EVERETT — The streak came to an end in the most innocuous of manners.
The game already was won. The Everett Silvertips led the Edmonton Oil Kings 3-0 with less than a minute remaining last Saturday at Comcast Arena. With 37.4 seconds to go, Everett’s Jari Erricson took an over-exube
rant tripping penalty on an Edmonton player wheeling around his own net, giving the Oil Kings one last chance at a consolation goal.
Then with just 6.6 seconds remaining, Edmonton’s T.J. Foster pulled the puck out from under a downed Everett defender in the slot and flipped it past Tips goaltender Kent Simpson.
That most trivial of goals might have ended Everett’s longest successful penalty-killing streak of the season, but it didn’t change the fact that the Tips’ penalty kill has taken a dramatic turn for the better.
“It’s definitely gotten better,” said center Clayton Cumiskey, one of the team’s top penalty killers. “We’ve all kind of got the system down. We’re pressuring when we’re on the PK and we’re doing what we need to do.”
Prior to Foster’s goal, Everett had killed off 29 straight penalties, a streak that spanned seven games.
Twenty-nine consecutive kills is noteworthy under any circumstances. However, it’s particularly meaningful for the Tips. Everett had been near the bottom of the WHL’s penalty-killing statistics the entire season, hovering around a success rate in the mid-70 percent.
But the recent string of success has Everett’s penalty-killing numbers looking much healthier. The Tips have pulled into the middle of the WHL pack in penalty killing, now ranking 13th at 79.9 percent. Prior to Foster’s goal Everett had passed the 80-percent barrier that is often used as a benchmark.
“It’s been better,” Everett coach Craig Hartsburg said. “We’ve tried to be more aggressive.”
A big part of Everett’s improvement on the penalty kill is the play of goaltender Kent Simpson. A common phrase used when discussing penalty killing is that a team’s best penalty killer is its goaltender. Simpson has been fantastic of late, and his play has elevated Everett’s penalty kill.
“That’s always a big factor in the penalty kill,” Hartsburg said. “You can do a lot of things, but your goalie still has to make some big saves. Over the course of a game the other team is going to get some quality scoring chances. Kent has been very good during this stretch and that plays a big part.”
But Simpson hasn’t been the only reason for Everett’s recent success on the penalty kill. The Tips’ penalty killers, under the direction of assistant coach Chris Hartsburg, have been more aggressive lately, giving opponents less time to make plays. That’s not so much an adjustment as it is better execution.
“I don’t think we’re doing anything different,” Cumiskey said. “Everybody has a better idea of how we kill penalties and we’ve been going over the penalty kill a little more, but it’s nothing outrageous.
“Maybe before we weren’t taking enough pride in it,” Cumiskey added. “Killing penalties is something you have to take pride in. There’s no stats involved in killing penalties, you don’t score any goals, so you have to take pride in blocking shots and stuff.”
It’s no coincidence that Everett’s success on the penalty kill overlaps with the team’s recent upswing in fortunes. The Tips went 5-1-1-0 in the seven games involved in the streak.
“I think it’s been a big part of it,” Craig Hartsburg said. “It’s part of the game that can be such a momentum builder if you get a big kill or a couple kills in a row.”
The Tips were so close to carrying their penalty-kill streak into this weekend’s home games against Spokane and Kelowna.
“Yeah, it was definitely disappointing, especially since it was in the last six seconds of the game,” Cumiskey said.
“We’ll just have to start over again.”
Check out Nick Patterson’s Silvertips blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog, and follow him on Twitter at NickHPatterson.
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