Bad luck Bruins bow to Hawks

By Eric Welsh - Chilliwack Progress - November 27, 2007

Sometimes, life just isn’t fair.

The Chilliwack Bruins walk into Portland Saturday night looking to bump a five game winless skid against the league’s most dismal team.

They fire 17 first period shots on goal and trail 2-0. They fire another 19 at the Portland net in the second period and end up trailing 4-0.

They fire an astounding 32 shots on net in the third period, but when the final whistle blows the scoreboard reads Portland 4, Chilliwack 3.

Sometimes, life just isn’t fair.

“We put 68 shots on net,” Bruins forward Mark Santorelli noted increduously. “I can’t believe we didn’t win. We hit posts and crossbars and the puck just wouldn’t go in. That’s our luck right now.”

For the record books, Chilliwack’s previous mark for shots on goal in one game was 50, set in a 6-2 win over Seattle Oct. 17.

In 20 of their 28 games this season, the Bruins have mustered less than the 32 shots on goal they got in the third period versus Portland.

“We pretty much ran every play we know how to run,” Santorelli said. “The goalie was great. He’s very good and he made some spectacular saves.”

If the Bruins didn’t know about Kurtis Mucha before, they certainly know about him now. In two previous games versus Portland, both wins, Chilliwack beat backup netminder Jordan White.

Their introduction to Mucha, an 18 year old native of Sherwood Park (Alberta), was a miserable experience.

“It was a quiet bus ride home,” Santorelli admitted. “But when you’re on a losing streak you can’t dwell on the negative. You have to find the positive in every situation and I think if we get four more of those shots past Mucha we’re winning the game 7-4 and feeling a lot better about things.”

Santorelli has business to attend to before his Bruins face Portland in a home-ice rematch Friday night (7 p.m.).

The Burnaby native is off to Cranbrook tomorrow to play for Team WHL in the 2007 ADT Canada Russia Challenge.

Santorelli is one of 31 WHL players chosen to participate in the event, which pits the CHL’s best against Russia’s top junior aged players in a six game series (two each against the WHL, OHL and QMJHL).

“I think my selection shows that someone thinks I’m good enough to be on the team,” Santorelli said. “I’m working hard and having a pretty good year. It’s a really good opportunity and I’m going to enjoy it.”

Santorelli has never participated in a series like this at any level. There are plenty of unfamilar dynamics at work.

For starters, the WHL scoring leader is going to find himself sitting in a locker room with 30 strangers he’s never met — one of them will be Spencer Machacek of the arch-rival Vancouver Giants.

“I’m assuming that when you attend one of these things you’re probably pretty friendly with the other players,” Santorelli laughed. “We’re certainly not friends when he’s playing for Vancouver and I’m playing for Chilliwack. Friends are for away from the rink, not on it. We’re both there to play hockey.”

The biggest adjustment for Santorelli may be playing with complete strangers. For the better part of two years he’s known with 100 per cent certainty that Oscar Moller would be his linemate.

That won’t be the case in Cranbrook.

“I have no idea who I’ll play with,” Santorelli said. “It will be weird at first. I know Oscar’s tendencies. I know where he’s going to be and he knows where I’m going to be. I’ll be doing a lot more guessing. But I’m guessing it will be easy to read off them because they’re all such good players.”

Following Wednesday’s game, Santorelli will stick around as a sub for Game 2 Thursday in Medicine Hat before coming home for the Bruins game Friday against Portland.