Steelheads can win first division title in 4 years — but they’ll be missing top scorer
The Idaho Steelheads have an opportunity to do something this season they have never done under the direction of fourth-year head coach Neil Graham — win their division.
But he will have to do it without his leading goal scorer, Steve McParland, who was loaned to the AHL’s San Diego Gulls, his third AHL call-up of the season and the 10th Steelhead to leave for the AHL this season.
“It’s really tough,” Graham said after a 4-1 win Wednesday over the Wichita Thunder. “But that is the nature of our league. We are wanting to win hockey games, we want to make a big push, but it is also a developmental league.”
The Steelheads (35-20-2-2) sit in a tie for first place atop the Mountain Division with Tulsa (34-20-4-2), with both having 74 points. Utah (32-19-4-3) is in third place with 71 points. Four teams from each division go to the playoffs, and each team goes through its division first, making up the first two rounds. Idaho’s final three games of the season are in Utah (April 5-7).
A playoff berth would be the 22nd consecutive postseason appearance for the Steelheads, who are home again Friday and Saturday nights against Wichita.
Kansas City (30-23-3-1) currently sits in fourth with 64 points and most likely will be the Mountain Division’s final team in the playoffs. If the Steelheads, who hold a 21-6-2-1 record at home, win the division, not only will it be the first division title since the 2014-15 season, but it will guarantee an easier first-round matchup and home-ice advantage through the first two rounds.
“It would be huge,” said Kyle Schempp, who scored two goals on Wednesday. “Our fans are awesome. I think we are really comfortable in this rink. We do play really well here so that home-ice advantage would be huge.”
To help with the final push, Graham acquired Will Merchant, a former Steelhead who collected 94 points in 138 games during a two-year stint from 2016 to 2018, from the Greenville Swamp Rabbits in exchange for forward Zach Franko and defenseman Clint Lewis.
In a separate transaction, the Steelheads regained Spencer Naas from Idaho’s AHL affiliate, the Texas Stars, marking the end of his second trip of the season to the AHL, where he played a total of 10 games. Reid Petryk was also reinserted back into the lineup Wednesday after being day-to-day with a minor injury, Graham said.
“Both guys bring a lot of speed,” Graham said. “They play the game with pace, they both have good shots, they are both elusive when they are coming through the neutral zone ... . Having both those guys back in the lineup was big.”
The Steelheads won Wednesday’s game after surviving a late surge from Wichita’s power play during the final 2 minutes of the game. Tomas Sholl, who stopped 33 of the Thunder’s 34 shots, was peppered with Thunder chances during a 6-on-4 once Wichita pulled its goalie. The puck never left the Steelheads’ defensive zone during the two-man advantage and the Steelheads never had a chance to make a line change, but Sholl stood tall. The Steelheads polished off the win with an empty-net goal.
“When games are that tight, you need your special teams to be good,” Graham said. “Now the challenge is what we talked about when you have so many call-ups and new guys coming in, you are trying to reteach ... things like special teams and you are going to have to pick things up on the fly.”
Sholl entered Wednesday as the league’s top goaltender in save percentage at .929, while giving up 2.22 goals per game, the third-best mark in the league. Wednesday was Sholl’s 31st start of the season and his 21st win.
“It was awesome,” Sholl said. “They always play great. The goalie gets some of the credit sometimes when they have a big game with a lot of saves but the (defenders) are the ones that are keeping them on the outside and making them easy for me to make saves. A lot of credit to those guys. They helped me a lot tonight.”
This story was originally published March 7, 2019 at 1:06 AM.