Breaking down the Silvertips’ matchup vs. the Thunderbirds
Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 6, 2017
EVERETT — The top-seeded Everett Silvertips and the U.S. Division No. 2-seeded Seattle Thunderbirds are set to renew their postseason rivalry beginning Friday at Xfinity Arena.
The Silvertips won an epic five-overtime Game 6 at Victoria on Sunday to win that series 4-2. The T-birds had no trouble dispatching the Tri-City Americans, the third seed in the U.S. Division, as Seattle swept that series in four games.
The T-birds went 6-4 against Everett this season while the Tips were 4-4-1-1. What follows is a breakdown of both teams.
Offense
Goals Scored (regular season): Everett 229 (15th in WHL), Seattle 253 (T-8th in WHL).
Power play (regular season): Everett 20.7 percent (11th in WHL), Seattle 22.2 percent (8th in WHL).
Everett did tally the the fourth-highest goal total in team history this year, but the Tips are far from an offensive juggernaut. They are heavily reliant on top-line wingers Patrick Bajkov (29 goals, 49 assists during the regular season) and Dominic Zwerger (28 goals, 27 assists). That was even more the the case during Everett’s 4-2 first-round series win over Victoria.
Bajkov had five goals and five assists while Zwerger had two goals and eight assists. Aside from defenseman Kevin Davis (one goal, seven assists) and Matt Fonteyne (two goals, two assists), no Silvertips player had more than three points.
Moreover, the Tips lived and died by the power play through the first four games of the series and finished with eight of their 16 goals on the man advantage. The Tips were held without an even strength goal in Games 3 and 4 at Victoria. Their 32 percent rate on the power play is fourth in the postseason, but they will need to score more consistently at 5-on-5 to beat the Thunderbirds.
Winning faceoffs was a challenge for Everett in the Victoria series as centers Devon Skoleski and Riley Sutter opened the series with injuries, forcing wingers to play center and defensemen to play on the fourth line.
The Tips got Sutter back from injury midway through the series and he appears good to go, while Skoleski was a full participant in Thursday’s practice and is expected back.
Seattle has suffered its own rash of injuries both during the year and in the present. Yet it didn’t seem to matter who the Thunderbirds put on the ice in their four-game sweep of the Tri-City Americans.
Western Conference Player of the Year Mathew Barzal (10 goals, 69 assists) missed the Tri-City series and hasn’t played since leaving the ice during the National Anthem on March 8 against Everett. Likewise, linemate Ryan Gropp (35 goals, 49 assists) missed the final two games of the series after tallying three points in the first two games.
That left the likes of forward Keegan Kolesar (26 goals, 34 assists), Donovan Neuls (14 goals, 27 assists), Alexander True (25 goals, 15 assists), Scott Eansor (18 goals, 20 assists) and Sam Moilanen (21 goals, 22 assists), Western Conference Defenseman of the Year Ethan Bear (28 goals, 42 assists) and defenseman Austin Strand (nine goals, 23 assists) to fill in.
They did that and more as all seven averaged a point or more per game against Tri-City, led by Kolesar (three goals, eight assists), Bear (two goals, seven assists), Neuls and True (both with three goals and five assists).
Seattle continued its regular-season power-play success in its sweep of the Americans, converting at a 40 percent clip. That’s second in 2017 postseason play.
Advantage: Seattle
Defense
Goals allowed (regular season): Everett 169 (1st in WHL), Seattle 206 (4th in WHL)
Penalty kill (regular season): Everett 85.8 percent (1st in WHL), Seattle 83.3 percent (3rd in WHL)
Everett is loathe to think of itself as a “defensive” team, but its defense is prolific. The Tips led the league in fewest goals allowed by far during the regular season, and Victoria mustered only 12 goals in six games. Everett’s penalty kill also led the league during the regular season.
A big reason for both successes is goaltender Carter Hart, the reigning WHL and CHL Goaltender of the Year. Hart led the league during the regular season in goals-against average (1.99) save percentage (.927) and shutouts (nine). Thanks in part to the five scoreless overtime periods the Tips played Sunday, Hart’s postseason numbers of 1.58 and .938 are even better.
