Tips Tuesday: Kicking it up a notch

The Silvertips finally played a home game last weekend for the first time since October 13th. Eastern road swings are such a bummer, but on the bright side, they got it out of the way early and now we’ve got more hockey in Everett soon!

Right?

Oh come on.

While you wait for this mini road trip to start, may I recommend checking out the CBIC Canada Russia Series? It’s an annual series of games featuring Russia’s best junior players going up against 3 separate CHL teams, one from each league. Team WHL features two familiar faces in Riley Sutter and Connor Dewar. Their first game took place Monday night in Kamloops, and Dewar showed up with the rare highlight-reel secondary assist.

They’ll play one more game against Russia on Tuesday night in Vancouver at 7 pm.

The Tips played two games last weekend and have quite a slate of them coming up this week, so let’s get to it.

Game Notes

The Tri-City Americans spoiled the Tips’ would-be triumphant return home on Friday. Everett had a plethora of chances to win that game, but Americans’ goaltender Beck Warm decided this was the game he was going to stand on his head. Warm stopped a career high 53 of 55 shots from the Tips en route to a 4-2 victory. And unfortunately Dustin Wolf played one of the worst games of his season, allowing 3 goals on only 16 shots. All in all, a very disappointing game for Everett.

The Tips were sent right back out on the road on Saturday, though this trip was mercifully shorter than their last one. They went to Spokane for their first matchup with the Chiefs and it went far better than Friday’s game. Their shooting percentage jumped up more notches than an Emeril Legasse roast after going to a commercial break.

Three goals in a span of 3:26 in the first period was enough to drive starting goaltender Bailey Brkin out, but it didn’t really matter which goalie played. Everett would tack on 3 more goals and Dustin Wolf stopped 23 of 25 shots on their way to a 6-2 victory. Sahvan Khaira also had himself a game, netting 3 assists on the night.

Snap Shots

• Everett is currently sitting atop the US Division with a record of 11-6-0-0
• Dawson Butt has a shooting percentage of 22.2% this year and is currently 4th on the team in goal scoring

• Dustin Wolf is still sporting a top-5 SV% and GAA
• The Tips suddenly have a top-10 power play, sitting at 23.5%, and they’ve drawn the 3rd most penalties in the WHL. They were 3-9 (33.3%) over the weekend
• The penalty kill remains tops in the league (I refuse to acknowledge Prince Albert any more because they are in a league of their own right now) at 87.0%
• Connor Dewar was named an assistant captain of the all-WHL team at the CBIC Canada Russia Series. Riley Sutter is also playing in the series
• Everett is one of seven teams that has yet to play in a shootout this season and I feel like that’s robbing us of a highlight reel Wolf save

What’s Next

Everett has another 3 games in 3 days this weekend, and whoever made the schedule deserves to be on the naughty list. (Sidenote: It’s after Halloween, so Christmas references are not only allowed, but encouraged.) The Tips will have to make the 4+ hour drive to Kamloops for Friday’s game against the Blazers, then head down to Kent for a matchup with the (last place in the US Division) Thunderbirds, and then go back to Kamloops on Sunday. The Blazers are sitting in 4th place in the BC Division. In their only matchup so far this season, Everett rolled them to the tune of 7-2 on the back of a 3-point night from Riley Sutter. Three different Blazers were given 10-minute misconducts during the game including former Silvertip Montana Onyebuchi, who also received a game misconduct for berating the referee late in the game. Let’s hope neither of those upcoming games get too out of hand.

It’ll be a bit until the Tips come home again for a game. They’re playing great hockey right now though and only getting better. The power play unit especially has been kicking it up a notch with each passing game. And when they do come back to town:

ANOTHER NOTCH