Chiefs capitalize early, cruise past Kamloops 5-2
The Spokane Chiefs looked up at the scoreboard with about 9 minutes left in Saturday’s game and saw that they had been held to 13 shots on goal.
Ordinarily, that would be cause for alarm, but the Chiefs led the Kamloops Blazers 5-2 at the time.
That was also the final score as Spokane, despite being outshot 31-21, cruised at the Arena to improve to 3-0-0-0 over the Blazers for the Western Hockey League season.
“It wasn’t pretty,” Chiefs head coach Don Nachbaur said. “We looked really tired. I thought we looked slow in everything we did, but we found a way to win. … So we showed some character to overcome that.”
“We might have got outplayed a little bit, but we capitalized on our chances and we battled hard,” said Chiefs left wing Adam Helewka, whose team-leading 24th goal gave Spokane a 4-0 lead early in the second period. … “It’s always good to win. You can’t complain about that. But at the same time, you want to win with authority, right?”
Markson Bechtold, Devon McAndrews, Liam Stewart and Dominic Zwerger also scored for the Chiefs, and 17-year-old goalie Tyson Verhelst (8-4-0-0) earned first-star honors with 29 saves for his third consecutive victory.
“I think the team’s really been coming together lately,” said Helewka, whose goal-scoring streak reached a league-high seven games. “We went on that long win streak (seven games) and we’ve been playing well ever since Christmas. … You’re going to win more games when the scoring’s spread out because it’s a team game.”
Helewka’s streak is the longest for a Chiefs player since Chad Klassen during the 2003-04 season. Kailer Yamamoto assisted on Helewka’s score to increase his points streak to 10 games.
The Chiefs, who have won nine of 12, improved to 23-15-3-0 (49 points) to remain tied for second place in the U.S. Division with Portland, seven points behind Everett. Kamloops (14-24-3-3) lost for the 12th time in 14 games.
Stewart, who earned second-star honors, assisted on Spokane’s last two goals. His goal with 1:10 left in the first period was his career-high 15th of the season and gave the Chiefs a 3-0 lead on just their sixth shot of the game.
Spokane finished 2 for 4 on power plays, on the first-period goals by Bechtold and Stewart, and finished 5 for 5 on the penalty kill. The Chiefs entered the night with the fourth-best penalty kill in the league (83.8 percent).
“That was big (the power play) because we weren’t playing well 5 on 5,” Nachbaur said. “We spent a lot of time in our end and when we did get chances to score, we did.”
Spokane managed eight shots in the final 8:51 to keep from tying its season low of 20.
Chiefs add forward
The Chiefs beat the Western Hockey League trade deadline Saturday by acquiring 18-year-old forward Kolten Olynek from the Moose Jaw Warriors for a sixth-round selection in the 2015 WHL Bantam Draft.
Olynek, who is expected to join the team next week, had three goals and seven assists in 40 games with Moose Jaw this season. He was selected in the second round of the 2011 bantam draft by Lethbridge.
The Chiefs also reassigned forward Mitch Lipon to the Melville Millionaires of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. Lipon scored two goals in 13 games with the Chiefs this season.