The Chilliwack Chiefs let the Victoria Grizzlies off the canvas Friday night and will pay the price with a long road trip tomorrow.
Up 3-1 in the best-of-seven playoff series and up 2-0 late in game five, the Chiefs took their foot off the gas pedal and the Grizzlies rallied for a 3-2 overtime win at Prospera Centre.
Nathan Looysen scored the winner early in OT, and Chilliwack now has to travel back to Victoria for game six.
The good news is that while the Chiefs have been surprisingly vulnerable at home, they’ve yet to lose a road game in the playoffs, and Victoria should still be without starting goaltender Matthew Galajda (concussion).
But if they play like they did tonight, that won’t matter.
Jordan Kawaguchi opened the scoring 7:53 into game five, sniping his BCHL leading 12th of the playoffs on a power play.
Taking a pass from Will Calverley to the right of the Victoria net, the captain caught Grizz goalie Tony Rehm leaving a sliver of space between himself and the goal post. Kawaguchi threaded the needle with a lightning quick snap shot for a 1-0 Chilliwack lead.
The Chiefs peppered Rehm’s net with 14 pucks through 20 minutes and the home team doubled the lead just 69 seconds into the middle frame on a Calverley goal. From just inside the right faceoff dot the rookie rifled the puck inside the far post for his third of the playoffs and Victoria was reeling.
The Chiefs had a chance for more when Tommy Lee was clipped in the face by a Carter Berger high stick. Berger was handed a double minor but the Chilliwack power play came up empty and that would come back to haunt them.
From just about that moment on the script was flipped and the visitors were the much, much better team.
Victoria spent just about the entire third period in the Chiefs end and got within one with 5:40 remaining on a Dayne Finnson goal. Grizzly captain Cole Pickup saucered a backhand pass across the goal-mouth to Finnson who put a sharp-angle shot through Sinclair from the bottom of the left faceoff circle.
Chilliwack head coach Jason Tatarnic had to call timeout to try and settle his troops but they were still hanging on as play resumed.
Victoria got the equalizer and got it with 2:52 to play. Looysen camped in the crease and deflected a Jake Stevens centering pass/shot past Sinclair, sending this one to overtime.
OT ended quickly with a Looysen rocket from the right faceoff circle that found the top of the net over Sinclair’s glove.
The three stars were Calverley (first), Arseneau (second) and Looysen (third).
The Fortis BC Energy Player of the Game was Ben Fanjoy.
Announced attendance was 2,772.
