EVERETT — Craig Hartsburg did not mince words following Wednesday night’s game.
The Everett Silvertips continued their recent roller-coaster ride with another Space Mountain-like dip, getting pummeled 6-2 by the Kelowna Rockets in a listless performance at Comcast Arena.
And after the game Hartsburg, Everett’s first-year head coach, launched into a scathing appraisal on his team, which he believes has not grasped the concept of putting forth a consistent effort on a nightly basis.
“They have a real arrogance about them, this group right now,” Hartsburg said. “I think they think they’re a lot better than they are, and that’s a big problem here. When you’re arrogant in this game it’s going to catch you, and it’s catching us right now. We have some players who don’t understand that the work and compete level has to be high every game, and this is the result of that.”
Everett was coming off perhaps its best victory of the season, a 6-1 road victory against U.S. Division-leading Tri-City on Saturday. But Wednesday’s effort — or lack there of — erased whatever gains were made Saturday.
Wednesday’s performance continued Everett’s recent trend of dramatic swings in results. The Tips are 5-4 in their past nine games, which with the exception of one game alternated wins and losses. While that stretch includes quality victories over the likes of Tri-City and Spokane, it also includes three defeats by four goals or more.
Hartsburg made clear where he thinks the inconsistency originates.
“It’s a simple game, really,” Hartsburg said. “People want to complicate it with lots of different things, but pretty much every team in the league plays the same system. So it comes down to who’s hungry and who wants to compete, and our guys didn’t want to do that tonight.
“This league I’ve found every night is a test,” Hartsburg added. “It’s a test of your character, it’s a test of your skill, it’s a test of your mental toughness because there’s not much difference between the top teams and the bottom teams. At the end of the year the ones that are going to survive the whole thing are the ones that truly care about their team, and they care about it every night.”
While Everett was going through the motions, a Kelowna team missing several key players because of injury was playing with a sense of urgency. The Rockets, who came into the game winless in nine attempts versus U.S. Division foes, consistently won battles for the puck.
That was best illustrated in front of the Everett goal. Kelowna scored five of its six goals off of rebounds as the Tips defense could not clear a puck from in close to save their lives.
“We lost all the battles,” Hartsburg said. “It didn’t matter what zone it was in, in our zone, their zone, neutral zone, we didn’t win a battle. When you lose battles your whole game looks stupid because now all of a sudden everybody’s chasing. If you win a battle then all of a sudden you look like you have more structure to your game. We had a lot of light players tonight, guys who were really light all over the place. First liners, fourth liners, it didn’t matter. They were all the same.”
Mitchell Callahan was Everett’s tormentor-in-chief, racking up two goals and two assists while making a nuisance of himself around the Tips goal. His first tally, midway through the first period, was the killer as it came just 41 seconds after Everett tied it 1-1.
Tyler Halliday, Shane McColgan, Geordie Wudrick and Max Adolph also scored for Kelowna (14-14-1-0), while Adam Brown stopped 25 shots in goal for the Rockets.
“It’s funny the way it works sometimes,” said Kelowna coach Ryan Huska, whose team lost seven of nine going into Wednesday. “We went 10 games scoring 19 goals in total. We got six tonight and won. I think our guys did a better job being hungry in front of net. We’ve been working on trying to get there, having our guys be willing to pay the price to score, and tonight they got rewarded for it.”
Shane Harper and Tyler Maxwell scored for Everett (16-9-1-0). For Harper it was his team-leading 20th goal and extended his goal-scoring streak to five.
Thomas Heemskerk had a rough day at the office in the Tips goal. He stopped just nine of 14 shots before being pulled early in the second period. Kent Simpson stopped 19 of 20 in relief.
“It didn’t seem like we were excited to play. We’ve been inconsistent,” said Maxwell, echoing Hartsburg’s evaluation.
“When we played Tri on Saturday we’d just lost to Regina and we were trying to redeem ourselves,” Maxwell added. “I think we got a little bit cocky tonight. Kelowna came out hard and I think they just outworked us.”
Rockets 6, Silvertips 2
Kelowna 3 2 1 — 6
Everett 1 1 0 — 2
First Period — 1, Kelowna, Halliday 5 (Chikie), 3:13 (pp). 2, Everett, Harper 20 (McCrea), 6:29. 3, Kelowna, Callahan 8 (Main), 7:10. 4, Kelowna, McColgan 10 (Callahan, Jobke), 15:19. Penalties — Froese, Everett (hooking), 1:39; Corbin, Kelowna (instigator-fighting-10-minute misconduct), 9:53; Harper, Everett (fighting), 9:53; Bowman, Kelowna (checking from behind), 17:46.
Second Period — 5, Kelowna, Callahan 9 (Chikie, Halliday), 1:54. 6, Kelowna, Wudrick 11 (Callahan, Barrie), 2:31 (pp). 7, Everett, Maxwell 17 (Murray, Froese), 12:09 (pp). Penalties — MacDonald, Everett (interference), 2:17; Elynuik, Everett (goaltender intereference), 2:43; Main, Kelowna (roughing-roughing), 5:19; Elynuik, Everett (boarding-roughing-roughing), 5:19; Callahan, Kelowna (slashing), 6:11; Tochkin, Everett (tripping), 8:35; Wudrick, Kelowna (slashing), 10:56.
Third Period — 8, Kelowna, Adolph 1 (Jobke, Main), 6:34. Penalties — none.
Shots on goal — Kelowna 11-14-9 — 34. Everett 8-12-7 — 27. Power-play opportunities — Kelowna 2 of 5. Everett 1 of 4.
Goalies — Kelowna, Brown 14-12-1-0 (27 shots, 25 saves). Everett, Heemskerk 9-5-1-0 (14 shots, 9 saves), Simpson (20 shots, 19 saves).
A — 3,825.
Nick Patterson’s Silvertips blog: http://www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog
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