The Stealth Dragon

Okay, just arrived in California after traveling all day. But I get to stay the whole week until the game on the 9th against Chicago, so I'm stoked about that. The San Jose Stealth (2-2) spoiled the home opener of the New York Titans (1-3) with a 12-7 victory. After giving up the first goal to Mike McLellan of the Titans the Stealth answered back with four goals in five minutes. Then the New York Titans scored two to start the 2nd quarter and the Stealth answered again with three goals in less than two minutes. All the Stealth goals came in streaks, never scoring just one goal in a row, except Jeff Zywicki's final goal in the fourth quarter to slow down a mini Titans run by new acquisition Brendan Mundorf. The star of the game was Aaron Bold in goal for the Stealth. Not the expected starter but, he may have put on the best performance in goal by any goalie in the league this year outside of Nick Patterson holding the Toronto Rock to just four goals. Bold saved 87% of the Titans shots on goal. It's the highest value I've ever seen, but I don't know what Patterson's save percentage was in that Rock game. The Stealth defense also contributed to Bold's performance by limiting the easy looks for the Titans. The Stealth bore down in the 3rd quarter holding the Titans completely scoreless in the 3rd, which was part of an 18 minute stretch where the Titans did not score. The Titans were missing Pat Maddalena for reasons unknown to me. He's the teams' 3rd leading scorer and his presence was missed, though also made up for by Brendan Mundorf returning to action. Stellar Titan rookie Jordan Hall had a quiet night offensively with 1 goal and 1 assist but, was second on the team with 10 loosies behind Jarrett Park's game leading 14 ground balls. Statistically, the Titans beat the Stealth in two key areas, loose balls and face-offs. Tim Booth competed with Jamie Hanford in the first half and they split 50% of the face-offs. And on the ground ball front, the Titans put up the biggest number and differential I think I've ever seen - 85 to 57. Collecting +28 loosies and winning the overall face-off battle 14 of 23 would generally lead to a victory or competitive loss. But not this time for the Titans, they fell behind early and couldn't stop the Stealth goal runs and couldn't get shots past Aaron Bold. The Stealth took advantage of one statistic that the Titans did not, assists on goals. The Stealth recorded 20 assists on their 12 goals, while the Titans managed a sub-par 9 assists on 7 goals. The Stealth offense emerged from the cocoon they hid in last weekend. Zywicki and Luke Wiles each registered a hat trick to lead the Stealth offense and Colin Doyle captained the attack while quietly he had 2 goals and 1 assist with the first goal was a short handed game winning goal in the 2nd quarter. In a 12-7 victory where almost everything went right for the Stealth, I still find myself with one gripe, there was no killer instinct by the Stealth in the 4th quarter. The game was put away in the third quarter by the Stealth with their 4-0 performance, extending their lead to 11-4. Yet in the fourth quarter the Steath just didn't keep up the pressure. In this game it didn't matter, but come April when we're battling Western division rivals we can't let up. Put the opponent away and pile on the goals until the final horn. Game MVP: No doubt in this one at all, Aaron Bold for his performance in goal.

