EVERETT — The Everett Silvertips are in the midst of their best stretch this season, closing the gap on the WHL’s Western Conference leaders with a current six-game winning streak and 11 victories in the past 13 games.
But now the Tips must deal with the team that’s been the biggest thorn in their side all season. Tonight, they will try to solve the riddle of the Seattle Thunderbirds, a conundrum that has kept Everett befuddled.
Five times the teams have met this season. Five times Everett has lost — one of those coming in a shootout.
“If we get two or three wins from those five games we’re right in the thick of things in the standings,” said Silvertips coach John Becanic, who gave his players Friday off after the bus from Prince George, B.C., where the team played Thursday night, pulled into Everett at 9 a.m. “Those losses are critical, and when it’s a rival it hurts a little more.”
Everett has a good record against the Western Conference this season — as long as Seattle is taken out of the equation. Against the the rest of the West, Everett is 23-11-0-1. That includes winning records against Spokane (3-1), Tri-City (5-3) and Kelowna (2-1), three of the four teams ahead of the Tips in the conference standings.
However, just one point from five games against Seattle is a primary reason why Everett is not amongst those leading the pack. And although the Tips went into Friday leading Seattle by nine points for fifth place (Seattle played at Spokane on Friday night), that gap was misleading as the T-birds had six games in hand on Everett.
The Silvertips’ last loss to Seattle, a 3-1 home defeat on Jan. 11, finally caused their frustration to boil over. Following the game, Becanic laid into both the officiating and the T-birds, decrying Seattle’s defensive tactics. Becanic ended up fined $500 by the league for his comments.
With the the Tips needing to remain hot to have any chance of hosting a first-round playoff series, combined with the built-up frustration of losing repeatedly to the team 30 miles down the road, tonight’s game in Seattle becomes that much more important for Everett.
“In the last little bit we’ve focused on our performance and asked, ‘Is this a playoff performance?’” Becanic said. “Your preparation for the playoffs can’t start a week before the playoffs begin. We have to play playoff hockey. If we do that against Seattle, on most nights we’ll be successful. We’ve had that in some games against them, but not all of them.”
Everett’s biggest problem against Seattle has been scoring goals. In the five previous games the Tips have found the net just five times as Seattle’s defense, combined with strong goaltending from Riku Helenius and Jacob DeSerres, has completely shut down Everett’s offense.
Everett gave up just 13 goals in those five games, but receiving only one goal per game of support is difficult on any team’s back end.
“They’ve gotten some really good goaltending all the times we’ve played them,” Becanic said. “We’ve talked about it before, but we’ve got to put pucks on the net and take away Helenius’ eyes. Defensively we’ve done really well against them. We haven’t given our goaltenders the goal support they need to win. But we’ve scored more goals lately. If we help them out with a couple goals early, I think we’ll be OK.”
Slap shots: Dan Gendur’s nine points in Everett’s two victories in Prince George catapulted the right winger into a tie for fifth in the league scoring race with 61 points in 42 games. He trails Kelowna’s Colin Long by 18. … Everett will be minus two-thirds of its second line tonight as both center Vitali Karamnov and right wing Kyle Beach are injured. Karamnov suffered a shoulder injury of yet-to-be-determined severity during Thursday’s 5-4 shootout victory at Prince George. Beach remains sidelined with a concussion.
Nick Patterson’s Silvertips blog: http://www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog
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