Mucha hoping to finish WHL career on high note

BY GREGG DRINNAN
(gdrinnan.blogspot.com)

The Edmonton Oilers were a year late and a couple of dollars short.
Had the NHL club made a contract offer to goaltender Kurtis Mucha of the Portland Winterhawks a year ago, he might now be in the AHL, with the Springfield Falcons, or in the ECHL, with the Stockton Thunder.
That didn’t happen, however, so Mucha is back for a fifth WHL season with the Winterhawks.
Mucha, a 20-year-old from Sherwood Park, Alta., started this season in the NHL team’s training camp. In fact, he was one of the last four goaltenders standing, right there with Nikolai Khabibulin, Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers and Devan Dubnyk.
“I had the camp of my life,” Mucha said Sunday before making his 200th regular-season appearance with the Winterhawks, this one in Kamloops against the Blazers. “I played the most consistent hockey I’ve ever played up there. Every day in practice with NHL guys I was playing really well. I just felt really comfortable out there.”
But when it came time to decide where he wanted to play . . .
“The contract offer was low,” Mucha said, “and I knew that coming back to Portland this season they were going to be a lot better team. That made it a little easier to come back.
“If it (had been) a couple of years ago, I probably would have had to think about it a little more. Coming back to this team made it a little easier.”
Ahh, yes, a couple of years ago . . .
The Winterhawks’ franchise changed hands a year ago. And, although the team would go on to its third straight last-place finish, the writing on the wall finally wasn’t all negative. Because as bad as things were on the ice — the Winterhawks won 47 games and lost 169 over the last three seasons — they were worse off it.
This season, with general manager/head coach Mike Johnstone, his assistant, Travis Green, head scout Garry Davidson et al having been at it for a year, well, positive results already are being seen.
The biggest change, however, has happened off the ice. Just ask Mucha.
“The word that is being used by everyone is ‘professional,’ ” he stated. “We have pro guys here now; Mike and Travis have been in the pro ranks. Our owner, Bill Gallacher, runs a huge company. So they all know what they’re doing.
“They came in with an idea of how they want to run things and that’s what they’re going to stick to. So far, it’s working out great. The players love it. The coaches like how things are going. So far it’s been a success.”
Part of that success may be due to the fact that this is a young team . . . which means there aren’t many players in the room — Mucha, Chris Francis, Luke Walker — who went through the bad, old days.
“We have a lot of young guys who don’t really know . . . once they start playing hockey, they just want to play hockey,” Mucha said. “They just want to put on their skates and go out there and play.
“That’s what they’re doing right now and I think that’s why we’re having the success we’re having right now.”
On Sunday in Kamloops, Mucha made 28 saves as the Winterhawks won 4-3 in overtime. It's interesting that the three old guys really figured in this one as Walker set up Francis, who also had two assists, for the OT winner.
This being his 200th appearance, Mucha said, meant a great deal to him.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Everyone wants to stay in this league as long as possible. You see a lot of guys come into this league for a year or two and they slip away. It’s a good thing to be in this league this long and to keep it going.”
He paused.
“It’s a lot of games for a goaltender, though,” he said with a grin.
And as he looks around the U.S. Division, there is no doubt that he is the granddaddy of goaltenders, especially with Chet Pickard having moved on from the Tri-City Americans and Dustin Tokarski no longer with the Spokane Chiefs.
Oh, the battles the three of them have had . . . like three kids in the same sandbox.
Not having those two around “is a nice change,” a chuckling Mucha said.
He added that the last couple of seasons have been tough with “those guys every night putting up really good numbers.”
“Now,” he said, “you’ve got a couple of younger guys just getting used to the league. They didn’t play a lot of games last season so it’s good if we can get a jump on them while they’re still figuring out the league.”
Of course, you can’t live through the seasons the Winterhawks have and not have suffered some collateral damage. Attendance figures, once one of the WHL’s crown jewels, have become laughable.
So far, the Winterhawks have played two home games. They drew 4,232 fans to their home-opener, a 6-1 victory over the Seattle Thunderbirds, but then had an announced attendance of 1,552 for a 5-1 victory over the Prince George Cougars. The Winterhawks meet the Silvertips in Everett on Wednesday and are at home Friday against the Tri-City Americans.
Asked what it will take to get the fans, or at least some of them, back to Memorial Coliseum, Mucha didn’t hesitate in saying: “Winning . . . home wins.”
“You can win on the road and that’ll get success,” he said. “But if you win at home that’ll bring people into the stands. I think if we keep playing well at home it’ll change what people think . . . I hope it does. We’d like to see that.
“ My first year we averaged six or seven thousand people a game. I don’t think it would take too long to get it back there. Hopefully, it does this season.”
If it doesn’t, well, Mucha won’t be around for whatever happens. This is his fifth and final WHL season, and he admitted that the realization that this is it feels “a little bit” strange.
“I look back and it’s not that long ago that I was 16 and playing against Devan Dubnyk and with Brandon Dubinsky on my team,” Mucha said. “It’s gone by pretty fast.
“I just have to get ready and have a good season and hopefully I can move on to a professional career.”