Patterson: Silvertips should go all-in at WHL trade deadline

EVERETT — OK, I’ve been mulling this idea around in my head for some time now, but I’ve been reluctant to share it because it seemed so bonkers. But with the WHL season reaching its winter break, it’s time to let it out.

I think the Everett Silvertips should go for it this season.

If you’d asked me before the season began if I thought the Tips would be championship material, I would have immediately started looking around to locate the prank show’s hidden cameras. It was laughable to think Everett was a contender then. Frankly, even though the Tips are 21-13-1-1 and just four points off the league’s best record, I don’t really think the Tips are contenders now, either.

And yet circumstances have aligned where, against my own sensibility, I’m advocating for Everett to make significant additions prior to the Jan. 10 trade deadline.

Allow me to break down why I think this crazy idea may not be so crazy after all:

1) Everett is better than we thought.

I doubt anyone would have predicted Everett being 21-13-1-1 at the break. Indeed, the preseason scuttlebutt was more about whether, with an 11th team being added to the Western Conference, this would be the season when the Tips finally had their string of making the playoffs in every year of franchise history snapped. There were big questions heading into the season: Where was the scoring depth going to come from? Could an inexperienced defense turn potential into performance?

But the scoring issue solved itself. Winger Dominik Rymon, who was a mystery man after missing most of his rookie campaign last season because of injury, has been everything the Tips could have hoped and more as he’s Everett’s leading scorer. Meanwhile, 17-year-old rookies Julius Miettinen and Carter Bear both showed they were ready to step in and contribute immediately. Everett is more than just the Austin Roest/Ben Hemmerling show up front.

Meanwhile, the defense has held its own. Tarin Smith, who like Rymon was forced to sit out most of his rookie season because of injury, has regained his first-round WHL prospects draft promise, while Kaden Hammell and Eric Jamieson took that needed step from talented 17-year-olds to productive 18-year-olds.

And Everett has built its record despite an injury crisis that’s seen as many as seven players listed on the injury report. What can this team do when/if it gets the likes of Roest, Cade Zaplitny and Caden Brown back? The Tips could have the equivalent of major trade acquisitions just by getting healthy.

2) There are no superteams this year.

Last year Everett wasn’t in all that different of a position at this stage of the season. However, the Tips decided to be sellers at the trade deadline, flipping star performers Olen Zellweger and Ryan Hofer for a haul of assets. That made complete sense for three reasons: Seattle, Winnipeg and Kamloops.

Last season the WHL had three teams that were stacked in a way rarely seen since Everett entered the league in 2003. Seattle had a team with five first-round NHL draft picks. Winnipeg’s 57 wins were the most by a WHL team since Kelowna in 2013-14, when the schedule was four games longer. And Kamloops had a good team and was hosting the Memorial Cup, all but guaranteeing it as going to make big additions. The three engaged in an arms race that saw top players being traded for unprecedented returns. No matter what Everett did it wasn’t going to be able to match those teams.

But there are no teams like that in the WHL this year. There are good teams, like Prince George, Saskatoon and Portland, which have a lot of capable players. However, they don’t have anywhere near the amount of elite talent — high NHL draft picks, World Junior Hockey Championships medalists — as Seattle, Winnipeg and Kamloops had last season. So the bar for contending is far lower than it was last season.

3) Everett has the assets to spare.

Remember that Zellweger/Hofer trade? The Tips extracted four players and a whopping 10 draft picks from Kamloops in that deal, including four first rounders. As a result Everett has amassed six first rounders in the next three drafts and 10 picks in the first three rounds of the next two. That’s a lot of trade ammunition, maybe the most of any team in the league, and certainly the most among potential buyers.

The most valuable of those picks is Kamloops’ 2024 first rounder. The Blazers currently have the second-worst record in the WHL, and they are essentially dead even with Edmonton for the worst. Because of the way the WHL prospects draft lottery works, the team with the worst record gets as 12-in-21 chance of getting the first-overall pick. This year that’s a big deal because of one name: Landon DuPont. The best way I can put it is that in Canadian youth hockey circles DuPont is considered the defensive version of Connor Bedard, he’s that highly thought of as a prospect.

How much would a team be willing to part with for perhaps a better than 50% chance at landing a generational talent? And might Kamloops have the emotional attachment that it would be willing to give even a little more to get its own pick back?

4) Next year may be a throwaway season for Everett, even if the Tips stand pat.

I should know better than to suggest this, given that just about every year since Dennis Williams became coach in 2017 the preseason narrative about the Tips has been that a dropoff is coming, only for the team to overachieve relative to expectations. But when you peer ahead into next season and look at Everett’s potential roster for 2024-25, there are issues.

The roster balance could be way off. Everett currently has a massive imbalance between forwards and defensemen in both its 19-year-old and 18-year-old groups. It works this season because the 19-year-old group has all the forwards and the 18-year-old group has all the defensemen, so they compensate for one another. That compensation goes away next year when the Tips can only retain three players from its current 19-year-old group.

And Everett may not have a goaltender. This season the Tips have 20-year-old Tyler Palmer and 19-year-old Ethan Chadwick. Palmer will age out after the season, and Chadwick will have to compete with several others for an overage roster spot. If Everett decides it has to keep three overage forwards next season for balance purposes, then the Tips will have no goalies in their system with any WHL experience.

So if it doesn’t make sense to play for next season, you might as well play for this one.

This crazy idea of mine isn’t a slam dunk. There are valid arguments against Everett being buyers, and we haven’t even touched upon the fact that there may not be much of value available in the trade market anyway.

But if I were Williams, who doubles as Everett’s general manager, I’d be thinking long and hard about shouting, “Carpe diem!” and going all-in.

Follow Nick Patterson on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.