EVERETT — The Everett Silvertips know the history.
After seeing each of their past three seasons end at the hands of the Portland Winterhawks in the WHL Playoffs, the Silvertips face their U.S. Division rival once again. Everett has lost as the underdog, and been upset as the favorite. It would be natural to feel haunted by their recent history.
These Silvertips don’t care.
“We’re just ready to win,” Silvertips defenseman Brek Liske said. “We’re not worried about the history or what went on in the past. We’re here to win.”
It may be the second consecutive season in which Everett won the Scott Munro Trophy as regular-season champions, but things feel different this time around. The Silvertips just wrapped up a franchise-record 57-win season, but they’re tired of regular-season accolades.
In Game 1 of the first round at Angel of the Winds Arena on Friday, where the games really start to count in the team’s eyes, Everett immediately made that difference clear. With two goals in the first 97 seconds, the Silvertips surged ahead and never looked back in an 8-1 victory.
Talk about a tone-setter for the best-of-7 series.
“The guys came out firing,” Everett coach Steve Hamilton said. “Obviously, it’s as good a start as you can hope for. So I like that we kind of came out and attacked, and had a pretty good first period where didn’t allow them to get much going, which was a good sign.”
Julius Miettinen had two goals and one assist, and Luke Vlooswyk tallied three helpers for the Silvertips. Goalie Anders Miller stopped 24 of 25 shots to lock up the win. Nathan Free scored the lone goal for Portland on the power play, and goalie Ondrej Štěbeták allowed five goals on 39 shots through 40 minutes. Backup Cruz Chase stepped in for the third period, making 18 saves and allowing three more goals.
Just 48 seconds into the game, Liske powered a puck through traffic from the left point off a pass from Luke Vlooswyk, hitting the back of the net and sending Angel of the Winds Arena into a frenzy. Mattias Uyeda followed up from nearly the same spot at 1:37, settling the puck off the faceoff and firing it through to push it to 2-0 before the fashionably late crowd took their seats.
Liske would not go as far to say the team planned to attack from that specific spot around the left point, but that the defensemen are encouraged to get pucks in anywhere between the two faceoff dots, and they managed to capitalize on that early.
After the quick start, neither side scored until Zackary Shantz extended the lead to 3-0 off the rush at 17:44, calling his own number as he drifted into the slot. Through 20 minutes, Everett held a commanding three-goal lead after outshooting the Winterhawks 22-5.
The Silvertips came close to scoring on their first power-play opportunity late in the first period prior to Shantz’s goal — with Carter Bear putting two shots on goal before attempting to set up Matias Vanhanen with a deflection in front — but ultimately didn’t strike until their second man-advantage midway through the second period.
Playing at 4-on-3, Everett connected on a tic-tac-toe goal with Landon DuPont going across the slot to Carter Bear, who fed Julius Miettinen in front for the finish. The team does not normally practice the 4-on-3, according to Miettinen, but they did this week leading up to the Portland series.
“It paid off,” Miettinen said. “You just have a lot more space out there (compared to 5-on-4). You have a lot more time with the puck. You have more looks there, and I think we did the right things.”
The Winterhawks got on the board with Free’s power-play goal at 14:16, and officials reviewed a potential second goal at 17:26, but it was ultimately confirmed that Miller froze the puck. Only 11 seconds after that, Lukas Kaplan scored off the rush with Shantz, turning what could have been a 4-2 contest into a 5-1 stranglehold.
Everett tacked on three more goals in the third period, with Miettinen notching his second of the night on a breakaway. Chase made the initial stop, but Miettinen managed to grab the rebound and bank it in off the Portland netminder to extend it to 6-1 at 4:30. Vanhanen and Hunter Rudolph closed things out with each forward scoring his first career WHL playoff goal at 8:21 and 15:30, respectively.
While tensions ran high throughout the game — the Winterhawks’ Griffin Darby dropped the gloves with Silvertips forward Jaxsin Vaughan just over five minutes in — Portland became increasingly frustrated as Everett stacked its lead. Players got physical after nearly every whistle, escalating to a point where Silvertips defenseman Kayd Ruedig received a five-minute major and a 10-minute game misconduct for contact to the head, and Winterhawks forward Nathan Brown received a double-minor for roughing and a game misconduct, all at 9:01 of the third period.
“We tried to stay out of most of it,” Liske said. “We knew once we started getting up, they’d starting getting a little stupid, I guess. So we tried to stay out of it as much as we could, (but we) stuck up for each other. I think we did a good job at that and didn’t hurt ourselves too bad.”
By the end of the night, the teams combined for 67 penalty minutes, with Portland holding the narrow edge at 35. Hamilton was not pleased with the amount of penalties his team took, and expressed a desire to maintain 5-on-5 as much as possible.
“Obviously some tempers and things get heated a bit, but we want to keep five guys on the ice as much as we can,” Hamilton said. “Part of that’s discipline and making sure we’re not putting ourselves in situations. There was a lot of 4-on-4 hockey tonight. I don’t love that, to be honest with you.”
As complete as the Silvertips looked on Friday, they could be in line to receive a key reinforcement at some point this postseason from injured forward Shea Busch, who scored 13 goals and 18 points in just 12 games, but went down in late October with an upper-body injury.
As expected, Hamilton remained tight-lipped about the timeline for a return, but multiple team sources confirmed that Busch has resumed practicing. Everett is also without forward Clarke Schaefer, who has been out “indefinitely” since late January with an upper-body injury.
In the meantime, the Silvertips will look to build on Friday’s statement win in Game 2 on Saturday. As much as Everett is shutting out the past and looking to the future, familiarity has certainly bred contempt between the two sides.
“We don’t like these guys, and they don’t like us,” Miettinen said. “I think that’s a pretty simple answer there.”