The Everett Silvertips have to be feeling confident heading into the Western Hockey League playoffs.
The Tips won the U.S. Division championship, their third in the past four years. Everett finished with the best record in the Western Conference, affording the Tips home-ice advantage until at least the WHL finals. Their plus-80 goal differential was the best in the conference and second-best in the league.
And more than anything, Everett knows it has the best last line of defense in the league in the form of goaltender Carter Hart. The three-time team MVP is well on his way to an unprecedented third WHL Goaltender of the Year award after a season in which his goals against average (1.60) was more than a full goal lower than the second-place qualifier.
Hart is as great a goaltender as the WHL has ever seen. There’s just one potential problem for Everett. Great goaltenders don’t have a great history of winning WHL championships.
The WHL began handing out the Del Wilson Trophy to the league’s best goalie in 1967. Of the 52 previous winners of the award (the award was split in 1987), just nine were on teams that ended up winning the WHL championship.
Recent history is even more ominous. Since Everett entered the league in the 2003-04 season just once has the Goaltender of the Year won a championship, that being Calgary’s Martin Jones in 2009-10. None of the runners-up for the award over that time won the title, either.
Carey Price and Braden Holtby, the two best goalies produced by the WHL the past 15 years, never sniffed a championship during their WHL days. Meanwhile, unheralded names such as Dustin Slade (Vancouver, 2006), Mark Guggenberger (Kelowna, 2009) and Mac Carruth (Portland, 2013) backstopped their teams to WHL titles. Last year Seattle claimed the title with 16-year-old rookie Carl Stankowski, who appeared in just seven games during the regular season, serving as the team’s goalie in the postseason.
It all suggests that when seeking a WHL championship, it’s better to have a great team with a decent goaltender than a decent team with a great goaltender.
”I’m not sure what to make of that,” said first-year Everett coach Dennis Williams, who wasn’t around the WHL to witness this phenomenon first-hand. “I think it comes down to this being a team sport, not an individual sport.”
If you’re in the camp that believes Everett is a one-man team, don’t bet the farm on the Tips this postseason.
But despite how Everett may be portrayed in some circles, the Tips are far from a one-man team. Everett scored 246 goals this season, the most by a team in franchise history, and for the first time ever the Tips had four 30-goal scorers and seven 20-goal scorers on its roster. Everett finished the season with 308 shots on goal more than its opponents (35.4 per game versus 31.1 per game), suggesting the Tips were winning the possession battles.
Winger Patrick Bajkov was named a second-team Western Conference All-Star after becoming the first Everett player to tally 100 points in a season, and frankly fellow overagers Matt Fonteyne and Kevin Davis had seasons just as good as players who were selected to the All-Star squads. The Tips have two legitimate scoring lines and two quality defensive pairings, which means they should have enough depth to navigate the playoffs, when the benches tend to get a little shorter.
And, of course, they have the league’s best goalie at their disposal. Despite what history says, having Hart in net has to be an advantage for Everett.
“I definitely think having Carter back there allows us to play with a lot more confidence in being able to get up the ice and play in the offensive zone,” Williams said.
”When you get into these best-of-seven series I definitely think a goaltender can be a huge factor to help win a series,” Williams added. “But at the end of the day, it takes a full team effort. You have to have sound special teams, you have to generate offense five-on-five while limiting the opposition’s opportunities.“
Indeed, if the Tips want to win their first WHL championship, they can’t just rely on Hart carrying them to the promised land. The rest of the team has to be great, too.
Follow Nick Patterson on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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