Silvertips knock down Rockets

Harvey stopped 29 shots, Dahl scored the game-winning goal and the Silvertips showed they can compete with anyone, defeating the top-ranked Kelowna Rockets 2-0 in a Western Hockey League game before a raucous crowd of 5,651.

"We beat the best team in the Western Hockey League right now on home ice and did it in pretty convincing style," Harvey said. "I thought we shut them down."

Martin Ruzicak also scored for Everett (11-10-3-1), which came away with a split from back-to-back contests against Kelowna (18-9-2-0), which is ranked No. 1 in the Western Major Junior Hockey Writers Association poll. Kelowna won 1-0 on Friday night.

"Today was a big game for us," Dahl said. "We worked hard yesterday just like we did today, and just came up short. Today getting that win was huge for our team because Kelowna is a tough team to play against defensively. The guys worked hard and everything turned out for the best."

Harvey’s shutout was his third in six starts. In two games in two nights against Kelowna, Harvey stopped 53 shots and yielded just one goal.

"I feel the pucks a little bit bigger out there," Harvey said. "But the defense makes it very easy for me. Anybody could have stood in there and got a shutout the way our defense is playing. It’s absolutely unbelievable."

It also helps to have Dahl back. Dahl was Everett’s leading scorer when he suffered a broken left wrist against Vancouver on Nov. 12. Somehow Dahl managed to make it back to the ice in 16 days, and Saturday he scored in just his second game back, despite wearing a removable cast on his wrist during the game.

The cast couldn’t prevent Dahl from giving the Silvertips the lead. At 11 minutes, 19 seconds of the second period, Dahl scored a solo goal. Dahl skated the puck into the Kelowna zone, deked to his left, then wristed a shot past Rockets goalie Derek Yeomans on his glove side for a 1-0 lead. It was Dahl’s ninth goal of the season.

"I was going through the neutral zone with the puck, it was two-on-two and I was just hoping for a screen shot," Dahl said. "It ended up going in. All I did was bury my head, shoot as hard as I could and hope for the best."

Once behind, Kelowna began pressing forward. However, it was Everett which found the net again. At 7:31 of the third period, Everett made a rush into the zone on the power play. Chad Bassen passed the puck to Jeff Schmidt in the slot. Schmidt then shielded the puck away from the defense for the onrushing Ruzicka, who lifted it past Yeomans to make it 2-0 with his second goal of the season.

The final 12 minutes featured numerous big hits and scoring chances for both sides. But Kelowna couldn’t find a way past Harvey and the Everett defense.

"We had (29) shots and we didn’t score," Kelowna coach Marc Habscheid lamented. "That’s been the nemesis for us all year.

"We’re getting shots, but tonight they were low-percentage shots," Habscheid added. "We didn’t get high-percentage shots in the red zone."

Yeomans, a 16-year-old making just his third WHL appearance, started in place of Kelly Guard, who leads WHL goalies in most statistical categories and had the shutout against Everett on Friday. Yeomans finished with 15 saves.

Slap shots: Everett forwards Bassen and Mark Kress returned to the Silvertip lineup Saturday after missing Friday’s game because of illness. However, defenseman Devin Wilson hadn’t recovered in time to play Saturday. … Going into Saturday night’s game, Kelowna and Everett were 1-2 in the league in penalty killing. Kelowna was in first, killing off 132 of 143 shorthanded situations (92.3 percent), and Everett was second, killing off 101 of 113 chances (89.4 percent). That penalty-killing ability was on full display in the teams’ two games this weekend as Everett was 1-for-11 on the power play and Kelowna was 0-for-11.