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Silvertips try to stay alive tonight

Everett tries to avoid bowing out of the playoffs with a fourth straight loss

By Nick Patterson
Herald Writer

EVERETT -- The Everett Silvertips have tasted their fair share of success since joining the Western Hockey League in 2003. Three U.S. Division titles. One Western Conference championship. A Scotty Munro Trophy for the league's best record. It's a list few franchises could recite after four seasons.

However, amongst the successes the Tips have developed a paradoxical annual ritual: When they depart the playoffs they do so in a hurry.

Everett -- again -- finds itself in another hole, trailing the Spokane Chiefs 3-0 in their best-of-seven first-round playoff series. And should the Tips bow out in tonight's Game 4, it will be the fifth straight time Everett's season ended with four consecutive playoff losses.

"I don't even want to think about that right now," said Everett defenseman Taylor Ellington, who lived through three of those previous four quick exits.

For Everett the end has always come with a cymbal crash, rather than a slow fadeout. A quick history:

n 2004: Swept in the WHL finals by Medicine Hat.

n 2005: Swept in the second round by Kootenay.

n 2006: Swept in the Western Conference finals by Vancouver.

n 2007: A variation on the theme. The Tips weren't swept, but they did lose the final four games of their second-round series against Prince George to lose 4-2.

And none of the Tips could come up with a theory to explain the quick-exit phenomenon.

"I don't know," said center Zach Hamill, who's been a part of every playoff series in franchise history. "Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's not, tough to say what it really is. I was thinking about that the other day, we've lost four in a row every year. But all we can do is look at (tonight's) game."

Everett coach John Becanic also couldn't find a common theme: "There's trends, but there's different players who have cycled through here. We lost four straight to Med Hat, a very talented team. The second year we were sort of going through a struggling year and lost four straight to a very good Kootenay team. The third year we had two injuries and then (goaltender Leland Irving) gets hurt. There's always different situations and different players."

Whatever the reason, the Tips are eager for that trend to end -- not necessarily for the sake of ending that dubious streak, but just for the sake of winning.

"Nobody wants to lose four straight, that's four sure," said Everett defenseman Graham Potuer, another veteran of past exits. "It's definitely motivating. It's one of the those things where you want to get at least one."

Said Hamill: "We're not going to try and win to avoid a sweep, we're going to try to win to win the series."

Spokane coach Bill Peters wasn't taking history into account. He expects the Tips to throw everything they have at the Chiefs tonight in order to avoid the sweep.

"We're going to have to have a better effort (tonight) in order to get it done," Peters said following Wednesday's 4-1 decision. "They're going to be desperate. They're going to come out and those first 10 minutes are going to fly off the clock."

Perhaps, but lately the Tips have gone out meekly in their final game. That wasn't always the case. In 2004 Everett led Medicine Hat 2-0 before falling 4-2, and in 2005 the Tips' season ended with a 4-3 overtime loss to Kootenay. But two years ago Everett was dominated 5-0 by Vancouver in their swan song, and last year the Tips went down quietly in an 8-2 loss at Prince George.

The Tips say they're still approaching the series with the idea of winning it, but that's an unlikely task. In the WHL's 41-year history only once has a team rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win a seven-game series, when Spokane overcame Portland in 1996.

Nevertheless the Tips are maintaining hope.

"There's a reason why records are broken," Becanic said. "It's when you least expect it that it happens. We're just going to go out and try and win a game."

But if history is any kind of guide, the Tips have their work cut out just to survive past tonight.

Nick Patterson's Silvertips blog: http://www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog