Mucha looking forward to playoffs

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
To your favourite aunt, it ain't Gone With The Wind.
To your kindly old uncle, it's not The Departed.
But to Kurtis Mucha it's an Oscar winner - the best movie of 2006.
It's a DVD of Game 5 of a 2005-06 playoff series between Mucha's Portland Winterhawks and the Vancouver Giants.
Mucha, now the No. 1 goaltender with the WHL's Kamloops Blazers, was 16 years of age when he and the Winterhawks met up with the Giants in the second round of the playoffs.
The Giants, who were en route to winning the WHL championship, took out the Winterhawks in five games. But it was Mucha's performance that left them talking.
“He was really good,” Craig Bonner, today the Blazers' general manager, but then an assistant coach with the Giants, said Monday afternoon. “We outshot them badly every game. We were all over them and he was excellent. He held them in there.”
Of course, Mucha and the Giants are to meet up again in a playoff series that opens with games Friday and Saturday in Vancouver before heading for Kamloops and games on March 23 and 24.
“Back then, I was young and I didn't know better . . . I just went out and played hockey,” said Mucha, 20. “That's what I need to do against this team. Just go out there and play hockey.”
In the spring of 2006, he opened with a 41-save effort as Portland won Game 1, 1-0, in Vancouver. The Giants then took the next three games - 7-1, 4-3 in overtime and 3-1. And, in Game 5, Mucha was the game's first star as he stopped 46 shots. But he couldn't keep the Giants from winning, 2-0.
That performance, wrote Steve Ewen of The Province three months ago, “might be the top netminding showing at the (Pacific) Coliseum in the last five years.”
Mucha just shrugs.
“When you're young and coming into the league and there's 10,000 people at a game,” he said, “you're so excited and you just want to go in there and play. That's what I did. I stood on my head. I didn't think . . . I just reacted.
“I want to do that again.”
It's not like Mucha watches that DVD every night before he goes to bed. But he plans on having a movie night at least once this week.
“It's the same team and in the same rink,” he said.
He just hopes that this time the outcome is different.
The Winterhawks went into a horrible funk following that season and Mucha will make his first playoff appearance since then when he skates onto the Coliseum ice on Friday.
Mucha, like many observers, expects the Kamloops-Vancouver series to be decided by two things - goaltending and special teams. The Blazers have an edge in the former, the Giants in the latter.
In preparing for a series, Mucha always looks at the other team's goaltending and turns it into a challenge.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I look at it two ways. I want to be better than their goalie, and I want to be a big impact on special teams. I want to kill their power play off and make sure our penalty kill is better than their power play. Those are the two areas that that team is good at.”
The Giants, with the WHL's third-best power play, scored 94 goals with the man advantage; the Blazers, ranked No. 7, came up with 82.
No big deal. Right?
The big deal comes on the penalty kill, where the Giants, with the No. 2-ranked unit in the WHL, allowed 58 goals. The Blazers, at No. 20 in the 22-team league, surrendered 96.
Do the math and the Giants are plus-36 on special teams, while the Blazers are minus-14.
Can you guess which team finished 17 points ahead of the other?
“Their power play is great,” Mucha said, “but the goaltending is their weakest point - everybody knows that, it's no secret.”
The Giants went through four goaltenders, jettisoning Jamie Tucker and Brendan Jensen before settling on Mark Segal and Derek Tendler, both of whom began the season in the junior A ranks.
Segal goes into this series as the starter, having played 1,915 minutes to Tendler's 445. Segal has a 2.66 GAA and a .910 save percentage.
Mucha, who was acquired from Portland on Nov. 22 for a fourth-round bantam draft pick, went 3.37 and .898 with the Blazers. On Saturday, he was credited with 50 saves in a 6-5 shootout loss in Vancouver, while the Blazers put five of 22 shots behind Segal.
“For sure,” he said, “I think special teams and goaltending will be the difference in the series. Whatever special teams show up and whatever goalie . . . that'll do it.”
There is extra motivation for Mucha, too, because, at 20, he knows this is it. In fact, he and the Blazers' two other 20-year-olds - defenceman Ryan Funk and centre C.J. Stretch - have talked about that.
“I talked to the other 20-year-olds . . . somebody mentioned that we could be done next Wednesday,” Mucha said. “We all said, 'No, it's not going to happen. We're not going to let it happen.'
“There is extra motivation there, especially with this team. The track record in the playoffs lately hasn't been the best. That's unacceptable.
“We're going to do everything we can to not only win a game but to win a series for the team, the organization, and all the people who spend their money to come and watch us play.”

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com