excellent player,” said Peters. “He’s one of those guys that continues to improve. You look all the way back to when we went on the road in (Spokane’s 4-0 first-round sweep of Everett) and that line (of Koper-Johnson and Justin McCrae) generated a lot of offense, and they’ve generated a lot of offense here in the last two games.”
The Giants leveled the score late in the first as the Chiefs gave up their first opening-period goal of the playoffs. Canucks prospect Mario Bliznak swatted in a behind-the-net feed from Craig Schira for the goal at 18:44.
Vancouver took the final lead in the second when Michal Repik dished the puck from the right boards out to Blum, who fired in a shot from just inside the blue line to score at 11:24.
Neither team clicked on the power play, a theme that has been threaded throughout the series.
Spokane was 0 for 4, while the Giants were scoreless in three advantages.
“You’ve got to tell those penalty killers to quit working so hard and those goaltenders have got to let in a greasy one” Peters joked. “The penalty killers are working so hard, and are so dedicated to blocking shots that they are outworking all the power-play players right now.
“It’s not even close.”
Ice chips
Koper was stopped by Sexsmith on a short-handed 1-on-1 breakaway 4 minutes into the second period. … The Lethbridge Hurricanes closed out their semifinal series 4-1, advancing to the Eastern Conference final with a 3-0 victory over visiting Kootenay. Also in the East, Swift Current avoided elimination with a 5-2 victory over the host Calgary Hitmen. The Hitmen lead the series 3-2. Whoever wins the Spokane-Vancouver series will play the Tri-City Americans in the Western Conference final, as the Ams beat Seattle 4-0 to win the series 4-1.