EVERETT — This weekend marks a rare opportunity for the Everett Silvertips and their fans as a pair of East Division powerhouses visit Angel of the Winds Arena.
The Brandon Wheat Kings take on the Tips at 7:05 p.m. Saturday with the Swift Current Broncos coming to town Sunday for a 4:05 p.m. puck drop.
Everett only plays Eastern Conference teams once per year while alternating home and away games, so this is the first time both Brandon and Swift Current have visited Snohomish County since the 2015-16 campaign.
That can make scouting difficult compared to opponents in the Western Conference that the Tips see four to 10 times per season.
“We give them tendencies of what they’re going to see on the power play, penalty kill, faceoffs, what they’ve got going up front, their D-zone coverage,” head coach Dennis Williams said. “But at the same time we have to worry about us. Maybe during the week we tweak it a little bit, but to start with we’re going to go out and try to play our style. If we can play with our pace and our style we want to do our best to make other teams change how they play.”
Swift Current and Brandon are having tremendous seasons. Yet both are chasing Moose Jaw (36-7-1-2, 75 points entering Friday’s game at Regina) for the East Division lead and also have to contend with the Memorial Cup host and division rival Pats (24-19-4-0, 52 points).
Thus the Broncos (32-10-3-0, 67 points) and Wheat Kings (28-13-2-1, 59 points) went different directions at last week’s trade deadline with Swift Current loading up and Brandon selling.
With the way the playoffs are structured, it’s likely Moose Jaw, Swift Current and either Brandon or Regina will all end up in the same bracket. The Nos. 2 and 3 seeds (currently Swift Current and Brandon) would play in the first round with the winner likely facing the top seed (currently Moose Jaw) in the second round.
That’s partly why, despite holding the third-best winning percentage league-wide, Brandon dealt away star defenseman and Team Canada World Junior gold medalist Kale Clague to Moose Jaw, and captain Tanner Kaspick to Victoria at the deadline for a king’s ransom on prospects and bantam picks.
“The prices in this league right now are out of control probably for the history of this league,” Wheat Kings general manager Grant Armstrong told Brandon media on Jan 10. “We just decided at some point during the process that we just needed to get better. We looked at it from the long-term perspective that our need was to get the pieces to build from and hopefully we’ve done that today.”
The Wheat Kings still have strong point-producers in winger Ty Lewis (25 goals, 43 assists), Stelio Mattheos (30 goals, 31 assists) and Evan Weinger (19 goals, 17 assists).
“I think we could compete with (the other East Division teams), but I thought we had to get in the right mindset to take advantage of the situations that were out there,” Armstrong said. “I still don’t believe that we’ve walked away from the year and I want to stress that. I think this team is still a very good team … We just tried to make this a better situation for us as a hockey team for the future.”
Swift Current took the opposite approach. The Broncos believe they can fully contend for the division and conference titles this year and went all in at the deadline by adding a number of big pieces to an already potent offense.
The Broncos acquired forwards Matteo Gennaro (30 goals, 27 assists) from Calgary in a November blockbuster deal with Calgary, then added forward Giorgio Estephan (19 goals, 41 assists) and goaltender Stuart Skinner (17-15-2, .902 save percentage, 3.16 goals-against average) from Lethbridge at the deadline.
Those pieces joined a group that already had prolific point-producers in Aleksi Heponiemi (23 goals, 59 assists), Glenn Gawdin (35 goals, 46 assists) and Tyler Steenbergen (35 goals, 30 assists).
“This is an opportunity that doesn’t happen very often in junior hockey,” Broncos GM/head coach Manny Viveiros told Swift Current Online after the deadline. “There are certain cycles for teams to be able to put themselves in a position to compete or do well … go deep in the playoffs. We certainly felt that it was something this organization and the community needed.”
Everett (28-16-1-1, 56 points) had Friday off while the Wheat Kings took on Tri-City in Kennewick. Swift Current was in Portland Friday and in Kent on Saturday.
“We’ll worry about Brandon (Saturday),” Williams said. “We should be well-rested. We’ll definitely manage the amount of ice we have this week and our guys’ workouts so we’re fresh.”
It might the lone regular-season trip for both East Division teams this year. But Everett hopes it could be a preview of a potential league championship series in May.
For the latest Silvertips news follow Jesse Geleynse on Twitter.
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