EVERETT — Skating around the ice at Angel of the Winds Arena for one last time this season, the Everett Silvertips saluted their supporters following their 4-2 loss to the Portland Winterhawks in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinals. Defenseman Rylan Pearce replayed the scenes in his head just 16 hours later, after the team’s exit meetings.
“Tears, lots of tears,” Pearce said. “We’re gonna remember the crowd, for sure. The cowbells at the end of the game. It’s not how we wanted to go out, but we battled every night and the fans made it super easy to come to the rink and try to win for them.”
It won’t be the last time Pearce suits up for the Silvertips, but the team stayed in the locker room together much longer than normal, savoring as much time as possible with the teammates who won’t be returning.
When the players arrived at the arena on the next morning for exit meetings and locker clean-out, those fans who made it so easy to come to the rink were not there. Instead, they were greeted with reminders of what could have been.
After taking a 2-0 series lead with back-to-back overtime wins against Portland at home, Everett dropped three straight before extending their season with an 8-4 win in Game 6 on Friday. The Silvertips led 2-1 with less than 17 minutes to go in Game 7, but the Winterhawks scored twice in 30 seconds to take a 3-2 lead, one they would not relinquish. It marked the third year in a row that Portland ended Everett’s season.
Even after a night’s sleep — or a sleepless night, depending on who you ask — the shock still had not worn off.
“It’s a tough day,” said Silvertips forward Tyler MacKenzie, whose WHL career is over. “I think an emotional one, to say the least. I don’t know if all the guys are emotional in that room, but you know, it’s a hard day. I think none of us expected this coming. I think it makes it worse, a little bit, when it feels like a blindside.”
After toiling against a heavy Seattle Thunderbirds team in the first round, in which they trailed 1-0 and 2-1 before winning in six games, Everett’s 2-0 series lead against Portland was newfound territory. Silvertips general manager Mike Fraser said he believed it was the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that the Silvertips won the first game of a playoff series. He was correct, with the last time being in the first round against Tri-City in 2019.
With the exception of Everett’s decisive Game 6 victory, every game against Portland was effectively decided by one goal; Games 3 and 7 were boosted to a two-goal margin with a Winterhawks empty-netter in the final minute.
Despite the series being so closely contested down the wire, did an unfamiliar 2-0 series lead cause the team to ease up? Even in retrospect, the answer isn’t unanimous among the players.
“I thought after those two games … we’ll get through much easier than against Seattle,” forward Dominik Rymon said. “And I think we were too cocky, too comfy, and s—’s gonna happen, you know? Yeah, that will be in my mind for a long time.”
Defenseman Eric Jamieson pushed back on that, slightly.
“I don’t know if those are the words I would use– maybe ‘comfortable,’” Jamieson said. “But it’s a seven-game series, it’s long, and that’ll happen. We get the first two games and then drop the next three, and that’s just kind of how it’ll go in hockey sometimes, but I thought we battled hard to force a Game 7, and obviously the last game doesn’t go our way, but I was still proud of our effort.”
Defenseman Kaden Hammell flat-out rejected the notion.
“I don’t really think that that was the case,” Hammell said. “We had a group that was— I think everybody’s eyes and hearts were all in the same direction, looking towards doing something that obviously we didn’t end up getting done, but I don’t think that there was ever a moment of staying off the gas pedal. I think that we were pushing towards winning every hockey game that we played, and sometimes bounces — whatever it is — just don’t go your way.”
No matter the case, the Silvertips will have to wrestle with the lost opportunity. After winning the Scotty Munro Memorial Trophy as regular season champions for just the second time in franchise history (2006-07), Everett fell painfully short of reaching their first conference finals since 2017-18, where they ended up losing in the WHL Championship. The franchise has never missed the postseason in its history, but is still searching for its first championship.
After postseason disappointment followed a benchmark regular season, how does the team measure the success of this year? That answer was more unanimous, if not more complicated. Nearly every player expressed pride towards grinding out a regular-season championship over the course of 68 games, as well as the effort in the postseason. But the disappointment about the result is inescapable.
“It didn’t end how we would want it, but I think we had a good run and a good season,” forward Cole Temple said. “Definitely disappointing (in) how it ended, but you know, sometimes it just goes that way.”
The injuries stacked against the group in the postseason certainly made things more difficult; multiple players pointed to the loss of leading scorer Carter Bear, who suffered a lower-leg injury on March 9 and missed the rest of the season. Additionally, the team lost several other top producers for stretches during the playoffs, including MacKenzie (second on the team in scoring), Rymon (third), defenseman Landon DuPont (fifth) and Temple (seventh) to at least three games each.
But all of the latter four were back for the decisive Game 7 against Portland, albeit not all at 100 percent. It was almost enough.
While congratulating Winterhawks general manager Mike Johnston after the game, Fraser said they both shook their heads and laughed, each saying the series could have gone either way at the same time. To Everett’s disappointment, it did not go theirs, but Fraser hopes the experience aids the group of returners next season, which will be supplemented by the fifth overall pick of the upcoming WHL Bantam Draft, among others.
“It’s tough for us,” Fraser said. “I think the guys really grew a lot in the playoffs this year and learned a lot. We had a very older group, maybe on the back end, but I think what a lot of people fail to realize is how young we were up front. And I think, you know, a lot of those guys going through something like that for the first time, I think bodes well for them in the future.”
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