t’s that time of year again.
Time for the Everett Silvertips to hit the road.
Thursday morning the Silvertips boarded their home away from home – the team bus – and departed for their annual trek east. For more than two weeks, the Tips will rack up more than 3,000 miles, bond as a team and face unfamiliar foes, just as they’ve done every other November in franchise history.
However, this season’s road trip comes with a twist.
By beginning the road trip with a game at Prince George, and with the Western Hockey League’s East Division having expanded to six teams, this year the Tips face the mother of all road trips.
“It’s going to be a long two-and-a-half weeks,” Everett captain Cody Thoring said. “It’s more bus legs if you’re sitting on the bus for 12 hours before you play, so it’s going to be a challenge.”
The seven-game, 17-day affair is about as long a trip as Everett could possibly schedule. It begins in the league’s furthest northwestern outpost in Prince George, B.C. It then winds its way all the way to the league’s easternmost destination in Brandon, Manitoba.
As a result, the Tips will spend about 70 hours on the bus and log approximately 3,278 miles during the longest road trip in franchise history.
“Personally, the best part is playing hockey and the hardest part is probably riding the bus,” Everett leading scorer Zach Hamill said.
“It’s a little different this year, I don’t think we’ve ever done it like this,” Hamill added about the addition of Prince George to the itinerary. “But it doesn’t really matter. A game’s a game and it doesn’t matter if you’re traveling 10 hours or playing at home, every game’s the same.”
The magnitude of this year’s trip has both plusses and minuses. On the minus side, the Tips are away from home longer and travel more miles than they ever have before. On the plus side, the schedule is less demanding, with the six games against the East Division spread out among 10 days – as well as the absence of the standard four-in-five stretch. It also includes a two-night layover in Edmonton, where the Tips have the opportunity to practice at the home of the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers.
As a result, Everett coach Kevin Constantine is looking forward to the trip, despite its length.
“We’ve never added the PG trip to it, so we’ve added 13 hours and a lot of miles,” Constantine said. “But we’ve always liked the trip being early in the year. It’s a time when we’ve still got a lot of energy as a team, and it’s always been a time when we can hang together a little more. It’s a chance to be together on the road, get away from any distractions and just focus on hockey.”
There are several personal positives, too. Everett has five players from Saskatchewan, and the trip gives those players a chance to play closer to home.
“My parents were at the home opener, but my aunties and uncles have kids who are in minor hockey, so they can’t get away very often,” defenseman Jason Fransoo, a native of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, explained. “This is a chance for all my cousins and aunties and uncles to come see me play.”
There’s also an element of freshness as this will be the only time this season Everett faces the teams from the East Division and plays in their rinks, barring a matchup in the WHL finals.
“I’m always excited just because I love the arenas out there,” right wing Brady Calla said. “They’re all pretty vintage rinks with a lot of memorbilia to look at. I know it’s going to be fun for the younger guys to see that.”
Historically Everett has been reasonably successful on its long road trips. Last season, riddled with injuries and illness, Everett went 3-3-1-0 on its trip through the Central Division, which included a stop in Spokane on the way and one at Kootenay on the way back. The year before the Tips went 4-1 during their swing through the East Division. In its inaugural season Everett made two trips to the Central Division, going 2-1 and 1-1.
With a 10-1-0-1 record heading into this season’s trip, and with a what amounts to a full roster available – left wing Ondrej Fiala (knee injury) and center Damir Alic (school commitments) were not with the team when it left Thursday, but are scheduled to fly and meet the team on Nov. 3 – the Tips have high expectations from a results standpoint.
“If we don’t come back 7-0, we won’t be satisfied,” Thoring said. “Most teams probably go looking to stay .500 on a long road trip like this. But we want to win all of them and anything less is not good.”
But regardless of the number of victories, when the Tips pull back into Everett on Nov. 11, they know that based on the time and miles put in, they’ll have earned them.
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