Two more lacrosse games for the San Jose Stealth (1-2) this week. The first half of the transcontinental journey is Thursday night at Madison Square Garden against the New York Titans (1-2). There are a few similarities between the teams, both won their season opening games on the road and then both teams dropped their next two games. The Stealth and Titans also have a large number of American based players, but the Stealth put their Americans on defense while the Titans also have an American based offense lead by Casey Powell. Finally, several former Stealth players, Ryan Boyle, Jarrett Park, Matt Alrich and Matt Vinc, migrated out east during the creation of the Titans in late 2006. The Stealth *have* to reverse the direction they went in their two games last weekend. The offense couldn't complete many passes and the whole team failed to work together on ground balls. And it isn't that they couldn't scoop up a loosie, but if they did it was instantly checked out of their sticks again because everyone but Eric Martin and Jeff Zywicki left their sticks hanging after picking up the ball. Going hand in hand with the loosies was the apparent failure of communication in traffic. Instead of doing the basic "Man Ball" communication everyone just poked at the ball hoping to snatch it up while the opponents boxed guys out and won the battles. The Titans are a small and fast team that will dominate the ground ball battle against the Stealth teams that played last weekend. The Stealth can't let this happen. The Titan's Casey Powell has continued his offensive leadership and dominance that emerged last season when he returned to the NLL. But he's not the only Titan that can be focused on because four other Titans have already scored 12 or more points in the first three games. Jordan Hall has filled the hole left by Gewas Schindler nicely. While I don't instinctively associated the five Titan forwards as being as potent as the Stealth's main five scorers, the top five Titans have scored 16 more points (79 to 63) than the Stealth in just three games. If there is a weak defender on the floor he is at risk of being exposed by the any of the Titan forwards. The Titans are also converting more than 50% of their Power Play opportunities, so staying out of the penalty box will be more important than usual for the Stealth players. After the Lumberjax game, the Titans defense has been exposed as weak when playing the better offenses of Buffalo and Toronto. The Stealth offense is more on par with Buffalo and Toronto than it is with the Lumberjax, so I expect the Stealth to be scoring numerous goals against them. Matt Vinc is a stellar goalie and is actually lucky to be in New York and getting all the playing time he is at his young age. Down the road this will aid him, but he still is not matured to the point that he is a shutdown goalie that can win a game like Anthony Cosmo, Steve Dietrich or Gee Nash. Until then, I look forward to playing the Titans every year possible. Finally I'd like to see Colin Doyle return to the point of the Stealth offense where he played last season. This year he has returned to the right side, a position he played more in his days in Toronto since the Rock had Josh Sanderson playing the point. The Stealth offense didn't flow last weekend when Doyle wasn't up top all the time. Please Coach Christianson, stick Doyle back up top and leave him there so the offense can return to it's dominate 2007 form. The X Factor: Two Titan players will determine the fate of the game. Jarrett Park being fed ground balls by Jamie Hanford in the face-off circle. Hanford took Pat Jones to school in the Portland game we saw to start the season. As noted in my Titans vs. Lumberjax review, it wasn't entirely Jones' fault, despite being beaten to the clamp on most draws. Jarrett Park ran free all night when Derek Keenan failed to make any adjustments at all. Stopping Jarrett Park will slow down Jamie Hanford. Prediction: The Stealth will control all aspects of the game and dominate for a 16-12 victory that'll spoil the Titans home opener. Go Stealth!

Taking a break from the Rush vs. Mammoth game to post this story. Saturday night was my first regular season game at the Rose Garden. It was quite exciting for several reasons. First and foremost, because the Lumberjax lost. Actually, I think that should be, because the Lumberjax lost! The exclamation point is much better. It helped the Stealth, that's priority one. And it was a shocker that it happened at all. It's not the first thing I remember about the game, but when I remember it, it was the one thing that I liked the least. The freakin' Lumberjax blare music during the game at rock concert levels. I mean really loud. My little nephew was with me and he's not a loud talker and I'll be damaged if I was able to hear anything he was telling me or asking me. I actually saw the refs motion to the scoring box during play to turn it down and they did. I've been to four arena's now and they all play music during the game play, but this was intrusive instead of ambient. I hope it gets turned down even further going forward. Next up, where are the stats for the game? There are a couple of things that I want to check out and there's nothing to be seen. I know that people were trying to follow the game through the box score and there wasn't one. I was in the #lacrosse room on irc.chatstop.net during the first half and unbeknown to me, I was giving the only score updates that anyone had. And now that the game's over I want to see how many face-offs Jamie Hanford won and how many ground balls those produced for Jarrett Park. Now that I'm finally talking about game play, let's keep it going. Face-offs were the deciding factor in my opinion, it was the only part of the game that was unbalanced. New York's free agent acquisition Jamie Hanford