Everett-Portland WHL Playoff History

While the Portland and Everett WHL Playoff history is not as storied and exciting as the ones Portland has had with Kamloops (13 series), Spokane (10) or Seattle (9 after this years), the three playoff match ups have been exciting in their own right. This years should be even more exciting as this is the very first time the teams have played each other outside the first round.

Lets take a look at the series history:

2004/05 First Round

-Everett wins series 4-3 with a 3-2 win in Portland in Game 7.
-It was an exciting series with 5 of the 7 games being decided by 1 goal, including two OT games.
-Ultimately Silvertips Goalie Mike Wall proved to be too hard to score on as he stopped 36 of 38 in the deciding game.
-Everett was led by future Boston Bruin Zach Hamill while Portland relied upon Captain and future Philadelphia Flyer and Tampa Bay Lightning D-man Braydon Coburn to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

2010/11 First Round
-Portland sweeps the Silvertips in 4 straight. Only 1 of the games was even close.
-The Hawks jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first period of Game 1 and never looked back in this series. The over-matched Tips only had future Columbus Blue Jacket Ryan Murray in their arsenal, while Portland had Ryan Johansen (a future teammate of Murray's), Nino Niederreiter (Minnesota), Sven Baertschi (Vancouver), Ty Rattie (St. Louis), Joe Morrow (Boston), Derrick Pouliot (Pittsburgh) and Crag Cunningham (Arizona) to counter with.

2012/13 First Round
-Austin Lotz stood on his head and stole two games, but Portland eventually got through and won 4 games to 2.
-Lotz was insane in this series, with 42 saves in one of his team's wins and 55 in the other.
-The Silvertips were once again over-matched and mostly felt surprised that they even were able to win two games in this series.

Not only does this series mark the first time the two teams have played past the first round, it's the first time since 2005 that the two teams seem to be on somewhat equal footing. We should be in for an interesting series.