Patrick King

The importance of the first goal can never be underestimated

The Tri-City Americans finally enjoyed playing with a lead in the Western Hockey League finals and as a result, the Americans live to see another day. Calgary has scored first in each of the first three games to take a commanding 3-0 series lead over the Americans.

That first goal afforded the Americans the opportunity to climb out of a huge hole and play a less desperate style. As head coach Jim Hiller said, it was back to the fundamentals that worked for Tri-City all season.

"We haven’t scored a lot of goals so I thought that was a key moment in the game," he said. "We had some great saves and some good goaltending and timely goals. That’s kind of our recipe. That’s how we win games. We come, we get the building alive and then we feed off that energy.

"I’m glad people got to see what our building’s like when we scored some goals."

In each of the previous two games, Tri-City stared at a three-goal deficit before reaching the score-sheet. They faced that same deficit in the series before taking Game 4 on Wednesday night by a 4-2 final. The series reverts back to Calgary for Game 5 on Friday.

Hiller went with Russian goaltender Alexander Pechurskiy for the second straight game after Drew Owsley had been lit up in the first two games. Pechurskiy turned in an admirable performance Wednesday and his coach could draw parallels from his saves and his team’s offensive explosion.

"We needed big saves and big goals. You can’t have one without the other," Hiller said. "(On Wednesday) we obviously got that. It’s been a while since we’ve had that combination working for us. We haven’t had that going yet in this series and that was a key point. You can’t have one without the other right now and we got it from Alex."

Hiller spoke of the importance of winning the special teams battles, which has been decidedly in his team’s favour the last two games. Tri-City has had 11 power-plays in the last two games compared to Calgary’s three.

Calgary’s lack of power-plays was a point of frustration for their head coach, Mike Williamson.

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hockey game where you generate as much as you did and end up with one power-play at the end of the night," he said. "It’s got to be the cleanest team in the history of hockey."

Williamson has every reason to feel frustration over the way the game was called. Calgary’s quick-strike transition was in full effect throughout the game, but was unable to change the outcome.

"Our guys are doing everything we’re asking and we can’t get frustrated with it," Williamson said. "I think we could have done a better job of (moving our feet and getting to the middle of the ice), then you generate some more chances on the power-play. All you can do is control what you can control."

"We know how good Calgary’s power-play is," Hiller said. "We can help ourselves by staying out of the penalty box more than anything."

The Hitmen will look to become the third team to advance to next week’s Memorial Cup when they host the Americans on Friday. The Ontario Hockey League’s Windsor Spitfires won their second-straight title and will defend their Memorial Cup championship in Brandon.

Meanwhile, the hosts Brandon Wheat Kings have been waiting for the national championship ever since being eliminated by the Hitmen in five games in the Eastern Conference championship.

Calgary has an 8-4 home record in the playoffs and the Pengrowth Saddledome is one of the harder venues for a visiting team to capture a win.

Tri-City veteran Mason Wilgosh knows the odds are stacked against his team making an epic series comeback. His team will need to play the way they did in Game 4 if the series is going to head back to Kennewick, Wash. for Game 6.

"We know their fans are crazy and they feed off their energy, but nobody’s going to roll over and die," Wilgosh said. "We just have to come out and play our game and stick to our game-plan and it should work out."

Hitmen forward Joel Broda spoke of the need to simplify their game in the offensive zone and eliminate looking for the prettiest play.

In a series that has been decided primarily by the team that scores first, that same scenario could determine Game 5’s winner.