is continuing his dominance he had in Colorado the past couple seasons. Pat Jones is a fine face-off man and I did not expect him to get dominated like he did last night. The domination was completed by a lack of coaching adjustments by Portland. On _every_ face-off the Titans put three men behind Hanford and one in front. Portland countered with two in front and two behind. So NY starts with a 3-2 man advantage every single time. Hanford would control just about every single draw and pull it back to the odd man advantage. Jarrett Park was first and clean off the back line, he'd scoop it up and start a NY possession. The plan of attack remained the same for four straight quarters and Portland (specifically Derek Keenan) never adjusted for it at all. I thought I'd get to this later in the post, but I've already raised the issue. Derek Keenan was making no adjustments on something as simple as face-off setups that never changed. The Lumberjax offense was not getting open looks in the first half, was down 8-3 and Keenan was waiting until halftime to discuss it with his players? There's nothing to discuss, put a third man behind Hanford to even up the face-off setup. By the middle of the first quarter it was apparent that Pat Jones was not going to control the draws, make the adjustment. You're down 8-3 because everyone on offense is trying to make the extra pass (or shooting it straight in New York goalie Matt Vinc's chest). Abandon ship, put the ball in Dan Dawson's stick and follow his lead. In the 2nd half Dawson was unstoppable, but in the 1st half he was bottled up in the team offense. The games aren't long events, if you're going to make changes it needs to be done in a 2 hour period, not in practice getting ready for the next game. Keenan has proven to be a very capable GM and has assembled a roster that I'd be worried about the Stealth playing athletically. But with Keenan behind the bench the only thing you have to fear is that your initial game plan was much worse than Portland's. If you plan well and/or can make adjustments you'll be stay ahead of a Keenan coached team. In reality, Keenan just needs to shave his head and start screaming again. Two years ago in 2006 when he lead the team to the regular season West title his head was shaved and it would turn red as he screamed at his players. Players will listen to that coach and they'll want to go out and play hard and often because they don't want to be on the bench with the scary coach. Last year and this year Keenan's got hair and isn't scary (or persuasive) to the players. If the offensive woes of 2007 continue the problem won't be on the floor. The roster is stacked, the problem will be the coaches. Now I want to get back to the action on the floor. Watching the Titans I got to see a couple of things. One of my favorite former Stealth's, Jarrett Park, was playing. (Toronto's Cam Woods is my other favorite former.) And I saw Jordan Hall make his professional debut. Jordan played a good game for it being his first professional action. He is already on the EMO squad, not bad for a rookie. And he hustled all over the floor. Two times I remember him running all the way back on defense after turnovers and actually having a positive impact for NY as result of getting in and breaking up a fast break. IIRC, Jordan was a middie in college, or he at least was a middie on the 2006 Canadian World Field team, so he knows how to run and he did. Now back to Jarrett Park, he's my vote for the most under-rated player in the NLL. If the face-offs continue like this all season, and Park's ground ball numbers balloon because of it, everyone will take notice, but for now he's just another face in the crowd. Jarrett is lightning fast, I mean he caught Mark Steenhaus from behind on a fast break when Steenhaus had a good 10 yard head start. Speedy Steve Tool is the Transition legend and Josh Sims gets lots of good press in the Denver area despite being a jerk, but I'd pick Jarrett over those two in a race anytime. Go Jarrett, I miss you much. Please find a way back on the Stealth roster. On the Portland roster there were some highs and lows. The low was the start of Dallas Eliuk. The nllinsider.com forums have some excuses about league mandated pads that Dallas is in hate with, but I don't care. If it means that everyone is now wearing the same pads, then that's even less of an excuse. Eliuk was pulled 5 1/2 minutes in the game after giving up 5 goals. He wasn't making many saves, but he wasn't getting any help from his team either. Two, maybe three, of those five were Power Play goals for New York. On the high was Dan Dawson's second half play. Dawson finished with 5 goals and 4 assists for 9 points on 11 Lumberjax goals. I predicted he'd have 7 points on 13 goals. But 9 points on 11 goals, he's the central cog in the offense. And the thing is, everyone knows this and they still can't stop him!!! He's awesome and I'm so glad that we get to watch him this season while we're in Portland. I don't know what our excuse will be for buying Lumberjax tickets next season when Dawson's not in PDX. Stop Dan Dawson, Stop the Lumberjax. I dare you. Bottom line, Portland lost to a team that they are better than on paper in basically every aspect. Going in to the game I couldn't name a single NY Titan defensive player except Pat Merrill because was getting press all summer. After watching the game I still can't and they shutdown Portland. Good for them, bad bad bad for Portland. The analysts on nllinsider.com unanimously picked Portland to win - all seven. No one thought New York had a chance except New York. How Portland lost this game to a team that traveled cross country and had an inferior group of athletes is beyond me. Unless there are some major changes, my thoughts about Portland finishing last in the West will prove true.

