Tips can’t find offense, shut out by Seattle

EVERETT – Frustration.

Saturday night the Everett Events Center played witness to both ends of the frustration spectrum.

For the Everett Silvertips, it was the frustration of an offense stuck in neutral.

And for the Seattle Thunderbirds, it was relief from a season’s worth of frustration against their nearest rivals.

The T-birds took out their frustration by defeating the Silvertips 4-0 in a Western Hockey League game before a restless crowd of 7,605.

Everett (13-12-4) bore little resemblance to the team that’s put its expansion status to shame most of the season.

“We didn’t have a very good start,” Everett coach Kevin Constantine said. “We’ve talked about it all year that it’s important to have a good start, and they were the better team in the first period.”

Josh Lepp made 16 saves and Aaron Gagnon, Chris Durand, Clayton Barthel and Dustin Johner scored goals for Seattle (10-16-6), which earned its first win in five tries against its I-5 rival.

“We knew coming in that this was our biggest game of the year,” Lepp said. “It was our last game before the Christmas break, and to beat a team that we’re battling with for the playoffs has a huge impact.”

Everett’s biggest frustration came on the power play as the Silvertips rarely threatened Lepp’s goal. The Tips managed just the 16 shots despite having nine power-play opportunities.

Everett clearly missed the presence of power-play quarterback Ivan Baranka, who left Friday to join the Slovakia junior national team.

“When you’re really ready and ready to compete, things flow for you a little better offensively,” Constantine said. “I thought our power play, from the first power play on, the key guys that are on that power play, one or two were missing in terms of being prepared. If you take one or two guys off a five-man unit in terms of their intensity and preparedness and your power play isn’t going to look that good.”

Meanwhile, the T-birds played like a team possessed, flying around the ice and putting their full weight into every check. In a season that so far has been a disappointment, Seattle finally looked like the defending U.S. Division champions that they are.

“This looks like the team I remember watching and playing last year,” said Lepp, who was on Kelowna’s roster a year ago. “The guys were flying around on every shift.”

Jeff Harvey made 22 saves in goal for the Tips.

Seattle took the lead at 11:14 of the first period on a well-crafted goal. Justin Maiser released Steven Goertzen down the left side of the ice. Goertzen then centered the puck and Gagnon, racing down the middle, met the puck and tapped it in before crashing into the net himself, giving the T-birds a 1-0 lead.

The T-birds then broke the game open with two goals in two minutes early in the second period.

Johner scored the final goal with 21.7 seconds remaining in the game.

Slap shots: The Silvertips picked the wrong night to have their Teddy Bear Toss. The teddy bears were supposed to be thrown onto the ice after Everett’s first goal. But not only were the Tips shut out, the Seattle fans in attendance tossed their bears onto the ice after the T-birds’ first goal, and frustrated Everett fans began a steady cascade during the final minute of play. The final 21.7 seconds were run off the clock because of the mass of teddy bears on the ice. “That’s great, the kind of thing you remember years down the road, shutting out your biggest rival on teddy bear night,” Lepp said. … Seattle was without its head coach Dean Chynoweth. Chynoweth, who is serving as an assistant coach for Canada’s junior national team for the 2004 World Junior Championships, is at Canada’s selection camp in Kitchener, Ontario. Assistant coach Rob Sumner was in charge in Chynoweth’s absence.

Thunderbirds 4, Silvertips 0