After snatching Game 2 of their first-round, best-of-seven Western Hockey League playoff series against Spokane this past Saturday, the Seattle Thunderbirds had aspirations of socking away a pair of victories on their home ice at the ShoWare Center.<\/p>\n
With the series tied at 1-1, the defending Memorial Cup champion Chiefs squashed those aspirations, taking two games on the road from the T-birds this past Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Spokane waylaid Seattle 5-1 in the first-ever postseason game at the ShoWare Center. Despite an early 1-0 Seattle lead \u2013 with T-bird rookie forward Colin Jacobs earning his first career WCL goal at the 7:18 mark on an assist from Prab Rai and Greg Scott \u2013 Game 3 of the series was all Spokane, with the Chiefs getting two goals and two assists from Levko Koper and two goals from Tyler Johnson.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs\u2019 special teams were dominant in the contest, scoring two power-play goals and two shorthanded goals.<\/p>\n
Spokane goalie Dustin Tokarski stopped 32 of 33 shots and the T-birds\u2019 Calvin Pickard made 29 saves on 34 shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you give them too much room or you make too many mistakes, they make you pay,\u201d Seattle coach Rob Sumner said after the game. \u201cThey\u2019re a good team.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the series at 2-1 in favor of the Chiefs, the two teams squared off again at the ShoWare Center on Wednesday night, with Spokane taking Game 4, 3-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still think in several areas we were better,\u201d Sumner said. \u201cIt was certainly a better game performance tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spokane took an early lead with Justin McCrae scoring a goal on an assist from Dustin Donaghy at the 3:27 mark of the first period.<\/p>\n
Seattle quickly bounced back with Jim O\u2019Brien sneaking a rebound by Tokarski at the 4:18 mark. Jeremy Schappert and Jeremy Boyer notched assists on the goal.<\/p>\n
With 13 minutes left in the first, Schappert gave Seattle the lead at 2-1, popping a deflection over Tokarski\u2019s glove.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of a gift in front of the net,\u201d Schappert said.<\/p>\n
Both teams had 12 shots on goal in the first period, but in the second it would be all Spokane, as the Chiefs grabbed the lead for good on goals from Johnson and Ondrej Roman. Spokane had 12 shots on goal in the second to Seattle\u2019s seven.<\/p>\n
Despite several desperate flurries by the Thunderbirds in the third period, the Chiefs held on for the win and a 3-1 lead in the series, courtesy of Tokarski\u2019s steadfastness between the pipes in the third.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he sees it, he\u2019s going to get it,\u201d Sumner said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get traffic. We had some close calls off scrambles tonight. We have to create rebounds so he has difficulty. Basically anything he gets set for and sees, he\u2019s going to stop. We\u2019ve got to get him unpredictable shots, ones he can\u2019t see until the last second. And be in front of him for the rebounds. We have to score those grittier type of goals, because he\u2019s tough to score on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tokarski stopped 28 of 30 and Pickard stopped 34 of 37.<\/p>\n
Now the series moves to Spokane for Game this Saturday at Veteran\u2019s Memorial Arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s must win now,\u201d Sumner said. \u201cAll games you want to win, we\u2019re in a position of must win. Desperation, survival, we\u2019re going to have to go into that mode. It\u2019s win or go home. That\u2019s how we have to approach that. We know what we\u2019re up against. They don\u2019t change, they just play it. Maturity shows and their experience shows. So the good news is that we know what we\u2019re up against.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always a tight game, a tight series when we play these guys,\u201d Schappert added. \u201cWe\u2019ll come ready to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Game 6, if necessary, will be played at 5:05 p.m. on Sunday at the ShoWare Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After snatching Game 2 of their first-round, best-of-seven Western Hockey League playoff series against Spokane this past Saturday, the Seattle Thunderbirds had aspirations of socking away a pair of victories on their home ice at the ShoWare Center. With the series tied at 1-1, the defending Memorial Cup champion Chiefs squashed those aspirations, taking two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20433"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}