Tips: Beach’s self-imposed ‘demotion’ key in Saturday win

EVERETT — To many it must have appeared to be a demotion.

During Saturday night’s game against the Moose Jaw Warriors, Kyle Beach was no longer playing on the Everett Silvertips’ top line with Zach Hamill and Dan Gendur. He was also absent from Everett’s No. 1 power-play unit. It seemed as though the Silvertips’ leading scorer was being sent a message.

Far from it. Turns out it was Beach’s idea from the start.

“Actually (Beach) asked for it,” Everett coach John Becanic said. “He asked if he could play with those other players.”

Beach’s status change was part of a general reshuffling of Everett’s lines in an effort to resuscitate a floundering offense, and for one night it worked as the Tips rang up six goals in beating the Warriors.

Change of some sort was certainly needed. Everett has been inconsistent offensively all season long, with a heavy reliance on the Hamill-Gendur-Beach line for scoring. The offense then struggled mightily the first two games back from the Christmas break, totaling just two goals in two defeats.

So in an effort to freshen things up Everett changed each of its top three lines Saturday. Clayton Bauer joined Hamill and Gendur on the top line, while Beach lined up with Vitali Karamnov and Jordan Mistelbacher on the second unit. With Zack Dailey out with a groin injury, Shane Harper shifted to center on the third line alongside Lukas Vartovnik and Matt Ius.

So far so good.

“At this point we were willing to try anything to generate more offense,” Becanic said. “Now it’s only one night and we don’t want to dwell on one night. We’ll see if we can continue to do it.”

There’s a certain amount of logic to the changes. Bauer seems a natural fit on a line with Hamill and Gendur. Bauer has been Everett’s leading goal scorer since arriving via trade in November, tallying nine goals in 18 games. However, Bauer is more of a finisher than a creator (just two assists with the Tips) and needs to play with a setup man to be effective. So playing with Hamill, Everett’s top playmaker, makes sense.

Also, Bauer is a left-handed shot and is therefore comfortable on Hamill’s left, whereas the right-handed Beach was playing on his off side on Hamill’s left. The move not only put Beach on his more natural right side, it allowed the Tips to move Mistelbacher back to his preferred left side.

“Obviously Bauer has proven he can score, so we wanted to put him in a situation where he has the best opportunity to score,” Becanic explained. “And Kyle has shown he can carry a line by himself. Karamnov’s line had gotten a lot of work done, but hadn’t been able to finish. We thought the best avenue was the split (Hamill, Gendur and Beach) in an effort to make us a more difficult team to defend.

“There was also an issue defensively,” Becanic added. “The Hamill-Beach-Gendur line was creating offense, but they were also getting scored against. You can only look at that for so long before you try and fix it.”

Becanic had a similar motivation for tinkering with the power-play units. Much like the even-strength lines, Everett was overly dependent on its top power-play unit, keeping it on the ice for the majority of each advantage.

But by putting Beach on the second unit, with Harper slotting into the top unit, Becanic hopes he’s created two top units instead of a first unit and a second unit. It worked Saturday as Everett scored four power-play goals, with both units seeing substantial time and finding the net.

“This gives us two more blended units, so we don’t have one out there for 1:40 and the other 20 seconds,” Becanic said. “I think we were tiring guys out because they were playing on the power play too long.

“On the power play it comes down to work,” Becanic added. “If you watch us on the penalty kill, we play desperate because you have to work harder to kill. If the power play doesn’t match the energy put forth by the opponent’s penalty kill, it’s not going to be successful. Tic-tac-toe plays and backdoor passes are nice, but if you watched (Saturday) night those came about because of hard work in the corners before that.”

Initally the changes have worked. But the Tips have tinkered before this season, only to return to Hamill-Gendur-Beach. It remains to be seen whether this time the changes work for the long haul.

Nick Patterson’s Silvertips blog: www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog