Rivalry Renewed and Revved Up

Saturday night at Climate Pledge Arena, one of the fiercest and most intense hockey rivalries will be renewed.

That's when the Seattle Thunderbirds and Everett Silvertips will meet in the "Battle of the Sound" at 6 p.m. with portions of the ticket sales to Saturday's game going to support the Ronald McDonald House. Tickets are available
here
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The two Western Hockey League rivals have been battling each other since the Silvertips joined the league as an expansion team for the 2003-2004 season. Rivalries heat up and cool down over time. The Seattle-Everett series started quietly with many matchups under the same historic roof they will compete Saturday.
Early on, it was more of a sibling type rivalry. They wanted to beat each other but the animosity wasn't at a fever pitch.
Playoffs add major heat to a rivalry. The Silvertips and Thunderbirds had not met in the playoffs until the 2014 postseason. Since then, any matchup between the two teams has become must-watch hockey with anticipation, passion from the fans and some grudges thrown in for good measure.
Seattle won that first playoff series four games to one. The two clubs would meet three times over the next four postseasons. The latest chapter between them will play out at Climate Pledge Arena with a meaningful matchup for the current road to the playoffs.
Both teams are having excellent seasons. Everett leads the U.S. Division by eight points with a 35-7-2-5 record and an impressive goal differential of plus-78. The Thunderbirds are looking to make up ground Saturday and have a record of 30-11-4-1 and they are plus-67 in goal differential.
Kraken KJR-950 radio studio host Mike Benton called most of those playoff series as the voice of the Silvertips for six seasons, including the three-year stretch from 2016 to 2018 when the winner moved on to the WHL Championship Series. The Thunderbirds lost the title series in 2016 but beat the Regina Pats in 2017 for their WHL title. Everett ran all the way to the championship series in 2018, falling to the Swift Current Broncos.
"The road to the Cup went through a Seattle-Everett series," Benton says. "Like the phrase says, 'iron sharpens iron.' Those two teams battled it out, duked it out and grinded it out."
Year in and year out, future NHLers are produced by the WHL. The Everett-Seattle rivalry has featured its share of notable names. The Thunderbirds had players such as Shea Theodore (Vegas Golden Knights), Mathew Barzal (New York Islanders), Keegan Kolesar (Vegas Golden Knights) and Alexander True (Seattle Kraken).
The Silvertips countered with Carter Hart (Philadelphia Flyers), Connor Dewar (Minnesota Wild), Noah Juulsen (Vancouver Canucks), and Dustin Wolf (Calgary Flames).
Seeing these players at a young age is part of the WHL's attraction and you'll find future pro players skating every night. Fans attending Saturday night will see six players drafted by NHL franchises skating for the two teams, with at least two players each on Seattle and Everett who will be likely choices in this summer's 2022 NHL Draft.
Kraken team photographer Chris Mast knows this firsthand. Prior to shooting NHL games, he served as the Silvertips' team photographer from 2012 through last season. Mast has seen his fair share of the Everett-Seattle rivalry through the lens and away from the arena, too.
"The Seattle-Everett rivalry was the one for the Everett players," Mast says. "I always felt like Seattle's true rival is Portland but in its short time, the Everett franchise put itself on the map. My favorite thing about the rivalry was how intense it was on the ice, but then a lot of the players are friends, grew up playing together. They would chat in the tunnel after games."
Players enter the WHL at 16 years old, traveling from all over Western Canada to new cities where they live with billet families during the hockey season. Each team is allowed three 20-year-old players and most players move on at 19.
Over the past three seasons, the WHL has had more players drafted by NHL teams than any other development league in the world. That's a big draw for these kids to leave home at a young age. Saturday night, we'll see the next crop to come out of the league playing high-stakes hockey.
Saturday's game will feature numerous NHL prospects. Seattle has players who have already been drafted like Conner Roulette (Dallas Stars) and Lucas Ciona (Calgary Flames). The Thunderbirds also have an Olympic medalist in Samuel Knazko (Columbus Blue Jackets) who won bronze with Slovakia in Beijing. Seattle's roster includes two top prospects for the 2022 NHL Draft in Kevin Korchinski and Jordan Gustafson.
The Silvertips feature the league's leading scoring defenseman in Olen Zellweger (Anaheim Ducks), plus Niko Huuhtanen (Tampa Bay) and Ronan Seeley (Carolina Hurricanes).
"They're the best 16- to 20-year-olds in the entire world," Benton said. "You really don't understand it fully until you get a chance to work up close and personal with them day by day. You really see the lab, or factory, that they work in so to speak, where all the good habits are put in place.
"You see where Carter Hart hones his competitiveness. You see where Mat Barzal hones his competitiveness. That's what makes that league so great. You understand you know where these players came from. You can pinpoint exactly where they began to figure it out and have really nice long careers in the best league in the world now."
The players on these two teams all have NHL and pro hockey dreams and that's their ultimate goal. For three periods of hockey Saturday, the only thing they will be thinking about is beating their rival and claiming Puget Sound bragging rights.
Fans can buy tickets here for Saturday's "Battle of the Sound" at Climate Pledge Arena.