Season over for Steelheads after double overtime loss May 25, 2002

Chadd Cripe
The Idaho Statesman

Darin Oswald / The Idaho Statesman Idaho Steelheads goalie Blair Allison stops a close-range shot by Fresno´s Dale Junkin in the first period Friday night at the Bank of America Centre in Boise.
Darin Oswald / The Idaho Statesman Bobby Stewart stays frozen to the ice after an exhausting loss Friday night at the Bank of America Centre. Idaho lost 3-2 in double overtime to the Fresno Falcons.
Darin Oswald / The Idaho Statesman Steelhead Kevin Smyth takes a pop from a Fresno player in the first period Friday night at the Bank of America Centre in Boise.

The Fresno Falcons absorbed everything the Idaho Steelheads had Friday night, and still walked out of the Bank of America Centre with the Taylor Cup.

Fresno outlasted Idaho 3-2 in double overtime of Game 6 of the finals in what was without a doubt the Steelheads´ best performance of the playoffs, and probably the greatest game in the WCHL´s seven-year history.

Idaho outshot Fresno 50-38, including 16-7 in the first overtime. But Kris Porter, the playoff MVP, chipped in a rebound in transition at 3:06 of the second OT for the championship.

“We came with a good effort, but we put our backs against the wall,” said Idaho center Dan Shermerhorn, who was part of the Steelheads team that lost in Game 7 of the finals last season. “We did it to ourselves, and we didn´t get a bounce tonight.”

The Steelheads lost all three of their home games in the series. They´re 0-6 at the B of A all-time in finals games.

A victory would have forced a winner-take-all Game 7 tonight at the B of A.

“Come Game 7, I think we would have won it,” Idaho´s Matt Oates said.

But the B of A will be empty tonight, and no amount of analysis will explain why. The Steelheads dominated the action most of the night in a game that was tied 2-2 at 15:51, then was scoreless for more than 68 minutes.

All three Fresno goals came in transition. The Steelheads were pressuring the Fresno net, and then all of a sudden they were hanging their heads.

“The best team didn´t win tonight,” said Idaho coach John Olver, who dropped to 1-5 in finals series, “but the best team won the series.”

The Falcons can thank Porter. He wasn´t a likely star, but he flat-out owned the Steelheads. With a goal and an assist in Game 6, he amassed a series-best 10 of his 18 total playoff points.

He got the game-winner on a rebound of Mike Mathers´ shot from the right wing.

“I kind of chipped it,” Porter said. “It was kind of like slow motion, watching it go fluttering up and over the goalie.”

It provided a dramatic end to a crazy night enjoyed by a standing-room-only crowd of 5,427.

“If you´re a fan of hockey, I don´t care what level it is, that game was awesome,” Oates said. “There were chances all over the ice, guys diving, guys getting punched in the face. ... It felt like Game 7.”

The Steelheads came into the game having been outshot in every game of the series and averaging just 20 shots a game. They took 17 in the first period, one more than they managed in all of Game 5 on Sunday in Fresno.

“It was just all-out effort,” said Eric Rud, who saw his career, and those of teammates Cal Ingraham and Thom Cullen, end in the loss. “Every guy in this locker room gave the ultimate effort tonight.”

Fresno´s Terry Friesen finished with 48 saves, after making just 88 in the first five games. He blocked a shot after wandering all the way to the left-wing circle, stuffed Derek Paget on a point-blank shot and denied Oates on a bouncing-puck breakaway in the first overtime alone.

“We were dog-tired, but we kept getting traffic in front of the net,” Oates said. “The puck bounced the wrong way a couple times, and it bounced their way at the end.”

The Steelheads had to cling to life in the third period.

The Falcons seemed to smell the champagne and they were relentless. Idaho goalie Blair Allison made 12 of his 35 saves in the final period of regulation.

Porter had four tries on one breakaway at 8:50. He got loose and Allison shut the door on his backhand try. Porter lashed at the rebound three times, and all of those tries bounced off Allison´s pads.

Derek Cormier also had a great opportunity at 14:31. He made a diving stab to redirect a pass, but the puck hit Allison square in the chest.

The sellout crowd roared its appreciation when the Steelheads finally got the puck out of the zone at 17:00.

“They were just shooting and shooting, and Blair stopped everything,” Oates said.

The first period had all the offense. Or, at least, the offense that showed up on the scoreboard.

Dale Junkin scored at 1:57 in transition after a sustained Idaho fore-check. Porter brought the puck down the right-wing boards and whipped a pass to Junkin at the far post for an easy goal.

Idaho drew even shortly thereafter. Defenseman Scott Swanson ripped a slap shot through traffic from the left point. It zipped past Friesen at 3:50.

Fresno took a 2-1 lead at 15:38 with a near duplicate of its first goal. Drew Schoneck beat Jeremy Mylymok down the left side of the ice and passed to Jason Weaver at the far post for the tap-in. Weaver had outraced Greg Bullock.

Idaho came right back 13 seconds later. Rud scored a rare goal with a perfect wrist shot from just inside the blue line. He tucked the puck into the upper right corner of the goal.

From there, it was an edge-of-the-seat thriller.

“It was one of those battles of wills,” Rud said.

And the team that set a championship goal from the first day of training camp in September — nothing else would do, they said — didn´t win.

The Steelheads won the Founders Cup for the first time in their five-year history as the regular-season champs and won 18 straight home games. But they never completely put it together in the playoffs, at least until Friday.

They rallied from a 1-0 hole in the first round against Anchorage and a 2-1 deficit in the Northern Division Finals against Tacoma.

In the finals, they fell behind 2-0 on home ice.

“It´s just too bad,” Oates said, “because we´ll look at it tomorrow or in a couple days and realize how close we were to bringing a championship to Boise.”