It was a loss, but it was a great game. On Friday night, the Spokane Chiefs barely took the game from the Seattle Thunderbirds by a slim margin of 5-4 when the two teams had it out at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena. It was a tight, intense game with the Birds leading most of the way and it was obvious that both teams played their hearts out the entire night.

During the first period, the Birds scored the first goal. Mathew Barzal stole goalie Tyson Verhelst’s pass, redirecting the puck back into the net and setting the tone for the close game all evening. Outshooting the Chiefs 11-8 during the first period, the Birds clearly took that round of the game. During the second period, however, the Chiefs bounced back. Although Scott Eansor scored the first goal of the second period (with an assist by Jared Hauf), the Chiefs tied the game soon after. Markson Bechtold scored the first goal from the Spokane side of the evening with an assist from Keanu Yamamoto. Evan Fiala’s next goal resulted in a 2-2 game, but the Chiefs soon took the lead when Nik Anderson scored another goal.

With a quick wrist shot, Keegan Kolesar tied the game up again at 3-3 during the third period, but Dominic Zwerger and Presten Kopeck of Spokane both scored back to back in a matter of a minute, ahead of Seattle once again at 5-3. Ryan Gropp made another goal during the third period, raising the score to 5-4 with assists from Eansor and Kolesar, but it just wasn’t enough to land them the game. The final score was 5-4.

Even when you lose, when it’s like this, you can almost live with it because the game was so much fun to watch! While there was some tripping and major fighting (between Fiala and Spo) in the first period, minor penalties in the second period and some roughing (Leth and Sea, then Bechtold and Spo) in the third period, overall it was a very clean game, too. It’s games like this that make fans out of first time hockey watchers. It was a pleasure to watch, even if our guys didn’t win it, and it would be a pleasure to watch a similar game again sometime. Of course, wining would make it all the more sweet!

Stay tuned for notes on Saturday night’s game with the Tips.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia