Chiefs need to stay course
The Western Hockey League season is 72 games long, which is why coaches and general managers don’t like to evaluate things too early.
Well, after Saturday night’s game, the Spokane Chiefs have played exactly one-third of their season. And, if the season was over today, the Chiefs would not have earned a spot in the WHL playoffs. They sit last in the five-team U.S. Division of the Western Conference with a record of 8-12-3-1 (20 points) and trail fourth-place Tri-City by two points.
The first third of the season has been a mixed bag for Spokane. The Chiefs, picked to finish in the bottom two spots of the entire league, exceeded expectations for the first 10 games or so. Then they had to endure a seven-game losing streak. Recently, Spokane has stopped the downward slide with two wins, five losses and three ties in the past 10 games.
“The boat’s kind of turned around on us now,” said goalie Jim Watt after a recent game. “We’ve got to work hard, because just as fast as we turned it around we can lose seven or eight in a row again. By all means, if we lose another seven or eight in a row, it’s going to be hard to get into the standings and really make a run for the playoffs. … I feel that if we start winning five, six, seven in a row, but take one night off, it’s going to be OK as long as we work hard.”
Today, Spokane embarks on its sole Eastern Conference road trip of the season and it could be telling. The Chiefs have been a miserable road team so far, going just 2-6-0-1. They are a respectable 6-6-3 at home, but overall not enough to get the job done.
“We need to start picking it up on the road if we’re going to have a chance at all,” said Chiefs coach Al Conroy this week. He has set a team goal of going 4-3 over the seven road games beginning Saturday night with Tri-City (a 3-2 overtime win). “With as much travel as it is and five games in six nights, it’s going to be a tough grind. But we should be a game over .500 on that trip.”
The immediate future is something upon which the Chiefs need to focus as they try to work their way out of the cellar.
“Our goals, we try to keep them short-term so they’re pretty attainable,” said Conroy. “But we can’t afford to get too far behind teams either. It gets harder and harder as the season progresses to catch up. Typically, the games get tighter and nothing’s given to anybody. So, we need to start closing the gap right now.”
Spokane has been frustratingly inconsistent. The Chiefs have proven they can stay with the best teams in the league and, in some cases, have blown them out of the building. But Spokane has sometimes looked like, well, the 18th-best team in the league.
One thing the coaching staff stresses, no matter the outcome, is effort. At times, the Chiefs have worked hard and been physical. At other times, they have been outworked badly and been manhandled. At times they have skated hard. At other times, they have looked like they were casually skating at Riverfront Park.
“I think we’ve fallen off a little bit in our intensity, consistency,” said Conroy. “I think if we get our compete level back up to where we want it to be – and where we were at the first of the year – we’re going to be fine. We’re disappointed (so far).”
The Chiefs started the year as a younger team, with nearly half of its roster as rookies. However, through trades and lots of playing time for those rookies, Spokane has closed the experience gap with other teams.
“We had a lot of young guys to start, but now we’re more or less the same age group as a lot of other teams,” said Conroy. “So, that’s not really an excuse for us. We kind of ran into a dry spell scoring goals and now we’re not competing as hard as we need to – we just need to pick that up.”
There have been times when Chiefs players have made great decisions with the puck and been rewarded. There have been other times where they have been immediately punished for not thinking clearly on the ice.
“The turnovers and the mistakes just need to be limited and our hard work is going to get us through those mistakes,” said Conroy. “But when we’re not working hard and we’re making those same mistakes, they’re accentuated by everything else.”
The Chiefs often play with an edge and don’t back down from a fight, sometimes to their detriment. They have been quick at times to take retaliatory action and have already had a season’s worth of line brawls.
The team’s strength is that they are a close group of players with good veteran leadership and an impressive crop of rookies.
The Chiefs need to start making a move in the standings if they want to make the playoffs. Conroy himself can’t afford to “wait for next year.” Expectations are high in Spokane, which is a perennial playoff team.
That’s why the team needs to play the best that it’s capable of playing, at whatever level that may be. The Chiefs are not the most talent-laden team, so they need to do “the little things” every night: outwork teams and not beat themselves with mistakes.
So, Spokane takes off for its road trip with a telling stretch of the schedule upon it. In a week, they will know a lot more about themselves as a team. Certainly the coaches will be watching closely to decide who will get playing time in the second half of the season.
“The majority are giving the effort night-in and night-out, but because we want to play everybody – especially early in the season – it’s important that everybody’s going,” said Conroy. “As the season goes on, the guys that are playing are going to be the guys that are working hard that particular night.
“But, part of our job is developing players and giving them every opportunity to develop, so we feel we have to play them for it to be fair. At the same time, once the midseason point comes around, after Christmas for sure, then it will tighten up and it will be the guys that are working hard that will be going.”
The foregoing said, here’s a look by category at the Chiefs so far this season:
Goaltending: The Chiefs now have good depth at the position, with the acquisition of Kevin Opsahl from Portland, to back up Watt.
Both goalies have had brilliant moments, making tough saves, but have allowed far more goals off straightforward slapshots or wristers than either of them would like. Yet sometimes a goalie can only be as good as the defense in front of them, so it’s been spotty.
“I think it’s really the foundation of our team right now, we just really need to be more consistent game-in, game-out,” said Conroy.
Defense: This was expected to be the heart of the team, with the most returning experience (two 20-year-olds) and some top additions to round out the rotations.
Spokane wants to play six defensemen and the group has performed well, for the most part. Spokane has been sweeping away most second shots and often controls play in the other team’s half of the ice. But there have been times where the defenders have put their goalies in bad situations by not challenging shots, not pinching guys against the board, or by clearing pucks sloppily up the middle which leads to turnovers.
“I think it’s been good, but yet again I think consistency is what we’re looking for,” said Conroy.
Offense: The Chiefs have struggled at times scoring goals.
Conroy and his staff have tried a variety of combinations on the front line and are still experimenting on a nightly basis. Usually, at this point of the season, lines are starting to get set. Spokane wants to skate four lines and each of them has been bringing different qualities: speed, grit, or checking. Spokane has been very streaky and, when on its game, has been able to light up the best goalies and the best teams in the league.
“For the coaches, I think guys are still a ways away,” said Conroy.
Special teams: Spokane has put itself on the penalty kill far too much this season. At home, they have not been hurt by it. They are the league’s third-best unit at home playing a man down, killing off 91 percent of those situations. On the road, though, Spokane ranks just 18th in that category with a 78 percent success rate.
On the power play, Spokane is actually better on the road than at home. However, the Chiefs rank only 13th overall in that category.