Tuesday night games

Spokane and Kelowna took the first steps towards digging out of their holes and getting back into their respective series tonight by posting wins over Vancouver and Tri-City, moving those two series to 2-1 counts.

Lethbridge was unable to do the same against the Hitmen and are now in a probably insurmountable 3-0 hole. Calgary can close the series out (with their 2nd straight series sweep) with a win tomorrow night in Lethbridge.

Some thoughts....

• Kyle Beach got himself tossed from the Calgary-Lethbridge game midway through the 3rd period with his team down 4-1, for mouthing off to the refs. So far in nine playoff games, Beach has two points, is a -5, and has 29 PIM. Is this what the Hurricanes envisioned when they gave up two first round bantam picks to get him? I'm pretty sure they got him to deepen their offensive attack and he definitely hasn't provided that in the playoffs. Just bad penalties. Compare that to Zach Boychuk's 13 points in 10 games, +4 and 10 PIM. No doubt who's the real leader of the team, between those two NHL first rounders.
  

• Through three games, the powerplays are 21-10 for the Hitmen, and the Hitmen have scored on 6 of those powerplays (29%). Story of the series, perhaps.

• Tri-Cities played tonight without Jason Reese and Taylor Procyshen....hard enough to win on the road in the playoffs against a team like Kelowna, let alone having to do it without two of your overagers and leading scorers. And Brett Plouffe still hasn't played in the playoffs after being injured in the 2nd-last regular season game. They're a hurting team right now.

• Spokane played a really, really good game tonight, and I have to give credit to the Shaw announcers. They might have Giants logos tattooed on their asses but they were very fair in their call, and quite complimentary of the Chiefs' efforts.

• Terrible crowd in Spokane. You could see entire sections of empty seats on the broadcast. Where's the fan support, it's playoffs!

• Craig Cunningham of the Giants deserves a suspension for that brutal chop to the face of Levko Koper late in the third period. How did he only get two minutes? It definitely looked intentional to this neutral observer, and the league can't put up with that B.S....

Some general playoff notes....

Is home ice advantage really an advantage? Through the playoffs so far this year, the answer would be a definite No. With 51 games played thus far, the home team has won 26 and lost 25. At that rate, having a coin flip before the game means as much as having home ice in terms of predicting the winner.

And coaches (and TV commentators) always talk about the importance of scoring the first goal in the playoffs. But how important is it, really? After 51 games this year, the team scoring the first goal has gone on to win only 29 of those games, losing 22. So, not really quite as important as you might think....but still more important than having home ice....