Chiefs 5 Bruins 2

January 27th, 2008

Marc Weber, The Province

The Chilliwack Bruins might have to settle for moral victories these days.

Bombarded by bugs -- both sickness and injury -- Chilliwack is also in the midst of perhaps the toughest part of their schedule: six games in nine days and matchups with the top four teams in the Western Conference.

Despite stifling Spokane in the first period and being opportunistic enough to tie the tilt at 2-2 midway through the second, the Bruins were gassed for the final 40 minutes and paid the price against a talented, hard-charging Chiefs squad.

"We're depleted. We won't even get into the extent of it," said head coach Jim Hiller, who lost versatile centre Matt Meropoulis (broken hand) in a Friday fight just days after watching gritty winger Cody Smuk (separated shoulder) slump off the ice.

To boot, around two-thirds of the team is suffering from the flu, strep throat, tonsillitis and the like. Players were throwing up between periods.

"Strictly based on compete and courage, that's what we're evaluating things on right now," Hiller continued. "This is just going to make us stronger in the end.

"I thought we had a pretty good game tonight for a half, then we just ran out of gas and they took it over. We didn't have much strength to push back."

Spokane outshot Chilliwack 22-4 in a dominant second period, busting the game open on two goals in the final 2:15 of the frame by David Rutherford and Mitch Wahl.

Ondrej Roman and Seth Compton, into an empty net, also scored for the Chiefs, while Brandon Campos -- his fourth goal in three games -- and David Robinson tallied for the home side.

"It's just crazy," Robinson said of the health hazard in the dressing room. "Just looking around you can tell so many guys are feeling it. But we battled. I guess that's all you can ask right now."

Hiller could only find 11 forwards to dress and is resigned to playing patient hockey for now.

"We want to be aggressive, but we can't be right now," he said. "We'd be dead. We wouldn't be able to make it back to our own end."

Matt Esposito turned aside 19 shots in third-period relief for Chilliwack. Spokane played without injured leading scorer Drayson Bowman (30-30-60).