Silvertips ready for stretch of seven straight home games

Published 8:00 pm Friday, November 18, 2016

EVERETT — The Everett Silvertips are thankful they won’t see the inside of a bus or a hotel room for a while.

After a pair of games played on back-to-back nights that involved long distances, the Tips are home for their next seven contests beginning at 7:05 p.m. Saturday when the Lethbridge Hurricanes make their lone appearance at Xfinity Arena.

“We play an energy game, so having energy is pretty important,” Everett coach Kevin Constantine said. “It’s always a little harder to have it on the road (with) sleep patterns and so forth. We’d prefer to be at home. It’s no guarantee of anything, but we’d pick home over road if we could.”

U.S. Division-leading Everett (15-2-3-0, 34 points) has not lost in regulation in its last 10 games. Nevertheless the Tips are coming off a 2-1 overtime defeat at Kamloops on Wednesday in which fatigue may have been a factor at the beginning of the third period — though Constantine is loathe to admit that.

“We either took our foot off the gas or we didn’t have any gas left in the tank,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you which. They were a better team than us the first 10 minutes of the third.”

But the Tips won’t have to deal with travel again until Dec. 9 when they play at Vancouver to begin their first “three in three” stretch of the season.

The Hurricanes entered Friday’s game at Seattle with a record of 7-10-1-2 and in fourth place in the Central Division. Lethbridge was the surprise winner of the division last year before it was ousted by Regina in the first round of the WHL playoffs.

“When you’re seeing teams from the other conference that you only see once a year it’s more about your game,” said Everett defenseman Lucas Skrumeda. “We’ll watch a little bit on them just to get an idea of what they’re doing, but it’s about getting our game and responding to our last loss there in Kamloops.”

The Hurricanes recently jettisoned leading point-producer Brayden Burke by dealing him to Moose Jaw after he fell out of favor with general manager Peter Anholt.

Consequently, Ryley Lindgren (seven goals, 16 assists) is the points leader. Tyler Wong, Giorgio Estephan, Ryan Bowen (who was acquired from Moose Jaw for Burke), Egor Babenko and Brennan Menell all have 11 or more points.

Stuart Skinner (7-9-0-1, 3.29 goals-against average, .903 save percentage) has played 17 games in net.

Constantine mentioned that the Tips need to work on making better offensive choices with the puck and that will be a priority Saturday.

“There are always parts of your game that are going pretty good and there are always parts of your game that are off the tracks a little bit,” he said. “So we’re always trying to pick whatever is off the tracks and set it back on the tracks so that we give ourselves the best possibility of winning based on having as much of your game in order as possible.”

Following Saturday’s game the Tips play host to the Seattle Thunderbirds at 7:05 p.m. Wednesday. Everett welcomes Edmonton to town Friday before a showdown with Prince George, Everett’s co-leader atop the Western Conference standings, a week from tonight.

Notes

Manitoba forward Bradly Goethals, acquired from the Brandon Wheat Kings in October, skated with the Tips Friday. … Brett Kemp and Graham Millar remained out with upper body injuries. … Bryce Kindopp (upper body) and Skrumeda (broken finger) each were full participants.

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