2 weeks Ago By Langley Advance Times Staff
It's a do-or-die situation. The outcome of Saturday night's game could knock the Vancouver Giants from playoff contention, especially if they played the way they did Thursday in Spokane. The G-Men dropped three of the six goals against them while players were burning off time in the penalty box, much to the disappointment of associate coach Adam Maglio.
"You've got to eliminate the high sticks, the slashing, hooking, tripping, those ones, and then after the whistle stuff, you've got to skate away, right? Any retaliation stuff, you've got to just eat it and move on. I think at the end of the day, you still want to play hard. You've got to play hard; you've got to play within the rules.
A little bit of that is you're going to finish checks, but you're going to do it the right way. So making sure they're not late and high. Making sure they're clean," he said after the Giants lost Game 4 of the WHL playoff series to the Spokane Chiefs by the score of 6-2.
Maxim Muranov opened the scoring for the Giants with a great effort, as he picked the top corner on the short side of Chiefs' goaltender Dawson Cowan while fending off a defender at the same time from the left circle. Spokane responded quickly, and not just once. Nineteen seconds later, Chiefs' Andrew Cristall equalized from the left circle after getting a pass from Berkly Catton.
Fourteen seconds after that, teammate Chase Harrington scored from a similar spot to make it 2-1. Late in the first, Catton found Cristall wide open in the right circle on one of eight Giants' power plays in the game, and found the back of the net. Chiefs' Mattis Preston extended Spokane's lead to 4-1 early in the second with another power play marker, beating netminder Burke Hood from the right circle.
Less than two minutes later, Cristall completed the hat-trick with the Chiefs third power play goal of the game. Harrington added to the hurt at the 7:15 mark of the second, when he made the score 6-1 after putting home a rebound from the side of the net. Spokane was in control the whole way, thanks to six consecutive goals in the first 27 minutes of the game.
They tallied 33 shots on goal Thursday night, compared to 23 by Vancouver. Schmidt would score a power play goal for the Giants five minutes into the third period to make the final score 6-2, but there was no coming back for the G-Men. "I think a lot of momentum shifts.
We get the first one and they punch right back with two quick ones. And then discipline became a massive issue for us," Maglio said, reflecting on the overall game. "One thing is we're down – we've been down in this series before – but it's how we react to it.
I think we just got away from it a little bit. Took some undisciplined penalties in that second. But I did think 5-on-5 for the most part tonight, although there wasn't a ton of 5-on-5, I thought we were okay.
I thought we were in there, we were hanging around and we had some good chances," he said, optimistic the Langley-based hockey team can turn things around Saturday night. The Giants now trail the best-of-seven series 3-1. They need a win to stay in the playoffs when they take on the Chiefs again Saturday night, 6:05 p.
m., in Spokane. People can tune in for free on starting at 5:55 p.
m. or on Sportsnet 650 following the Canucks post-game show around 5:30 p.m.
If they force a game six, it will be played at Langley Events Centre on Monday, April 7. The puck would drop at 7 p.m.
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