The Spokane Chiefs are a desperate hockey club.
Heading into their weekend games in Portland on Friday and at home Saturday to Tri-City, Don Nachbaur's Chiefs are on the outside looking in at a playoff spot.
They started the day Friday nine points behind the Portland Winterhawks for the second wild-card spot in the WHL Western Conference. So when the Chiefs do finally get to Prince George for an afternoon encounter with the Cougars on Family Day (2 p.m. start), the home team won't be taking them lightly.
The Chiefs have four players on the top-50 in WHL scoring and three of them form their top line.
The Yamamoto brothers - Kailer and Keanu - are the bookends who surround centre Jaret Anderson-Dolan, and if they get time and pace to operate, chances are the Cougars will be fishing the puck out of their own net.
"I watched their game against Portland and that one line is pretty talented, they were really good in the offensive zone and we have to find a way, because they keep a guy up high in the slot and if you don't know where he is he's wide-open," said Cougars assistant coach Shawn Chambers.
"They have big, strong, physical D and we have to use our speed against those guys. They need the points, just like we do right now, and we have to play with the same desperation they play with.'
Kailer Yamamoto,17, leads the Chiefs in scoring (30-36-66), ranked fifth in the scoring race, and is on a 1.43 points-per-game pace.
He and Anderson-Dolan (29-27-56) are earning the scrutiny of NHL scouts and are considered likely candidates for the June draft. Kailer Yamamoto, 20, is built like his brother (five-foot-nine, 165 pounds), but that hasn't stopped him from putting up some big numbers (19-32-51). Hudson Elyniuk is the other Chief in the top-50 (18-34-52).
The Cougars have just two top-50 scorers - Nikita Popugaev (25-35-60) and Jansen Harkins (16-38-54). But Brad Morrison (20-28-48) and Jesse Gabrielle (26-21-47) aren't far down the list. Gabrielle has been cooking with gas lately, with three goals and five points in his last four games.
On Wednesday, the Cougars suffered their first loss in a shootout after three wins this season, falling 3-2 to the Vancouver Giants.
The Cats focused Friday in practice on special teams play and creating some havoc in the opponent's net, continuing their season-long project to improve their power play and to try to get their penalty-killing efficiency back to what it was for most of the season.
They rank 20th in the 22-team league on power play (16.5 per cent) but their PK is still up there, second only to Everett with an 84.2 per cent rating.
"We looked at the tape and in the first two periods of that second game we were really good, but we didn't get to the dirty area in front of the net," said Chambers.
"We have to cycle better and do a better job of guys staying in front of the net. We controlled the whole play, the whole game, the third period all they did was flip the puck out because they couldn't do anything against, but we didn't generate the right shots and the right traffic in front of the net. Their goalie (David Tendeck) played great, but he saw everything."
The Cougars might have Harkins back for Monday's game after he missed the two games against Vancouver with a leg injury. Brendan Guhle (12-12-24), their top scoring defenceman, is on the shelf indefinitely with an ankle injury and hasn't skated since Jan. 29 in Edmonton. Winger Tanner Wishnowski, 19, acquired Jan. 10 in a trade from Spokane for an eighth-rounder in 2018, is still showing concussion-like symptoms and hasn't played since Nov. 19.
The Chiefs could have Elyniuk back from an upper-body injury. He's listed as day-to-day.
Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk hadn't decided Friday who he'll elect to start in goal. Nick McBride played well in Tuesday's 4-1 win over the Giants and Ty Edmonds, who has lost his last three starts, is one win away from setting the team record for career wins (96).
The Chiefs play the second game of the doubleheader on Tuesday (7 p.m. start).
