Silvertips on serious roll into season's final stretch

The needle carrying the intravenous fluid into Dan Gendur's right arm has been removed and he's ready to make the opposition sick in the most important hockey games of the season.

Gendur, who missed the Everett Silvertips 1-0 loss to Vancouver last Saturday with a bout of the flu so severe it required medical attention, expects to be back at full strength tonight when Everett is at home against the Tri-City Americans.

"Now that I can keep something down again I'm just trying to eat as much as I can to gain the weight back," Gendur said before practice on Monday. "These last few games of the regular season are going to be a really good test for us."

Even with the narrow loss to Vancouver last Saturday with Gendur and his team-high 83 points out of the lineup, the Silvertips are on a serious roll.

With four games left in the regular season, Everett still has a chance to finish fourth in the Western Conference standings and earn home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

"If we would have played the first half of the season like we did the second half, we'd be right there for the Scotty Munro trophy again," Everett coach John Becanic said of the hardware awarded for the team with the best regular-season record in the league.

"You have to hit your stride at the right time and we feel like we're doing that this season."

Everett is on a 20-1-0-1 run since Christmas and is 10-1-0-1 in its last 12 games with both losses coming by one goal.

The Silvertips are also getting healthy, another key element to success in the playoffs. Defenseman Taylor Ellington, who has been out with a broken foot since early February, was back skating in practice this week and should be ready when the playoffs begin. That leaves only defenseman Tyler Keiffer out of the lineup with a shoulder injury.

Kyle Beach, who took a slapshot to the face from a teammate during the Vancouver loss and suffered broken bones in his face, will play with a full face shield.

"The most impressive thing about our second half is that we've done it with significant injuries," Becanic said. "Now we're getting healthy. Every game we have left means something. We're excited and expect to be playing games with unbelievable intensity."

This season there are no truly dominant teams and at least a dozen teams with a realistic chance of getting hot and going all the way.

Everett, with goaltender Leland Irving back in form after a slow first half of the season, is definitely among them.

"It's a whole new game in the playoffs with so much more intensity," Gendur said. "We're going down the stretch and into the playoffs with a lot of confidence."

Good goaltending always breeds confidence in the playoffs and Irving has shown why many consider him to be the top goaltender in the league even after a subpar first half of the season.

"Irv has been unbelievable for us when we needed him," Becanic said. "And we're getting scoring out of two lines. You just never know who will score the goals in the playoffs."

In fact, Becanic is fond of playing team trivia to emphasize the importance of a full roster going full speed in the postseason.

"He likes to ask everyone who are the top goal scorers for the Everett Silvertips in the playoffs," Becanic said. "Everyone always guesses Peter Mueller, Torrie Wheat or Zach Hamill. No one ever guesses Mark Kress, but he's right up there on the all-time list."

Kress, a defensive specialist who scored 16 goals in 171 regular-season games, ranks third on the all-time playoff list with eight goals in the playoffs to rank behind only Mueller (14) and Hamill (10).