I spoke with Everett Silvertips forward Brandon Ralph before the team bus left on Tuesday, and I recorded the interview you see below. Ralph, a former Edmonton Oil King, will play against his old team for the only time this season Friday.
The biggest surprise about the interview? The fact that Ralph has a physical calendar with Friday’s date marked:
Everett Silvertips F Brandon Ralph talks about facing his old team from Everett Herald on Vimeo.
On Thursday afternoon I managed to get in touch with Everett Silvertips head coach Kevin Constantine as the team bus was somewhere in the mountains that form the border between British Columbia and Alberta.
Constantine said it was snowing pretty heavily as the team was in the midst of a rather lengthy bus trip from Kamloops to Edmonton. He acknowledged the Tips got a break Wednesday when the game-winning goal was accidentally knocked into the Blazers’ net by Blazer defenseman Ryan Rehill, as he and fellow D-man Nolan Kneen converged in an attempt to clear it out the zone.
However, Constantine credited Everett forward Matt Fonteyne with creating the opportunity for things to go the Tips’ way.
“We created the break,” he said. “Fonteyne’s energy and the fact that he drove the puck to the net – we talk a lot about taking the puck to hard areas and having the courage to go there. Because he had the courage to go there, we created the luck.”
Fatigue also played a role in the final two periods of Wednesday’s win, Constantine said. The Silvertips, 9-0-2-0 in their last 11 games, in nearing the end of a stretch of 10 games in 16 days, and simply began to run out of energy as they were outshot 28-15 by Kamloops over the final 40 minutes.
“Each period got a little more in their favor,” Constantine said. “We were really good in the first. The game was fairly even in the second and they were better than us in the third. For me it had a lot to do with energy levels. I think we’re just running out of energy. In terms of playing 10 games in 16 days it’s probably our toughest stretch schedule-wise.”
It’s a stretch during which the Silvertips have recorded at least a point in 11 straight games to vault themselves into second place in the Western Conference standings.
Each ensuing victory makes it more difficult to ward off what Constantine calls the “disease of success” that threatens to lead to complacency. He made clear complacency wasn’t the issue in Wednesday’s game, however.
“I wouldn’t say (Wednesday) night would be an example, but I would say Saskatoon (on Monday) was an example of a touch of complacency,” he said. “The Regina home game that we lost in overtime had a touch of complacency. It has seeped in. In our stats we grade ourselves in a lot of different areas. Those numbers are trending down, not dramatically, but slightly, and that trend is a combination of fatigue, playing this many games in such a short time and a hint of complacency. It’s not an epidemic, it’s just a hint.”
A positive aspect for the Tips is their improvement on the penalty kill, to which I alluded in last night’s postgame blog entry. You might recall they were 20th in the league at the break with a percentage of 75.8 percent. Well, I crunched the numbers today and they’re 29 for 33 on the kill since the break (87.9 percent) and haven’t allowed a power play goal in the last four games. During the current 11-game stretch they’re at 90.6 percent.
“We felt that was an area we needed to get better at in the second half and the guys have responded,” Constantine said. “They have taken that weakness of our team and gotten better at it.”
The Silvertips now turn their attention to Friday’s game at Edmonton. The Oil Kings (18-22-6-1, 43 points) are currently eighth in the Eastern Conference and clinging to the final playoff spot. They are 4-3-2-1 in their last 10 games and coming off a 3-1 win over Moose Jaw.
Brett Pollock (18 goals, 31 assists) and Lane Bauer (21 goals, 23 assists) are the top performers for the Oil Kings while D-man Dysin Mayo has 27 assists.
The Silvertips will study enough film to familiarize themselves with Edmonton, but it’s not like preparing for divisional opponent.
“You have to have enough knowledge to be surprised by what they do, but we won’t spend too much of our energy wondering about all their intricacies,” Constantine said.
Lastly, if you haven’t already done so, check out this video on Noah Juulsen produced by the CHL and released today.
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