EVERETT – When the Everett Silvertips traveled to Tri-City for the first time this season on Oct. 8, there was a friendly pregame ceremony.
Tri-City came close to moving to Chilliwack, British Columbia, last spring, and Everett was one of the teams that supported the team remaining in Kennewick, helping block the move. That night the Americans thanked the Silvertips for their support.
That may have been the last cordial moment shared between the two teams.
Though no one is willing to state it outright, it’s clear that the first-round playoff opponents are not fond of one another.
“I think there’s some (animosity),” said Everett left wing Brennan Sonne, who featured prominently in some of the highest-profile incidents. “But it’s like that with all teams, really. When you play a team 10 times in a season there’s built-up anger.”
Tri-City leading scorer Ian McDonald agrees: “I think it’s just good old-fashioned hockey. When you play 10 times you kind of get tired of looking at the guy across from you. But there’s not that much bad blood.”
Perhaps. But from antics on the ice to actions off it, the relationship between Everett and Tri-City this season has been strained.
The animosity seems to stem from differing philosophies on how to play the game.
Since Everett came into the league, coach Kevin Constantine has stressed discipline. The Tips compiled the fewest penalty minutes in the league in each of their three seasons, in large part because they rarely fight and religiously avoid rough stuff after the whistle.
Meanwhile, under coach Don Nachbaur, Tri-City has taken a more-rugged tack. The Americans focus on toughness, hitting hard and controlling the game with their physical play.
Those differences in philosophy have been magnified this season based on each team’s personnel. Everett has a wealth of speed and skill, but most of it is young and the team has little in the way of size. In contrast, the Americans have one of the biggest teams in the league, but are lacking in speed and skill.
The net result has been a heavy dose of Tri-City physical play directed at the Tips, and a steady stream of Americans headed to the penalty box. To Everett the Americans come across as thugs, and to Tri-City the Tips come across as whiners. And whether those labels are deserved or not, they’ve stuck in the minds of the opposing fans.
To no surprise, neither team believes the label is warranted.
“As far as crossing the line (physically), I don’t think we do that,” said Tri-City defenseman Logan Stephenson, who’s been involved in his share of incidents against Everett. “Sometimes things happen on the ice, but on the ice it’s a heated environment. You can’t say we’re crossing the line, it’s just that in the heat of the game things happen.”
Said Everett center Mark Kress: “In other team’s buildings you take boos as cheers. So when you hear them booing at you, you must be doing something right. We’re not a complaining team or a whining team. We’re just out there battling hard.”
Trouble began brewing before the season even started. During the preseason Tri-City’s Jason Beeman laid a hit on Everett’s Taylor Ellington, leaving Ellington with a concussion. Everett sent videotape of the hit to the league for review and Beeman was suspended.
That was just the beginning. Everett sent a total of three tapes to the league for review this season. All three happened to be against the Americans and all three resulted in Tri-City suspensions. In addition to Beeman, Aaron Boogaard was suspended for a kneeing incident that kept Ryan Sawka out for a month, and goaltender Carey Price was suspended for hitting a face-down Damir Alic in the back of the head with his blocker.
That didn’t exactly endear Everett to Tri-City.
“We’ve never sent in a tape on any of their players,” Nachbaur said. “I can’t think of another team in the league that’s done that. But that’s part of their makeup. It’s part of the rules that you can ask for supplemental discipline if you pay for it. I’m not a big believer in that part, but that’s the way it goes. There have been moments this year where my players have been subjected to the same things they sent to the league and we’ve chosen to look the other way. It’s a difference in philosophies.”
Constantine defended the actions: “Those are situations where there were serious injuries to players on our team with hits the refs missed. The league asks us to send those in. That has nothing to do with Tri-City, it has to do with our players being injured and helping the league make the right decision on what should happen in those cases.”
The penalty situation is also a bone of contention. In the teams’ 10 meetings this season, Everett was awarded 76 penalties to Tri-City’s 44, a discrepancy the Americans are none too happy about.
“If you look at the power plays and penalty kills, it’s heavily lopsided in somebody’s favor,” Nachbaur said. “In our games we played under the rules of the WHL, we sat in the penalty box and paid the price. Why did that happen? Who knows. You can speculate.”
The empirical evidence indicates that Everett should have little trouble winning the series. The Tips finished 10 wins ahead in the standings, won the season series 7-2-1-0 and outscored Tri-city 34-15 in those games.
But even if the Tips win the series, the question remains that given the type of physical punishment the Americans like to level against Everett, will the Tips still be in one piece when it’s over?
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