Overtime loss puts Wranglers in Game 5 tonight

Chadd Cripe

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 | 9:51 a.m.

BOISE, Idaho -- The Las Vegas Wranglers are bringing some unwanted baggage home with them today: the Idaho Steelheads.

The Wranglers erased a 3-1 deficit in the final five minutes Tuesday night at the Bank of America Centre, then lost 4-3 on Lance Galbraith's goal 21 seconds into overtime.

The Steelheads, down 2-0 four nights earlier, evened the ECHL Pacific Division semifinal series 2-2 and forced a decisive Game 5 at 8:05 tonight at Orleans Arena. Both teams were scheduled to be on the same Southwest Airlines flight at 8:20 PDT this morning.

Tonight's winner gets home-ice advantage against Alaska in the division finals. If it's Las Vegas, the series will begin Friday night in Anchorage because of arena-availability issues.

"You know the Steelheads -- we make it interesting," Galbraith said of his team's knack for dramatic wins. "We're going back to Vegas. That was our goal coming to this rink, and now we have to go there and play one of our best games of the season."

The Wranglers turned in their best game of the playoffs in Game 4. Justin Kelly, who returned from Lowell of the AHL on Sunday, scored the game-tying goal with 16 seconds left in his return to the lineup.

"This is the first game of the four we've played playoff hockey," Las Vegas coach Glen Gulutzan said. "It's a step forward for us. We hadn't played well in the previous three. We're going to be that way (tonight), and so are they, so it will be another great game."

The Steelheads may need a voodoo doll to survive. They have one win in seven visits to Orleans Arena despite some outstanding efforts. They lost a regular-season game there while outshooting the Wranglers 54-35 and dropped Game 2 of this series because of an erroneous call by a goal judge that swung the score from 3-1 Idaho to 2-2.

"We play well there," Idaho coach John Olver said. "It doesn't matter to us where we play this game. We just feel really fortunate we have an opportunity to play Game 5, especially after what happened in Game 2."

The Steelheads never trailed Tuesday. Galbraith staked them to a 3-1 lead with two goals and a beautiful pass to set up Zenon Konopka's goal. The Wranglers, however, showed the spunk that was missing from their game in the first three encounters. Ryan Christie backhanded a loose puck top shelf at 15:21 of the third period, and Kelly poked the puck between goalie Dan Ellis' knees during a mad scramble with 16 seconds left to force the extra session.

The Steelheads didn't sulk during the 18-minute intermission. Olver reminded them that considering where they were a few nights earlier, they were in prime position to win the series.

"It didn't matter how we got to 3-3," Olver said. "We just had to get the next goal."

It didn't take long. Konopka won the face-off, the Steelheads set up the forecheck and Darrell Hay took a shot from the blue line. Konopka, stationed in goalie Marc Magliarditi's lap most of the night, knocked down the puck, whiffed once and poked it off the right post. Galbraith, the garbage-goal specialist, raced in from the right wing and pushed the loose puck across the goal line before Magliarditi could recover.

"I was just curling, going around to the net, and it was just laying there," Galbraith said.

He hopped and danced his way to mid-ice and was mobbed by teammates. The crowd of 3,829 littered the ice with hats and the macaroni-and-cheese noisemakers distributed at the door.

"The people in Boise were treated to a hell of a hockey game," Gulutzan said. "Both teams left it out there on the ice."

They'll do it again tonight. Gulutzan hopes the hockey fans of Las Vegas get the word.

"We just hope a lot of people come out," he said. "We're going to need a rocking building to give our guys a little bit of a boost."

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