EVERETT – He started out the year by taking an expansion team filled with castaways and guiding it all the way to the Western Hockey League championship series.
He finished it by turning the youngest team in the WHL into a challenger for the U.S. Division title.
Yep, there’s no question that 2004 was a good year for Everett Silvertips head coach Kevin Constantine, who has been nominated for The Herald’s 2004 Man of Year in Sports award.
In their two years of existence, the Silvertips already have become significant players on the WHL map, and much of that can be attributed to Constantine.
“He’s done a great job,” said former Everett general manager Doug Soetaert, who left the team to take a job with the Calgary Flames organization. “In the first year he was outstanding as head coach. Then this past season he takes a young club with eight 16-year-olds on it and gets to the second round of the playoffs. He puts a lot of time and effort into it and he’s well known in the community now as the head coach of the Silvertips.”
During the second half of the 2003-04 season, the 46-year-old Constantine, a native of International Falls, Minn., did what nobody thought was possible – turning a group of expansion players into champions.
The league’s previous expansion franchise, the Vancouver Giants in 2001-02, finished with a 13-49-6-4 record, and the Silvertips were expected to do about the same.
Instead, under Constantine’s guidance, Everett in its first season:
* Set the WHL record for wins by an expansion team, and at 35-27-8-2 became the first expansion team in league history to finish with a winning record.
* Won the U.S. Division title.
* Made an improbable run to the Western Conference championship by winning playoff series against Spokane, Vancouver and eventual Memorial Cup champion Kelowna.
“We felt that with the players and coaches we had, once the players got to know Kevin’s systems and his desire to win and how he pushes players to get the most out of themselves, we’d be very competitive,” Soetaert said. “But to take it as far as he did, I can honestly say we did not expect to be in the finals last year. That’s a feather in his cap, the players’ cap and the entire organization.”
As well as Constantine performed at the end of the 2003-04 season, his coaching during the first half of the 2004-05 season was equally good.
The Silvertips faced a completely different challenge in their second season.
In its first season Everett may not have had much talent, but the Silvertips did have older, experienced players.
But in the space of one season Everett went from having the oldest team in the league to having the youngest. Everett began the season with 11 rookies, including seven 16-year-olds.
Constantine, undeterred, made the adjustment to coaching a younger, but more talented team. Expected to fall to the bottom of the division, Everett instead started the season 18-11-6-2 and within reach of the division lead.
That team went on to finish 33-28-9-2, in third place in the division and win its first-round playoff series against Portland.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
