Update

Seattle takes on Tri-City tonight at ShoWare Center. It's been a bit of a hectic week with the snow, ice and cold. I should be getting back to regular updates here pretty soon.

Seattle picked up 2 out of 4 possible points last weekend and they were probably lucky to have survived the weekend with any points at all.

I honestly didn't think their play on Friday night against Spokane was really that bad... but maybe that is a testament to how much this team has elevated their level of play and their expectations. What once might have been a "not so bad" effort last season is a poor effort this season. If that is true... then the action Saturday was horrible. Missed assignments and lack of defensive zone coverage led to three Everett goals in the first 13 minutes of the game and the Tbirds were never able to fully recover.

The Western Conference is unbelievably tight with just 2 points separating 3rd and 10th place and only 5 points between 2nd and 10th. Seattle still owns the 2nd best winning percentage in the Conference but they don't have any margin for error and that appears likely to be true throughout the entire season.

Some individual notes.

- How fun is Justin Hickman?? 3 bone crushing (and clean I might add) hits in the game on Saturday. When he plays the game the right way he sure is fun to watch. As he gets a little bit more playing time it will be interesting to see if he can add some scoring to his physical game.

- I thought the lines were all screwed up this past weekend. I wouldn't be surprised to see some new combinations tonight. I don't like Noebels with Jacobs and Alos.. that line just doesn't seem to work well. I like Noebels playing with Lockhart a lot more.

- The defense had a tough weekend and needs to improve the defensive zone coverage. The "big" mistakes have been kept to a minimum for most of the season but they are starting to creep in just a little bit in the last couple of weeks.

- To sound completely repetitive, Seattle needs to start doing some scoring on the 5 on 5. They can't really expect their PP to carry them for an entire season.

- Teams are appearing to be less and less willing to fight Jacob Doty. I'm going to bet that if he doesn't dance tonight or Friday that he'll find someone to tango with from Kootenay on Saturday.

- Erik Fleming got beat around the outside and then knocked off the puck during a sequence in Saturday's game... and I don't believe he saw the ice after that.

- I heard one fan Saturday yell at Sumner to "play all 4 lines/play the whole team". This isn't Squirts... its Major Junior hockey. When you play on the 4th line you don't always regularly get ice time. If you want to make the argument that some players aren't seeing the ice enough I suppose I will understand that.. but we're trying to win games and sometimes that means leaning more heavily on your top guys.