Hart and the Tips were also solid defensively against Seattle save for 6-1 drubbing Feb. 26 at ShoWare Center in a game that clearly was an outlier in the series. Hart shut out the Thunderbirds twice, and five of Seattle’s six wins in the season series were decided by two goals or less.
Yet another outlier in the series came in Seattle’s 3-2 win Jan. 28 at ShoWare when Bear scored two power-play goals in the final eight minutes to give the Thunderbirds the victory. Prior to that Everett hadn’t surrendered a power-play goal in 13 games.
Seattle’s defense was also excellent and it was buoyed tremendously by the preseason acquisition of overage goaltender Rylan Toth, the regular-season wins leader with 36. The Thunderbirds were fourth in goals allowed and third in the penalty kill so there isn’t much separation there. The return of Eansor after a nearly three-month absence only makes Seattle’s penalty kill stronger.
However, Toth left a game at Portland on March 11 and hasn’t played since. Instead it was rookie standout Carl Stankowski who won all four games against the Americans as he fashioned a 2.00 GAA and a .932 save percentage. A second-round pick by Seattle in the 2015 bantam draft, Stankowski was injured during much of the regular season and played in seven games with a 2.18 GAA and a .910 save percentage.
Seattle’s defensive unit is very big in terms of size and that can be a key matchup in the course of a seven-game series.
In addition to Bear (5-11, 205), blueliners Strand (6-3, 190) and Aaron Hyman (6-5, 215) were big midseason pickups to solidify Seattle’s back end. Turner Ottenbreit (6-3, 192) and Jarret Tyszka (6-3, 191) are also big-bodied defensemen for the T-birds.
Noah Juulsen (6-3, 190) is the only Tips defenseman over the age of 16 who is taller than 6-1.
Everett relied heavily on the power play against Seattle with 39.1 percent of its goals coming on the man advantage. Just 23 percent of Seattle’s goals came on the power play including the aforementioned crucial pair in the Jan. 28 T-birds win at ShoWare. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that will change for either Everett or Seattle in this series.
Advantage: Everett
Intangibles
How much to make of the rest-versus-fatigue factor? Probably not too much. Sure Everett is coming off an emotional six-game series that ended in five overtimes Sunday while Seattle swept the Americans fairly handily. But the Tips have had four days to recover and get healthy while Seattle ostensibly also has used the time to heal up.
Seattle has the benefit of the experience of last year’s playoff run that included a five-game series victory over the Tips in Round 2 en route to the Western Conference title.
The T-birds were also the preseason consensus favorite in the U.S. Division before Everett got off to a tremendous start and managed to stave off Seattle for the division title. Head coach Kevin Constantine and his staff have displayed a preternatural ability to generate buy-in from their players, and this Everett team has achieved far more than the collective sum of its parts would have someone believe. That’s been a consistent theme throughout Constantine’s pair of four-year tenures behind the Everett bench.
Everett has the pressure of being the division champion and top overall seed, but Seattle has the pressure of being the preseason favorite and actually won the most games in the conference this season. Then again, pressure is pressure regardless of the source.
Advantage: even
Overall
In addition to last season, the Tips and T-birds squared off in the opening round of the 2014 playoffs when Seattle also won in five games. So the recent playoff precedent is on the side of the T-birds.
Seattle possesses greater size and is less reliant upon younger players than Everett — both factors that can affect a postseason series.
However, the Tips have arguably the best goalie as well as the best defense in the league. They don’t deviate one iota from their discipline and structure regardless of the circumstances, and don’t expect them to do so in this series. That guarantees another close, low-scoring series and those games often hinge on minute factors like special teams and goaltending.
Health remains the wild card for both teams. We don’t know if Toth, Barzal or Gropp will play — though that hasn’t hurt the T-birds so far. The Tips are generally healthy, but have been prone to losing key pieces along the way in recent postseason action, including last year when Juulsen went down with a broken jaw in Game 2 of the Seattle series.
Everett also has home-ice advantage so it’s hard to pick against Carter Hart and the Xfinity Arena crowd in a Game 7 scenario. Unfortunately for the Tips, it probably won’t make it that far and Seattle will move on to the Western Conference Finals for the second straight year.
Prediction: Seattle in 6
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