HIS GOAL IS GOALS : Kansas City’s Dale Mitchell Is the Main Scorer on a High-Scoring Team

It may be surprising that a youngster growing up in Vancouver, Canada, would root for the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings, but it’s only fitting that Dale Mitchell’s idol was wing Gordie Howe.

Howe is the all-time leading goal-scorer in NHL history. In another era and another sport, Mitchell has become quite a scorer in the Major Indoor Soccer League.

Mitchell, a Kansas City Comet forward, has 226 goals and 373 points in 230 MISL regular-season games over five years. This season, Mitchell finished fifth in the league in scoring with 48 goals and 47 assists for a career-high 95 points.

A statistic that may shock a lot of people: Only Tacoma Star forward Steve Zungul and Socker midfielder Branko Segota have more points than Mitchell in the past five seasons.

“That’s something I never really thought about,” Mitchell said. “If you’re a forward, the numbers pile up.”

Mitchell scored 35 goals in 1983-84 and 55 goals in 1984-85 for a struggling team in Tacoma. He scored 37 goals for Tacoma and Kansas City in 1985-86, with 20 in 19 games after he was traded to the Comets for Keith Furphy.

It was a steal. Furphy has since been traded from Tacoma to Baltimore and has been nowhere near the scorer Mitchell is. In the past two seasons, Mitchell has 99 goals and 71 assists for 170 points in 99 games; Furphy has 52 goals and 41 assists for 93 points in 95 games.

“He has tremendous speed and a great eye for the goal,” Dave Clements, the Comet coach, said. “He’s deceptively strong on his shot and scores the big goals.”

He scored two very big ones in the past week against the Sockers.

Last Friday, Mitchell scored on a right-footer from the right corner at 13:57 of sudden-death overtime to cap a tremendous Comet comeback in a 7-6 victory. Two days later, he scored a short-handed goal after 11 seconds of the fourth quarter to break a 3-3 tie and catapult the Comets to a 7-3 victory.

The high-scoring Comets lead the Sockers, 3-1, in the best-of-seven Western Division finals. Game 5 is Saturday night at Kemper Arena.

On a team that led the MISL in goals with 294 this season, Mitchell--the Comets’ most valuable player this season--fits right in, a scorer playing with a scoring machine. Some players are paid to tackle, others to block shots or create chances. Mitchell is paid to score goals.

“One thing I’ve had to learn is you can’t just score goals when you play well,” Mitchell said. “There are long periods of time when you’re not involved in the game, but you need to score.”

A quarter or two can go by, and you won’t even notice that Mitchell has been taking regular shifts. Then suddenly, he’ll connect on a booming right-footer from the wing. And minutes later, he’ll score on another 25-foot shot. You might not even remember all his goals, but they add up.

“I certainly don’t have the athletic ability like Branko to go past two or three players or go on a full-length-of-the-field run,” Mitchell said. “That’s not my game. But one-on-one is not too bad for me.”

And two-on-two, when Mitchell hooks up with teammate Jan Goossens, is a deadly combination.

This season, Goossens added 101 points (45 goals, 56 assists) to Mitchell’s 95. They formed the top scoring duo since Zungul (136 points) and Segota (106) for the Sockers in 1984-85.

In 1986-87, Goossens had 95 points and Mitchell 75. The two roommates played together on the same line last season and for part of this season before Clements, Goossens and Mitchell decided it might be better if they tried playing on different shifts.

“At the time, it helped,” Mitchell said. “Things had gone a little stale. Doing that enabled some other guys to get more involved in the offense.”

But after Mitchell scored just one goal in the first two playoff games against the Sockers, Clements decided to reunite Mitchell and Goossens. In the past two games, Mitchell has three goals and Goossens has a goal and three assists.

“On the field, I know where he’ll be,” Goossens said. “He has a high standard of skill, and he’s a good soccer player.”

And Mitchell is playing on a very good team whose players, he says, believe they can win in the playoffs.

“It has taken our franchise a few years to get that attitude,” Mitchell said before the series against the Sockers began. “Now, when it gets to the fourth quarter, we believe we’ll win.”

Mitchell has proven to be a prophet. The fourth quarter has been the key to all three of the Comets’ victories in this series. With just one more, Mitchell will advance to the MISL championship series for the first time in his career.

It could a season of firsts. Surprisingly, Mitchell was selected to his first MISL All-Star Game this season, and he played for the winning Western Division team.

Not surprisingly, he scored two goals.