Mucha turns aside Chiefs for victory

The Portland Winter Hawks are, indeed, under new management. Friday night, in fact, they were too Mucha for the Spokane Chiefs.

Goalkeeper Kurtis Mucha, who came into the game at the Arena with the dubious distinction of owning a league-leading 10 losses already this season, turned aside 39 of 40 shots from the home-standing Chiefs to earn a 2-1 victory.

The win was the first in Spokane for Portland since Nov. 24, 2005, but it was the second victory in three games under the team’s new management.

On Oct. 28, the WHL confirmed the sale of the Winter Hawks to Calgary businessman Bill Gallacher, who immediately brought in former National Hockey League assistant coach Mike Johnston as head coach and general manager and former NHL and Spokane Chiefs player Travis Green as an assistant GM and assistant coach.

“You look at them and you see that they’re already starting to play better,” Chiefs coach Hardy Sauter said. “They went into Tri-City and they won and now they come in here and they beat us.

“I think what this means for our division is that there are no teams left that you can point to and say ‘Boy, I’m glad we’re playing them.’ Every team is going to be tough from here on out and you have to come ready to play every single night.”

The night started out on a high note. Dustin Tokarski, Jared Cowen and injured Jared Spurgeon each were presented with a Team WHL jersey.

All three were selected to play in the ADT Canada Russia Challenge, which begins a six-game, 10-day run Nov. 17.

Friday night, it was Mucha who made the difference, holding Spokane scoreless through two periods while his teammates continued to adapt to a new style of play. As the game wore on, they grew more and more confident.

“If we had gone out there and scored early, there’s no question that this would have been a totally different game,” Sauter said. “By the time we got going, their goalkeeper was making great play after great play. He must have made at least 10 great saves to keep them in it.”

Portland scored its goals 13 seconds apart midway through the second period.

Riley Boychuk found Tayler Jordan, who wasn’t listed on the game roster and was penciled in late, for the Hawks’ first goal. Brock Cornish flipped the puck past Tokarski during a scrum in front of the Spokane net to leave the Chiefs stunned.

“We played two minutes of bad hockey tonight and it cost us the game,” Sauter said.

Steve Kuhn scored on a power play 5 minutes into the final period to halve the Portland lead, but by that time the Hawks had packed in around Mucha in their defensive end and the keeper denied the Chiefs from long range.

Spokane enters tonight’s game with Tri-City two points behind the Americans in the U.S. Division.

Tri-City survived a shootout with Kamloops to take a 5-4 victory Friday.