Shorthanded Spokane Chiefs allow six unanswered goals in 6-1 loss to visiting Kelowna

The Spokane Chiefs are missing a few key cogs who are away from the team playing in international showcases. With the team near the bottom of the league in goals scored this season, they can ill-afford to be missing their two top goal scorers. 

It showed Wednesday in their matchup against the Kelowna Rockets. 

Tij Iginla and Carson Wetsch had a goal and an assist apiece and the visiting Rockets topped the Chiefs 6-1 in a Western Hockey League game at the Arena. 

The Chiefs, who entered the game with the league’s worst power play unit at 8.4% (7 for 83) this season, went 0 for 5 with the man advantage.

First-line forwards Mathis Preston and Chase Harrington are playing in the CHL USA Prospects Challenge in Alberta and are expected to rejoin the team this weekend, while Assanali Sarkenov is with Team Kazakhstan for the Division I, Group A U20 World Championships and will not return until after the holiday break.

Preston and Harrington are 1-2 in goals and points on the Chiefs, who had won two straight and four of their last five games. 

“We had played some good hockey coming into tonight, and Kelowna is a good hockey team. But I think, we definitely need to learn. And we’ve got to learn faster,” assistant coach Jake Toporowski said. “We’ve got to come together as a group a little bit better and just make sure we’re playing the right way for 60 minutes.”

Toporowski said missing three top players hurt, but others didn’t take advantage of the additional playing time.

“When you’re a hockey player, in this situation, and you are playing tonight, you’re excited for tonight knowing you’re going to get more ice time with those guys out and you’ve got to rise to that challenge. … I just didn’t think we rose enough, and I think that ultimately cost us.”

The Chiefs (12-11-0-0) were the recipients of the game’s first power play when Kelowna’s Dawson Gerwing was sent off for unsportsmanlike conduct at 15:59 of the first period. But Spokane was called for too-many-men a minute later to negate the advantage. 

Playing at 4-on-4 and with 11 seconds left on the original call the Chiefs found the back of the net. Coco Armstrong dug a puck out of the corner and played it to Rhett Sather, who slid it to the opposite point for Will McIsaac. The big defenseman beat Kelowna goalie Josh Banini with a long wrist shot for his third goal of the season.

Unfortunately, that was the extent of the highlights for the home team. 

Kelowna (10-7-3-1) answered a few minutes later, with Gerwig converting a pass from Owen Folstrom for his third of the season. 

The Rockets made it 2-0 with just 13.9 seconds left in the period as Tomas Poletin’s snap shot from the slot got past Chiefs goalie Linus Vieillard (28 saves) for his 13th goal of the season. 

“I thought the score was even in the first,” Toporowski said, “but I didn’t think we were quite good enough – just in our compete and little mistakes that kind of led to that second (goal) that had happened really all period. We need to be better than that. We need to come out ready.”

Less than 2 minutes into the second period, Kelowna added to its lead with Iginla feeding Nate Corbet, who was cruising through the slot, for his second goal of the season. 

Smyth Rebman mixed it up with Rockets forward Connor Pankratz soon after, but it was Kelowna that took the momentum from the scrap as Wetsch scored his fifth of the season to make it 4-1 a few moments later. 

Defenseman Nathan Mayes took a tripping penalty early in the third and Kelowna cashed in when Iginla knocked in a rebound backhanded while sitting in the paint for his 12th goal of the season.

Shane Smith made it a half-dozen for Kelowna, scoring a short-handed unassisted goal 4 minutes later. 

“Special teams obviously are so important. They won us so many games last year, and this year they haven’t been able to do that,” Toporowski said. “We’re working on it every single day and we need to improve in it. We expect better, both from (coaches) and from the players, just to make sure we get going on those things so we can start winning those games.”

Moves: The Chiefs added forward Nolan Bisson and goaltender Alexander Watren to the roster as Affiliate Players for Thanksgiving week. Bisson played sparingly in his WHL regular season debut while Watren was a healthy scratch.