TALKING POINTS
The crux of tonight’s game was Everett’s power play. The Tips used their prowess on the power play in Games 1 and 2 to earn a split in Kennewick, going 5-for-12 with the advantage. But there was no joy for Everett’s power play tonight. Not only did it not score — going 0-for-6 — it didn’t really come close. The Tips had all kinds of trouble just getting set up in the offensive zone, and on the rare occasions they did set up the puck was usually ineffectively on the perimeter.
And this was more important than just in a scoring sense. Everett is the heavy underdog in this series, but the Tips scored on the power play within the first two minutes of both Games 1 and 2 to take an early lead. That gave Everett the confidence it needed to know it could compete with the Americans. Well, that confidence-building moment never came during the first period tonight. Tri-City built a 2-0 first-period lead was never threatened.
Otherwise, I didn’t think either team looked quite as sharp as in Saturday’s Game 2. Tri-City got a little puck luck on two of its goals, but the Americans also missed some great chances, so it evened out. Justin Feser scored what was probably the decisive goal with 32.2 seconds remaining in the first period, reaching through his marker to redirect Jordan Messier’s centering pass past Everett goaltender Thomas Heemskerk. That was not the finest moment for Everett’s defense, which got caught puck watching. The Tips defense again had its share of shaky moments where it couldn’t get the puck out of its own end.
I thought Heemskerk played another decent game. Fifteen-year-old defenseman Ryan Murray wasn’t quite as impressive as he was in Kennewick, but still got a lot of ice time. Tri-City prospect Zach Yuen played, but only got a handful of shifts so I couldn’t really make a comparison to Murray.
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