EVERETT – Everett Silvertips coach Kevin Constantine has had enough.

Constantine finally reached his boiling point following the Silvertips’ 4-3 loss to the Kelowna Rockets in Thursday’s Game 4 of the Western Hockey League Western Conference finals, sounding off on the officiating in the series so far.

“You try to keep your mouth shut to be professional about the refs, so I have this series,” Constantine said. “But this is one of the worst officiated series I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been coaching a long time.

“It’s sad. If the league and the supervisor of officials put out the professionalism that the players have shown in terms of how they’ve competed in this series, then you could accept it. But these guys are playing so hard and the officiating is so incredibly bad.”

Constantine had a long list of specific complaints.

“We counted one game and there were 17 illegal obstruction plays made on the faceoffs by them, and the league says they’re going to call things just like the rules and they haven’t,” Constantine said. “Mitch (Love) got high-sticked on the second goal (Thursday), knocked his helmet off. That went uncalled and gave them a two-on-one and a goal. There’s consistent holding of the stick on the ice, which is obstruction. There’s obstruction every time we try to forecheck. Jeff Schmidt got speared (Thursday), no call, and that’s been going on consistently.

“It’s very frustrating to sit back and watch the effort of the players and see the game decided by really poor officiating. It’s gone on four straight games.”

Constantine was particularly incensed after Thursday’s game. He said the officiating played a major role in the outcome of the game.

“It’s magnified when plays are done that open up the ice or scoring chances that are illegal,” Constantine said. “Like Mitch getting high sticked and getting his helmet knocked off and not being able to play defense because of that. That’s what we’re talking about. Scoring opportunities are being created off faceoffs because of illegal play, a goal is scored on a two-on-one because of illegal play. Those are game-deciding things and that’s a referee’s job, to recognize situations where that’s going on, and they’re not doing it.”

Backed up: The Silvertips find themselves needing to win three straight games against the winningest team in the WHL in order to advance to the league finals.

But the Silvertips are sticking by their mantra of playing one game at a time.

“We just take one game at a time,” Everett right wing Barry Horman said. “It’s a best-of-seven series, they’ve got three games, we have to win three in a row now. We did it against Vancouver and we’re a confident bunch. We’ve done a lot of things no one thought we would this year. We can’t get down on ourselves too much, we’ve just got to get what we can out of (Game 4) and go into Kelowna and try to get the win.”

Of course, the Silvertips also say they have to play better, too.

“I think the guys have to be better,” Everett defenseman Mitch Love said. “Myself personally, out of the 14 games, (Game 4) was my worst of the playoffs. Our big-name guys have to step up in key situations and that’s what we’ve got to do (in Game 5) or we’re going to find ourselves on the golf course. That’s not what we want. We’re the underdogs and we’re just going to go out and battle.”

Power outage: The Kelowna Rockets were the best penalty-killing team in the WHL during the regular season.

But after giving up three power-play goals on four chances in Game 4, the Rockets are the worst penalty-killing team in the WHL playoffs. After killing off 89.9 percent of opposition power plays during the regular season, Kelowna is killing off just 68 percent in the playoffs.

“Sometimes there’s ebbs and flows with any part of your game and our PK isn’t exactly (at) a peak right now,” Kelowna coach Marc Habscheid said. “So we just have to fix that. We’re losing pucks, we’re not clearing and we usually clear. That’s been the big difference.”