2009-10 review: overview
Published 2:25 pm Friday, April 2, 2010
This year, for my season-ending story for the newspaper, I was asked to write a piece that was a little more analytical than reactive. Therefore, the story in Wednesday’s paper pretty much sums up what I’d want to say in this essay.
However, there’s two points I feel are worth emphasizing further.
First, let’s address Everett’s talent level. Quite frankly, the Tips had an average talent level this season. From a purely physical standpoint Everett was pretty small. I know Alan Caldwell (link at left) did an analysis of each team’s average size sometime early in the season, but I couldn’t locate that post. My recollection was that Everett was solidly in the bottom half of the league size wise. That doesn’t necessarily mean much. Recently Medicine Hat’s had some small teams that were among the league’s best. The difference was those Medicine Hat teams were full of gifted skaters. This Everett team collectively wasn’t a great skating team. So it was a team that wasn’t big and wasn’t fast.
What about top-end ability? Well, Everett had a grand total of two NHL draft picks on the roster at season’s end — center Byron Froese was a fourth rounder and defenseman Rasmus Rissanen was a sixth rounder. That’s the same number of draftees as Chilliwack, which was the Western Conference’s eighth seed and finished below .500, and those Chilliwack players were taken in earlier rounds. Kelowna, Everett’s first-round playoff opponent, has five NHL picks. Now, Everett’s roster is spiked by three undrafted players who signed NHL deals, and this season Shane Harper was certainly a better player than many of the league’s NHL draft picks. But one of those signees, goaltender Thomas Heemskerk, was somewhat redundant as the Tips had two good goalies. What about future NHL draft picks? Everett has three players who will probably be drafted this year, but none are first rounders. Ryan Murray is touted as a future first rounder, but that’s not until 2012. I don’t think those totals are all that better than anyone else.
It’s not like Everett was talent deficient, and this team did have expectations at the beginning of the season. But it wasn’t the type of talent level one expects from a team that ties for the best record in the Western Conference.
For my second point, I don’t think it can be overstated just how different this team played compared to past Everett teams. The Tips under Kevin Constantine were the prototypical slow-it-down team. The goal was to clog up the neutral zone and prevent opposing scoring chances at all costs. That style served Everett well as it helped an undermanned expansion team make it all the way to the WHL finals, then took a talented team to 54 wins. But it also served as a source of frustration to fans looking for end-to-end action.
When John Becanic succeeded Constantine as coach he loosened the reins somewhat, but many of the players were still of the mentality developed under Constantine, and the team continued to have moments where it played backwards instead of forwards.
But this season was a complete departure. New head coach Craig Hartsburg transformed the team’s style, changing it from a defending team into an attacking team. I can still remember Hartsburg barking at the team in practice early in the season, bellowing, “forwards don’t skate backwards, ever!” The Tips put two forwards in on the forecheck at all times, and Everett became a team that looked to create turnovers in the offensive zone rather than the neutral zone.
It was an education for someone like me, who only started watching hockey seriously when I began this job in 2003. And it was refreshing to see the Tips in a new light.
Next: 2009-10 review: offense
