This is the moment Everett Silvertips general manager Garry Davidson has worked six years to achieve.

When the Tips take the ice against the Portland Winterhawks on Friday night in Game 1 of their second-round WHL playoff series, it will be far from the first time Everett faces Davidson’s former employers in the postseason. However, it will be the first time the Tips have a chance at beating the Winterhawks at their own game.

The series between the Tips and the Winterhawks should be a thriller. These are the teams that finished with the best two records in the Western Conference, separated by just five points in the standings. The teams split their season series straight down the middle, with each team winning five of the 10 head-to-head contests. The Winterhawks scored 29 goals in those 10 games, the Tips scored 28. It doesn’t get much tighter than that.

These are teams that like to get up and down the ice, too. Portland scored 274 goals during the regular season, which ranked sixth in the WHL. Everett scored 246, which ranked 11th and also set a franchise record for goals in a season. Their playing styles are represented even better by shot totals, as the Winterhawks led the WHL in shots on goal per game during the regular season with 38.2, while Everett ranked fourth at 35.4.

And that’s where this year’s match-up between Everett and Portland differs from 2012, when the Winterhawks topped the Tips 4-2 in the first round; from 2015, when Portland eliminated Everett 4-1 in the second round; and from 2016, when the Tips swept the Hawks in the first round.

Past Everett-Portland playoff series were the epitome of contrasting styles, with the Winterhawks being the WHL’s model for offensive hockey and the Tips being the league’s foremost practitioners of defensive hockey. Those series were the classic confrontation between goal scoring and goal prevention, the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.

This time around it will be more akin to looking in the mirror.

This is what Davidson envisioned when he was hired as Everett’s general manager in February 2012. Prior to joining the Tips, Davidson spent four years as Portland’s director of player personnel under general manager and head coach Mike Johnston, and in that role he was the central figure in the Winterhawks identifying and acquiring the likes of Derrick Pouliot, Brendan Leipsic and Nic Petan, players who helped Portland become the greatest offensive force the Western Conference has seen in a generation. When Davidson joined the Tips, he talked extensively about trying to recreate that style in Everett.

But that didn’t happen right away. Davidson’s first coaching hire came in 2013, when he brought back the most successful coach in franchise history, Kevin Constantine. Constantine continued to have success in his second go-around in Everett, but his defense-first philosophy clashed with Davidson’s vision. This was the primary reason why Constantine’s contract wasn’t renewed following last season, even though the Tips won a U.S. Division championship.

New coach Dennis Williams and Davidson are more simpatico when it comes to playing style, and as a result Everett had its best offensive campaign in franchise history, with more 30-goal scorers (four) and 20-goal scorers (seven) than the team ever had in its previous 14 seasons. Heck, when the Tips knocked the Winterhawks out of the playoffs in 2016 it was with a team that had no 30-goal scorers and just two top the 20-goal mark.

So Davidson is looking forward to the Tips trying to speed their way past Portland rather than putting their efforts toward slowing the Winterhawks down.

“We’ve certainly moved in that direction big time this year, and I’m excited about that,” Davidson said. “It’s part of the reason why we’ve had a successful season here.”

Granted, goal scoring isn’t the only reason why Everett finished as the conference’s top seed. The Tips remain the league’s stingiest team, allowing just 164 goals during the regular season, in large part because of the stellar goaltending of Carter Hart. And with a large group of returning players who learned under Constantine’s tutelage, defensive responsibility remains ingrained in the DNA.

But this Everett team will not fear trading scoring chances with Portland the way it did in the past.

“I still think we have to play our game, and our game has a lot to do with good, solid defending and playing on that side of the puck,” Davidson said. “Our goaltending and overall structure on the defending side is very important because we’re playing a team with a lot of high-powered offense. But I think what we bring to the table now is a team capable of transitioning and creating more offense ourselves.

“I think it’s going to be a heck of a series, to be honest.”

No, Everett isn’t an offensive juggernaut just yet (it says something about the history of the franchise that the record for goals in season was only good enough to finish in the middle of the pack), and the Tips are still a long way away from being in the same discussion with the 2010-14 Portland teams that cracked 300 goals in four straight years.

But for the first time ever the Tips can at least entertain the possibility of beating the Winterhawks in a playoff series because of their offense, and that’s been Davidson’s goal all along.

Follow Nick Patterson on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.