Tips get a Tip of the hat.

Everett Silvertips have made and gave some big moves in the off season.  With Ryan Murray going second the NHL draft, the larger league has taken notice and the ownership feels the pressure of the Scouts.  Everett found a gold pot at the end of the rainbow in the  the 4 boys (Reece Wilcox, Ben Betker, Tyler Sandhu, and Mitch Skapski) trade for Seth Jones. The pressure by the scouts has only fueled the team to make some other oustanding moves, most recently moving into PDX scouting territory bringing Micro Muller into the mix with Luke Gordon and capping of what has been a solid off season of plugging the holes that plagued them at the beginning of last season.


It will be nice to see what the ice will do for the Silvertips this season.

US Div Seasons on the Rise

The US division of WHL has quite a following and I have proof.  I was going over the attendance averages for the past season and the average attendance seems to be another good season for the teams south of the border.  The chart below has the seasons average for the past 5 years.

                           2008          2009          2010          2011          2012

Everett               6425          6030           5701         5807           5278
Spokane             6557          6656           6453         6439           6643
Seattle                4082          4181           3853         4096           4206
Tri City              4245          4424           4480         4702           4653
Portland             4460          3648           4437         5594           6075

The most interesting part of the data is that the worst attendance season for the division was 2010 with an overall average for all 5 teams being 4,984.8.  The 2012 season was best attendance season for the division for the past 9 years with an average of  5,371 people attending the games.