Entering the storm

Published 5:11 pm Thursday, February 28, 2008

In tomorrow’s story I address the Tips stepping from the calm into the storm. Everett played just four games in the past 18 days, but the Tips end the season with nine games in 17 days. The story deals with the transition, so I thought here I’d take a closer look specifically at the brewing storm.

Everett’s remaining nine games (home games in bold):

Feb. 29 SEATTLE

Mar. 1 PORTLAND

Mar. 4 at Tri-City

Mar. 7 at Portland

Mar. 8 at Vancouver

Mar. 12 TRI-CITY

Mar. 14 SEATTLE

Mar. 15 at Chilliwack

Mar. 16 at Seattle

A pretty daunting schedule, especially since the Tips need to make up four points on Seattle to earn home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs, with the T-birds have one game in hand.

So what’s it going to take? Theoretically the Tips can take care of business just by winning the head-to-head matchups with the T-birds. However, Seattle’s schedule also includes two games against Prince George and two against Portland, games you can assume the T-birds are going to win. That leaves home games against Kelowna and Spokane and an away game against Vancouver. So even if Everett wins the final three games against Seattle (an unlikely scenario given the Tips have won just once in seven meetings), the T-birds can realistically expect to win at least five of their final 10.

Let’s say the other teams help Everett out a bit and Seattle finishes 5-5 (which personally I don’t think is going to happen). That gives the T-birds 87 points, meaning the Tips would need to get 14 points out of their final nine games to catch Seattle. Even in the unlikely event of a sweep against Seattle to go along with the two games against Portland, that’s a tough task.

I guess what I’m getting at is it’s going to be extremely difficult for Everett to be playing a home game when the playoffs open on Mar. 21. But we’ll just have to see how things transpire.