Everett claws out a 4-1 victory over T-Birds

By Andrew Eide

EVERETT — With just one game left in the preseason the Seattle Thunderbirds still have a few kinks to work out of their game.

Friday night Seattle dropped a 4-1 tilt with the Everett Silvertips at the Xfinity Arena in Everett. The Silvertips were paced by goalie Carter Hart’s 29 saves and two points from Brayden Low. Ryan Gropp picked up the lone goal for the T-Birds who now have lost two straight preseason match-ups with Everett. Both clubs will wrap up their preseason schedule Saturday night at the ShoWare Center in Kent.

This game was a confusing one for Seattle as they controlled the play for much of the first half of it, only to find themselves behind.

“I liked some of our game,” head coach Steve Konowalchuk said after. “But a couple of big break downs, didn’t clear the puck on the penalty kill, those kinds of things we’ve got to stop and get better at. There were some things I liked but we’ve got to be better.”

The first break down occurred early in the first period when Low deposited a rebound past goalie Taran Kozun to give Everett an early 1-0 lead. For the rest of that period the T-Birds controlled the puck, keeping the play in the Everett zone for most of the remaining time. The problem was, they couldn’t solve Hart.

“We generated some chances so that parts good,” Konowalchuk said. “We didn’t generate a lot of traffic, we need to generate more traffic on the goalie, we made it a little bit easy for him.”

Low — who was in training camp with the T-Birds two seasons ago — helped get the Silvertips a bigger lead in the second. He had the puck down in the Seattle end and sent a nice pass to teammate Kohl Bauml in the slot to give Everett a 2-0 lead. A few minutes later Carson Stadnyk extended the Everett lead to three when he somehow got a wrist shot past Kozun from a sharp angle.

After the third goal Danny Mumaugh came in the game to replace Kozun in net.

The T-Birds got on the board late in the second — on the power play — after Mathew Barzal made a nice move to draw three Everett defenders to him. That left Gropp alone in the slot and Barzal was able to float a pass to him for Seattle’s lone tally on the night.

Everett silenced any thoughts of a Seattle comeback early in the third period when Zane Jones beat Mumaugh with a wrist shot from the face off circle to give Everett a commanding 4-1 lead.

Konowalchuk mixed up his lines Friday night. Most notably he had Gropp and Barzal playing on different lines. Was this to sprinkle offense through out the lineup or was it to motivate the two talented players?

“Probably our two most skilled forwards are Barzal and Gropp but they sometimes think it’s going to come easy if they’re together,” Konowalchuk said. “I liked both their games today, they’ve got to be able to play with that kind of urgency and compete when they are together. It’s a mental thing sometimes when you put two guys like that together they think it’s going to be easy and they want to free wheel. So we wanted to mix that up, put some grit on every line and go that way.”

For his part, Gropp thought it was ultimately a positive experiment.

“I think we obviously play well when we’re together,” he said about being split from Barzal. “I think we’ve got to learn to generate offense when we’re split up too, that can be a good thing, I thought all of our lines were generating offense, so that was good.”

The two forwards were together on the power play and on the penalty kill — something that Konowalchuk wants to see them do all year.

“It’s different,” Gropp said about killing penalties. “I guess I never [played on the penalty kill] a lot last year so I guess its just learning where to go and spots to be, hoping to get better and better at it.”

Seattle’s preseason record fell to 3-3-0-0 as they look to end on a winning note Saturday. They open the regular season Friday evening as they hit the road to take on the Portland Winterhawks. Saturday night will be their last chance to work out the kinks in their game.

“Really making sure everyone’s individual game is where it needs to be and ready to go,” Konowalchuk said of Saturday’s game. “We’ve got one more game and then a week of practice, we want everyone’s individual game at the top level.”

Notes

Seattle forward Justin Hickman was supposed to be in Penticton, B.C. on Friday playing with the Winnipeg Jets in the Future Stars tournament. Instead he was in the stands watching the T-Birds as he suffered an upper-body injury in practice and did not make the trip. Konowalchuk said that the captain’s injury status was “week-to-week”.

Konowalchuk said that the decision to bring Mumaugh into the game was not the original plan. Kozun was slated to play the entire game but the coach wanted to shake things up a bit with the team trailing by three goals. Mumaugh ended up saving eight of the nine shots he faced in relief.

Seattle was without defensemen Shea Theodore and Evan Wardley on Friday night. Theodore is in camp with the Anaheim Ducks and Wardley is playing rookie games with the Montreal Canadiens.

The Silvertips were playing in a new arena Friday night, well, a new arena in name only. Formerly known as Comcast Arena, Friday’s game was the first under the new moniker, Xfinity Arena.

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