T-Birds Notebook: Good coaching, long bus rides and a top prospect

After a hit and miss last weekend, the T-Birds kick off an important three-in-three weekend tonight in Kennewick. Two of this weekend’s games are on the road and all three are against U.S. Division opponents. These games are big.

Why?

The new WHL playoff format presents some interesting scenarios and the stretch drive is going to turn into a “how do we avoid Kelowna in the first round” contest. Borrowing from the NHL’s new format, the top three teams in each WHL division are in along with two wild cards – the next two best records in the conference. If the season ended today, the T-Birds, who hold the top wild-card spot, would face the Everett Silvertips in the first round. While that would be a tough series, as we saw last year, it would be less formidable than facing the Kelowna Rockets would be.

Heading into this week, the T-Birds are one point behind the Spokane Chiefs for the third spot in the division, four points behind Portland for the second spot and three points ahead of Tri City for the dreaded Kelowna-in-the-first-round spot. The T-Birds play all three of those teams this weekend and the points are huge.

Here’s what else is going on with the T-Birds:

Time to recognize Steve Konowalchuk

With 28 games left, the T-Birds are at the 22-win mark on the season. It wasn’t too long ago that getting 22 wins for the entire year was a struggle for this franchise. In 2011, head coach Steve Konowalchuk’s first year with the T-Birds, they won 25, and he has improved the club every year since. That progression made the contract extension the team signed him to this summer a no-brainer.

This season Konowalchuk has turned in his best coaching job to date. Due to injuries, suspensions and players away at tournaments, Konowalchuk has had to juggle his lineup on a nightly basis. It feels like forever since the T-Birds have gone three games with the same line combinations and that’s not because Konowalchuk is tinkering – its because he’s had no choice in the matter.

Seattle has yet to have Mathew Barzal and Shea Theodore – its two best players – in the lineup at the same time this season. Its also had to deal with losing their team captain and a serious injury to a promising import player. They’ve had to have a forward play defense for the first time in his life along with asking a couple of defenseman to play forward for several games. Seattle has not played one game this year with its entire roster available to them.

Despite that, Konowalchuk kept them afloat during the first half. He mixed and matched his lineup and gave his young rookies a ton of playing time and responsibilities. They took their lumps early but the T-Birds would win as many as they lost and remain in the playoff race. Back from the holiday break, those young players are now playing with experience and confidence, and the team as won nine of its last 12 contests.

With Barzal set to return, Konowalchuk has his team in a position to make a charge in the division. This wasn’t done by luck. It’s taken three-plus years but he finally has a roster full of ‘Konowalchuk’ type players. Seattle has gone from a big dump-and-chase team to a hard-working group that has the skill to possess the puck and play 200 feet. Its grinded out wins and have shown resiliency in games that a young team shouldn’t show. It would be easy for the T-Birds to throw their hands up and say ‘We don’t have Barzal, we don’t have Theodore,’ but Konowalchuk hasn’t let them. His mantra has consistently been that any player in the lineup is expected to perform, whether they were a first round draft pick or a ninth. The players have bought in.

Konowalchuk’s 112 wins as T-Birds coach is sixth-best in club history and he’s closing in on Dean Chynoweth’s 122 and Peter Anholt’s 127 wins. With a team that is competing now and really set up to be even better next year, how high will his win total climb?

Unkind schedule

The 6-0 beating the T-Birds took Saturday night may have been the worst performance of the season. On the surface it was a surprising result considering the night before the team turned in an exceptional performance in beating the Kelowna Rockets 5-2 in Kelowna.

After the game the team boarded their bus and headed to Everett, where they would spend the night before taking on the Silvertips. Seattle started the game well but ran out of gas early in the second period and were helpless to stop a good team from potting six goals on them. In the post-game media scrum Konowalchuk refused to use the travel as an excuse and was hesitant to talk about when they arrived in Everett. That makes sense, a coach doesn’t want his players to feel like they have a reason to not play hard.

Since we are not players, we can use that as an excuse.

It’s 283 miles from Prospera Place in Kelowna to XFINITY Arena in Everett. The game Friday was nationally televised in Canada and started late, close to 7:45 p.m. Due to television there were more media timeouts – normally WHL games have one such timeout per period. The game ended around 10:15, and after showering, eating and a long bus ride, they got into Everett around 4:30 a.m. While sleeping on the bus is possible, if you’ve ever taken a Greyhound anywhere you know it’s not the most restful sleep.

They then had to muster up the energy to play a really good team that had played at home the night before in front of a sold out crowd. Everett may very well have won the game anyway – after all they are in first place and are 4-2 against Seattle – but a rested T-Birds team would have put up a better fight.

It seems that the WHL could easily avoid this situation for teams. Seattle isn’t alone in this situation by any means. It has taken advantage of teams who come into the ShoWare Center after similar travel.

The league should take that into consideration when making the schedule to help foster a more level playing field night in and night out. The T-Birds will have one more tough trip like this later in the season. On Feb. 13 they will play in Kamloops, hop on the bus and drive back south to play the Silvertips in Everett the next night. Everett will be at home against Vancouver the night before.

BMO NHL/CHL Top Prospects Game

Ryan Gropp represented the T-Birds in Thursday night’s BMO NHL/CHL Top Prospects game held in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. This game is played annually and features, as you can guess by the title, the top draft prospects from the CHL. Gropp joins Shea Theodore and Brendan Troock as recent T-Birds to play in the game.

Gropp’s Team Orr beat Team Cherry 6-0 on Thursday, and Gropp picked up an assist on Nathan Noel’s third period marker. Mathew Barzal was originally slated to play in the game as well but with his knee still in recovery decided to sit it out. There is still hope that Barzal will play in Tri City tonight for the T-Birds.

Speaking of Barzal, Tim Pigulski did a great job of breaking down where Barzal and the rest of the T-Birds draft eligibles were ranked on the recent NHL Central Scouting list. There has been a lot of speculation as to how Barzal’s knee injury will affect his draft stock. I recently spoke with an NHL scout who said he didn’t feel it would hurt him too much. He pointed out that NHL scouts are trying to project where a player will be in three to four years. They aren’t looking for the best player today and while he admitted that Barzal will get fewer viewings than other prospects, he didn’t feel that he would slip because of the time missed.

Follow Andrew Eide on Twitter @andyeide.

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