Mucha excited to get start against former team

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Kurtis Mucha, the Kamloops Blazers’ 20-year-old goaltender, has played in 224 regular-season WHL games. Yes, he still gets butterflies, small ones, on game day.
Today, however, that’s a pterodactyl flying around in there.
That’s because Mucha’s 225th appearance will come tonight, 7 o’clock, against the Portland Winterhawks, the team with which he spent the first four-plus seasons of his career.
Mucha preparing to face his former team is just one of numerous storylines around the Blazers, who named defenceman Ryan Funk as their captain Tuesday morning and practised with two new teammates for the first time later in the day.
The Winterhawks dealt Mucha to Kamloops on Nov. 22 for a fourth-round 2010 draft pick. It is a trade that Mucha didn’t understand then, doesn’t understand now and won’t understand in 40 years. But it’s one that has him stoked for tonight’s game.
“These are the first two (points) and I said at the time I want all six,” Mucha said. “For a player, you want to get a goal or assist. A goalie wants to get the win. I want to grab them all.”
The Blazers will play in Portland twice before season’s end, on Jan. 20 and Feb. 3. The Winterhawks almost certainly will honour him prior to the Jan. 20 game.
Mucha will make his 12th appearance with the Blazers tonight. He is 5-3-0-2 since the trade, with a 3.01 GAA and a .901 save percentage.
He expects to hear some chatter from Portland forwards Ty Rattie and Riley Boychuk, two of his better friends there, and said that if anyone gets in his face it likely will be winger Luke Walker.
“It’s not that we hate each other,” said a laughing Mucha. “It’s just the type of kid he is; he’s a competitive donkey.”
Mucha’s 225th appearance tonight will tie him with Aaron Sorochan (Prince Albert, Lethbridge, Vancouver, 2000-05) for third on the league’s career list. The record for games played by a goaltender (233) is held by Kyle Moir (Swift Current, 2002-07).
Mucha has played 12,556 minutes, which also is third. Moir holds that record, too, at 17,774.
Mucha will face Portland while wearing his Winterhawks mask. A new mask in Blazers colours should be ready next week.
———
Funk, a 20-year-old from Morden, Man., is preparing for his first game as captain. He succeeds right-winger Tyler Shattock who was traded Sunday, along with winger Jimmy Bubnick and defenceman Zak Stebner, to the Calgary Hitmen.
Funk spent his first four WHL seasons with the Saskatoon Blades, who dealt him to the Vancouver Giants last summer. The Blazers got him from the Giants on Nov. 23 for winger Brett Lyon.
“It’s been a different season, that’s for sure,” Funk said. “Especially when you’re on a team for four years and then you get dealt twice in less than a year.”
Funk said he is “honoured to wear the ‘C’ here,” adding that “I’m not going to change at all. I’m not going to change who I am.”
Prior to Sunday’s trade deadline, general manager Craig Bonner indicated that he wouldn’t trade away Mucha or Funk because of the work they were doing with the younger players. That mentoring is something that Funk is prepared to do.
“I was in that position once before, as the young guy,” Funk said, explaining that when he was 17, the Blades’ captain was Brad Cole, a 20-year-old defenceman. “We had a lot of young guys. The way that he led us . . . he pretty much taught me how to be a leader. Leadership is a big thing on a young team.”
Funk hasn’t forgotten and he still keeps in touch with Cole, who now is with the AHL’s Abbotsford Heat.
———
Defenceman Austin Madaisky, 17, and forward Chase Schaber, 18, who came the other way in Sunday’s deal with Calgary, were on the ice Tuesday at Interior Savings Centre.
Head coach Guy Charron, who has to replace two right wingers, had Schaber on a line with C.J. Stretch, the team’s leading scorer, and Brendan Ranford. They also worked together as one of the two power-play units.
Charron also had Dalibor Bortnak with Matej Bene and Jake Trask, Colin Smith between Dylan Willick and Jordan DePape, and JC Lipon with Ryan Hanes and Rhyse Dieno, the latter a 16-year-old who has joined the Blazers for the rest of this season from the midget AAA Saskatoon Blazers.
The other power-play forward unit had Smith with Bortnak and DePape. Madaisky and fellow defencemen Bronson Maschmeyer and Linden Saip rotated on the PP points. Saip goes into tonight’s game riding a seven-game point streak.
JUST NOTES: F Mark Hall (concussion) took part in his first contact practice since being injured Dec. 30 in Kelowna. Hall, who has missed five games, was to see a doctor after practice but isn’t likely to play tonight.