Allen, Texas — Andrew Martens glared back at the Allen Events Center ice one last time as he prepared to walk onto the Thunder’s bus, as if to steel the melancholy image into his mind for the next five months.
The urgency — if not sheer desperation — with which the Thunder was playing Friday night with its season on the line was best encapsulated in the final few minutes of a 3-2 win over Allen.
Kevin McClelland isn’t an expressive coach with a stack of motivational speeches in his office, ready to use whenever the situation calls for one. But Thunder players are familiar enough with McClelland to detect excitement from their coach.
Even before Allen began a five-minute power play near the end of the second period against the Thunder on Tuesday, Wichita seemed powerless to stop the momentum the Americans built by scoring three goals in seven minutes.
The Thunder’s victory over Allen in Game 1 of the Central Hockey League finals last week, certainly important at the time, has suddenly become even more crucial.
A pivotal moment in the second period of Game 4 of the Central Hockey League finals didn’t represent a shift in momentum as much as a shift in emotion.
The Central Hockey League finals are rarely looking like a final confrontation between teams separated by a single point during the regular season.
Part of playing in the finals involves players convincing themselves that the other team is a sworn enemy, even if the underlying feeling between them is mutual respect.
The mixed-martial artists who fought at Intrust Bank Arena last weekend may be asked back on Saturday — Game 3 of the Central Hockey League finals is going to need an undercard.
The Thunder has avoided talking much about the possibility of a sweep of Allen in the Central Hockey League finals, not for fear of getting ahead of itself, but because it never seemed like a possibility.
Remember how Jonathan Quick got so hot in the goal during last season’s Stanley Cup playoffs for the Los Angeles Kings? And how Quick’s dominance helped LA win the Cup and win 16 of 20 playoff games in the process?
The video-board operator at the Allen Event Center picked the optimal time on Tuesday night to show a video mocking Thunder players for contrived intermission rituals. If it had been shown one minute later, not as many people would have seen it.
Whenever an athlete says he has no preference regarding which opponent his team faces in an important playoff series, he’s almost always being less than honest. The truth comes out when top teams meet in the postseason, and a player says it was the series he wanted all along.
They’re supposed to be enemies this week, when they meet in the best-of-seven Central Hockey League finals, but Allen has been friendly to the Thunder recently. Or at least to Wichita’s previously maddening playoffs schedule.
The Thunder is at the end of its hockey season, but it looks more like the beginning.
The Wichita Thunder broke a 1-1 tie in the third-period with an Ian Lowe goal and eliminated the Fort Worth Brahmas from the CHL playoffs with a 3-1 victory Saturday night at NYTEX Sports Centre.
The Wichita Thunder scored a power-play goal early in the second period and added scores late in the third period to defeat the Fort Worth Brahmas 3-0 at NYTEX Sports Centre on Thursday night.
The biggest threat to the three-goal lead the Thunder established after one period Thursday against Fort Worth wasn’t the two goals the Brahmas scored in the second.
At the end of the second period Wednesday against Fort Worth, Thunder goalie Torrie Jung lingered near his goal for a few seconds as his teammates skated into the locker room.
The eight weeks approximated for Greger Hanson’s rehabilitation after he suffered a torn groin in early February put him in line to rejoin the Thunder just as the Central Hockey League playoffs were beginning.
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