Hickman leads Tbirds to victory

Conventional wisdom would tell you that Alexander Delnov (2 g, 2 a) led the Tbirds to victory last night. It would also be perfectly reasonable to suggest Connor Sanvido and his 2 goal effort or maybe Luke Lockhart and his 2 goals would be your choice for 1st star of the game.  All would be reasonable selections. I'm here to tell you that the player of the game last night was Justin Hickman.

Coming out flat in the 2nd period after they had dominated the 1st, Seattle found itself quickly down 2-1 after a minute and fifteen seconds. The crowd of 4,145 deflated and it looked as though the game may have turned I would have called timeout but Konowalchuk knows his team better than I do and exactly 2 minutes later Hickman would engage Carter Proft in a fight that lasted little more than 10-15 seconds but changed the course of the entire game.  Few actual punches were thrown before Hickman wrestled Proft to the ice and skated off imploring the fans (and his team) to get a little fired up.

Like clockwork, Delnov whipped in a wrister just 33 seconds later and Sanvido scored two and a half minutes later and the game had turned.

With this franchise it seems as though we are always saying "wait 'til next year" and sometimes it is foolish optimism for us to have looked towards next year. Fans, especially Tbirds fans, seem to feel like things are either "win a banner" or "that year sucked". I understand that sentiment to a certain extent because the Tbirds have very few banners and have enjoyed very little upper level success and I would consider upper level success to either be a Division title or Conference Finals appearance and beyond. The point is... I want to be very careful in my praise for what I saw last night. If you're looking for this team to win a WHL title this year I think you've set the expectations a little too high.

However... Based on what I have seen so far this season I can easily say this is the best Seattle team we've seen in several years. This team won't miss the playoffs. I feel pretty comfortable making that "prediction".  You have to go back to 2008-09 for the last time this team made the playoffs.  That team went 35-32-5 which was good for 75 points. The season before in 2007-08 the Tbirds went 42-23-7, good for 91 points.

I think this team is looking more like the 08-09 version but has a decent chance to put themselves closer to the 91 point mark.  Right now the team has the ability to roll 4 forward lines and have a pretty good chance at getting scoring from any of the 4 lines. My biggest concern continues to be the defense but so far they have been able to hold things together and I think guys like Wardley and Forsberg bring enough physicality to the defense to keep offenses from getting too comfortable.  Hauf and Green are still very raw and haven't learned to use their size to their advantage yet and that only comes from being better skaters.  I've said it a million times before... if you put Andre the Giant in skates... he isn't knocking me down because he doesn't know how to skate. It doesn't matter how big you are if you can't generate enough leverage to knock people on their ass (something Wardley has learned to do in SPADES in the last calendar year). If Hauf and Green manage to take a step forward before the year is over, this could be a very good defensive unit.

So... rejoice Tbirds fans. We should be seeing some more winning hockey going forward and that makes things very exciting for the rest of this season. Wait until next year is a tired and worn out mantra... but it is a mantra that "might" actually start becoming a reality if players can continue some of the momentum we are beginning to see.