My first game as a Lumberjax season ticket holder brings the New York Titans out West. This is a key factor in picking the winner. In the NFL you can almost always pick against the team that traveled cross-country. Same thing will apply here, even more so when the teams are otherwise evenly matched. The first face-off is at 10:30pm Eastern time, when I'm sure that a couple Titans are probably usually starting to think about going to bed, but Saturday they have to be starting a game. The main headline for the game from the NLL is that there are two sets of brothers facing off against each other. The older brothers, Patrick Merrill and Casey Powell take on the younger brothers Brodie Merrill and Ryan Powell. It's pretty amazing how many brother combinations have come through the NLL or are in the NLL right now. The league is focusing on the brothers when they should be focusing on Dan Dawson's Portland debut. But I doubt official press from the league is going to focus on continually pointing out that Arizona suspended operations. They'll just ignore that and talk about the brothers playing against each other. It's going to be Plaid Jersey night at the Rose Garden when the Lumberjax get to bust out the 3rd jersey to celebrate the new season. I've seen pictures of them and they're a pretty decisive uniform. People either love them or hate them. I thought they'd grow on me, but I'm in the "hate them" camp. Maybe it'll change when it's on a player and not model. Uniforms and brothers aside, the only real item to be evaluated is how much better will Dan Dawson make the anemic Lumberjax offense? Dawson tears it up on every team he plays for and he'll do the same in Portland. He's exactly what they need, it's too bad that they're only scheduled to have him for the one season. Also coming in on the other side of the offense is Derek Malawsky from Arizona, a former Stealth who still has the goods to put in a one or two goals a game. The Lumberjax defense will be lead by Brodie Merrill. He appears to be back 100% healthy after last years quad or hamstring injury he suffered. He'll probably be matched up on Casey Powell all night. New York's offense is lead by Casey Powell. Casey had a resurgent last season in his return to the NLL after not playing following Anaheim's suspension of operations. They've implemented a very American based offense, actually they're a very American based squad overall. This is a sympton of a rich New York guy buying a NLL for his kids. I have no proof, but I'm positive his sons made his select all their favorite players... but they were all field players. No good at the indoor game. They seriously brought Nic Polanco of the Long Island Lizards to the Titans camp a year ago. I'm sure the sons enjoyed it and their 4-12 record. Hopefully the dad has stopped listening to the sons and will let his GM pick up more Canadians to improve the team going forward. Casey Powell is joined by Ryan Boyle and rookie Jordan Hall. Hall was the Number One overall selection in this year's entry draft and I'm expecting him to make immediate contributions. The only doubt in my mind is that he's playing indoor with a bunch of Americans that don't play the typical Canadian based offense. I don't know if this will hinder his introduction to the NLL game. The highlight of the trip to Portland will be watching my favorite former Stealth and the most under rated player in the NLL, Jarrett Park. He's arguably the fastest player in the league and has adjusted the physical aspects of the game compared to the finesse of the outdoor game. If he picks a pass he's off to the races and just like Speedy Steve Toll, no one is going to catch him. Prediction: If it was a conference game with a short distance traveled by the teams it'd be a 1 point game as the teams are very evenly matched. Lumberjax take advantage of a travel weary Titans team and win 14-10. Dan Dawson will show the Portland fans why he was the easy #1 pick in the Dispersal Draft and put 7 points on New York.