Humbled Silvertips anticipate bounce-back in Memorial Cup

Published 9:18 am Tuesday, May 26, 2026

KELOWNA, B.C. — It was a clash of the two hottest teams in the CHL.

Entering Monday’s Memorial Cup round-robin matchup between the Everett Silvertips and Kitchener Rangers at Prospera Place, the tale of the tape for the two teams looked nearly identical.

Both went 16-2 in the postseason en route to capturing their respective league championship — the first WHL title in franchise history for Everett and the OHL title for Kitchener — and each has a single-digit in the loss column since the calendar flipped to 2026.

With victories for each team in their first round-robin game, Monday’s matchup held significant stakes. The winner would put themselves in prime position for an automatic berth to the Memorial Cup Championship on May 31.

On paper, it would be a tight contest between two juggernauts. So when the Rangers ran away with a 6-2 victory, the Silvertips rightfully felt… Well:

“It certainly never feels good to get kicked in the teeth,” Everett coach Steve Hamilton said. “But it happens. Our guys will be fine.”

As much as Kitchener proved its status as the top contender in the four-team tournament, the Silvertips picked the worst time to have an off-night. More specifically, six “off” minutes in the second period.

Rylan Gould had tied the game 2-2 at 8:21 of the second period. By 14:23, Kitchener led 5-2.

With the second of two soft goals allowed by goalie Anders Miller – who had been a brick wall all postseason – and a sequence of defensive zone breakdowns in front of him, Everett allowed the Rangers to score four unanswered goals after fighting back from a 2-0 deficit to begin the game.

“They’re a quick team,” Gould said. “They move pucks well. They have a lot of movement, so for us, it’s just to stick to our game plan next time and we’ll bounce back.”

The game plan was evident, and effective, early on. The Silvertips came out with a heavy forecheck and denied Kitchener clean entries into their zone, but Miller missed a Cameron Reid shot from the left side with his glove, and the Rangers suddenly had the edge.

Kitchener parlayed that into a multi-goal lead thanks to a power-play goal at 10:22 of the first, as the Everett penalty kill could not clear the puck away amid a scramble of bodies in front of Miller. While Vanhanen and Gould each struck to tie it, the Rangers capitalized on untimely turnovers and essentially made the final 25 minutes of the game obsolete.

“I’d say probably (goals) four and five probably hurt a little bit more (than the third),” Hamilton said. “I mean, Anders would be the first one to tell you he’d probably like a couple back. … That guy’s been rock solid for us, and by no stretch of the imagination was that the only reason. We had some sort out problems and some puck management problems, and those things happen.”

Not even Jaxsin Vaughan’s fight with Kitchener defenseman Andrew MacNeil could spark a comeback. Shortly after the Rangers regained the lead at 9:46, Vaughan dropped the gloves with MacNeil at 11:51.

“We were down one, and there was a good opportunity,” Vaughan said. “We kind of got out of our zone and into theirs, and I asked him to go and then we did. Obviously it didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but that’s part of my role and I’ll do that whenever I have to.”

Between Monday night and their final round robin game against Kelowna on Wednesday, Silvertips will go back to the drawing board. They know what went wrong, and they don’t intend to lose twice. The last time Everett lost back-to-back games was in last year’s playoffs, in Games 3-5 of the second round against the Portland Winterhawks in April 2025.

Of course, the Silvertips never faced opponents of this quality in a tournament such as this, but Hamilton still is not losing any sleep over what happened. In fact, he hopes it’s the wake-up call for a better performance when they’ll need it more later this week.

“Nobody’s intent on making mistakes,” Hamilton said. “But they happen, and then how you deal with those things, I think, has been a strength of our team all year long. And I trust these guys wholeheartedly and believe in them.

“I’ll tell ya, I’ll sleep okay tonight. I just know the response that we’ll get from these guys, and I just trust them, and I think they trust each other.”