Blazers go for a skate

From The Daily News of Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008. . . .

General manager Brian Fortin and defenceman Mark Schneider sat high in the
seats at Interior Savings Centre late Monday afternoon.
Down below, the Kamloops Blazers were skating . . . and skating . . . and
skating . . . and skating . . .
The Blazers, who followed a four-game losing streak by going 5-2-0-1, laid a
giant egg Sunday when they surrendered six first-period goals en route to an
8-1 shellacking at the hands of the visiting Lethbridge Hurricanes.
Schneider left that game in the third period after being struck in the face
by a puck. He sat yesterday afternoon holding an icepack to his face.
“Nothing’s broken . . . I don’t think,” he said, adding that he won’t play
tonight when the Blazers meet the high-flying Spokane Chiefs at Interior
Savings Centre. Game time is 7 o’clock.
You had to wonder if the pain Schneider was feeling was anything like what
his teammates were going through down below.
Judging by yesterday’s practice, Greg Hawgood, the Blazers’ interim head
coach, and Shane Zulyniak, the assistant general manager/assistant head
coach, weren’t impressed by what they had witnessed the previous night.
Up and down the ice skated the players, who had been split into two groups.
Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. And on and
on it went. . . .
“The message,” Hawgood said, “is that they didn’t work yesterday so they’re
going to work today . . . losing is just not acceptable; it doesn’t bother
them as much as it should.
“They didn’t care about one another last night and it’s not acceptable.”
Fans will find out tonight whether the Blazers got the message, or whether
that kind of practice, combined with this being the club’s fourth game in
five nights, will prove to be too be much.
Of course, the Chiefs also will be playing their fourth game in five nights,
but there was no hard practice for them. While the Blazers were being routed
at home Sunday, the Chiefs, who boast the WHL’s best record, best defence
and third-best offence, were beating the Bruins 5-2 in Chilliwack. (Kamloops
is tied for 15th in record, and is 15th in offence and 19th in defence.)
That was the fourth victory in a row for the Chiefs, who are 7-2-0-1 in
their last 10 outings.
In fact, Spokane has the best 50-game record in franchise history, its 36
victories three more than it had through 50 games in 1999-2000.
The Chiefs have won four or more games in a row five times this season.
Spokane, which had gone four seasons without winning four in a row, has had
nine- and seven-game winning streaks this season. The Chiefs have earned at
least a point in 40 of 50 games and have lost back-to-back games just once
this season.
“We’ve been hit and miss a little bit,” Spokane head coach Bill Peters said,
adding “we’ve had a couple of injuries here and there but everybody does at
this time of the season.”
Statistics would seem to show one weakness in the Chiefs’ game — their
penalty killers are ranked 16th out of the WHL’s 22 teams. Peters, however,
said that unit had been running at better than 90 per cent since Christmas
until it had one bad weekend.
“We got hammered,” Peters said, referring to games of Jan. 18 and 19 when
they gave up three power-play goals in a 5-4 shootout victory over the
Thunderbirds in Seattle and then allowed four in losing 4-2 to the
Silvertips in Everett.
“We gave up seven in two nights. That’s what dropped it,” Peters said. “Now
we’re trying to get it back up again.”
JUST NOTES: The Chiefs are without LW Drayson Bowman, who leads them in
goals (30) and points (60). Bowman, who has an arm injury, may return Friday
when the Chiefs meet the Kootenay Ice in Cranbrook. . . . The Ice may
welcome back C Ben Maxwell that night. A thigh injury has limited him to 11
of the Ice’s 50 games this season.