It’s sort of the calm before the storm as the Tips have the weekdays off before finishing the season with a flourish with the weekend’s three-in-three. In the meantime I have a couple things I want to discuss about the season Everett has had, and I’ll tackle one of those today.
Let’s talk about the offense. If you remember, the main question surrounding Everett heading into the season was about whether the Tips would be able to score. Everett lost four of its top five scores from 2013-14, including team MVP Joshua Winquist who carried the bulk of the scoring burden. It seemed like every other story I wrote during the preseason touched on this narrative in some way or other.
So get this. With three games remaining in the season Everett is four goals away from matching the 54-win 2006-07 team for the most in franchise history. This season’s Tips have scored 225 goals through 69 games. The 06-07 Everett team, which included scoring champion Zach Hamill and superstar talents in Peter Mueller and Kyle Beach, scored 229 in its full 72.
How is this even possible? How is it that this team, which was going to have to win games 2-1, on pace to break the franchise record for goals scored?
Well, the acquisition of Nikita Scherbak certainly helped. He has 79 points, which already ranks fifth all-time in franchise history. But Scherbak is only a small part of the offensive story. Consider:
– Everett has five players who have eclipsed 50 points. That’s only been accomplished once in franchise history, when five broke that barrier in 09-10.
– Everett has five players who have scored 20-plus goals. That’s only happened twice before, when the Tips had five in both 06-07 and 09-10.
– Everett has 10 players who have scored 10-plus goals. That’s only happened once before, as the Tips also had 10 double-digit goal scorers in 07-08.
– The top four defensemen in scoring have combined for 136 points. The best scoring contribution by four defensemen in the past was 128 points in 06-07, and that total includes points two of those d-men scored while playing for other teams prior to being traded to Everett.
Essentially the Tips have matched or bettered pretty much every milestone with regards to the number of players contributing offensively. Sure, Scherbak has played his part, but what’s really happened is that Everett has seen a greater collective contribution to the offense.
Of the 13 skaters on the team now who were full-time members of last season’s team, only two haven’t improved upon last season’s points total — and that’s 100 percent down to the injuries that caused Dawson Leedahl and Logan Aasman to miss big chunks of the season. Seven players have improved their scoring output by double digits, led by Noah Juulsen (plus-40), Kohl Bauml (plus-32), Carson Stadnyk (plus-30), Patrick Bajkov (plus-25) and Remi Laurencelle (plus-23).
So kudos to the Tips for turning the biggest issue of the preseason into little more than an afterthought.
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