Ice Dogs sweep venomless Vipers

The Long Beach Ice Dogs jumped into third place in the International Hockey League's Western Conference as the playoffs loom closer with a weekend sweep over the Detroit Vipers.

Coming off a 3-2 win over the Utah Grizzlies on Friday, the Ice Dogs returned to the Long Beach Arena for two games against the lowly Vipers. Even though the Vipers are the worst team in the IHL with a record of 22-40-8, the Dogs did not take the series lightly.

"These were two very difficult games to play here this weekend," said Ice Dogs Head Coach John Van Boxmeer.     "We're a better team, but they came in here and worked hard," Van Boxmeer said. "You can't let down against teams lower in the standings and I think we guarded against that."

The Ice Dogs skated away with an easy 4-1 win before a crowd of 8,570 on Saturday.

A goal from Vladimir Antipov started things off for the Dogs in the first period.  Pavel Rosa's power play marker at 3:03 of the second period made it 2-0, and turned out to be the game winner.

The Vipers' lone tally came midway through the second period when Samuel St. Pierre scored on the power play.

Long Beach shined on both ends of the ice in the third period. The offense scored two goals while the defense held Detroit without a single shot on net, leaving goalie Nikolai Khabibulin with little to do but watch.

"I usually don't like it when the other team doesn't shoot on me," Khabibulin said, "but I actually felt pretty good because our guys did a great job."     Rod Aldoff and Jan Nemecek scored the other goals for the Dogs, who out-shot the Vipers 26 to 10 in the win.

The Dogs' domination of the Vipers continued Sunday afternoon with a 4-0 shutout win before 6,320.

Alexei Yegerov broke the game open in the first period with a goal at 8:07 and assisted on a tally for Dmitri Leonov 33 seconds later that gave the Dogs a 2-0 lead.

The Dogs stretched the lead to 3-0 on a blistering slap shot from defenseman Mike Crowley at 8:16 of the second period.

"I just buried my head and shot it," said Crowley, who had four points in the series against the Vipers.

Center Doug Ast notched his 19th goal of the season at 3:29 of the third period, which capped scoring in the Dogs' victory.

Khabibulin played solid between the pipes in both games. By turning aside 22 Detroit shots on Sunday, he earned his fourth shutout in 25 games with the Ice Dogs.

"I think it was a team shutout," said Khabibulin, who leads all IHL goalies with a GAA of 1.77. "The guys played a great game in front of me clearing rebounds."

With a record of 38-28-7, the Dogs face off against the Manitoba Moose (34-25-14) at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Long Beach Arena.