A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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The 2008 NLL West Division champion San Jose Stealth host the Portland Lumberjax for the third time in just one month. Portland has become familiar and comfortable with the HP Pavilion because they won the previous two meetings, but it is a false sense of security they have acquired. In the most recent meeting they Lumberjax won 12-11 in overtime on a goal scored with Portland’s Derek Malawsky parked in the crease even before the shot was taken. Had that goal been disallowed things could have possibly gone the Stealth’s way that night, but it is impossible to know for sure.
The Stealth players aren’t forgetting they had that OT game taken away from them and will ensure that this time around the Jax won’t even be close as the game progresses. Portland thinks that they have the ability to come play a spoiler to San Jose like San Jose played to the Colorado Mammoth last year. But there is a key difference between the two underdogs in this comparison, last year the Stealth were hungry and knocked off a team that had already won it all and didn’t focus on their first round opponent. Portland on the other hand might be hungry, but they’re going to play a Stealth team that hasn’t won a Champions Cup and Portland is in the way of the Stealth achieving a goal they haven’t obtained yet. In other words, the Lumberjax are going to get run over in a game similar to last season in San Jose when Gary Rosyski scored 10 points and the final score was 17-8. No matter how much the Lumberjax think they’re ready for this game, they are not prepared for the fury about to be unleashed on them.
On defense Eric Martin and Steve Holmes are ready for Dan Dawson and Ryan Powell. Dawson will still get points, he always does, but he will be limited by the two lefty defenders banging on him all night. Powell has been slowed down with an sprained ankle, I don’t know what his status is for this game. He’ll almost certainly play, I just don’t know if he’s 100%. The one thing I did see today when I was watching the previous meeting that I missed the first time around is that Powell hurt his ankle on that game winning OT goal. I didn’t see if he tripped on a person or the floor, but he went down in a heap and for the level of play he needs to perform at it will probably hinder him.
Behind Meat, Holmsie, Curtis Hodgson, Kyle Sorenson, Shaydon Santos, Andrew Guindon, Steve Panarelli and Paul Dawson is the wall Mr. Cosmo. His save percentage was around 85% in his last outing and he was over 80% for the month of April. He’s a slow starter in terms of the season, but he finishes the season red hot and rolling in to the playoffs. Portland’s offense is going to have a rough afternoon ahead of them.
Injured Stealth sniper Luke Wiles might be out of his cast by now. It’s been 5 week since his injury in Edmonton so he’s got to be close to a full recovery and itching to get out on the floor. Maybe he’ll be on the bench in street closes, I’ll keep my eyes peeled. Cam Sedgwick had a great April and has been the one Stealth that’s really stepped up his performance in games fill the void that Luke left in the typical Stealth offense. In the past two weeks Peter Veltman has also come on strong. The delay between his insertion in the lineup and production in the offense was nothing to worry about. He was on the shelf for two months and then was immediately called in to action and I think he basically played his way through a live training camp in April and is now at full speed and knows the offense and his teammates now. We’re glad to have him and we’ll be really glad to have him for the playoffs because of the experience he brings having gone to the finals last year and in 2006.
Veltman alone has 8 games of NLL playoff experience from being with the Arizona Sting the last three seasons. This brings me to my last point of the game. Playoff experiences. The entire Stealth roster minus Veltman (who was there on his own) and this years rookies have the experience of going to the playoffs and winning in the playoffs as a team last year. This experience is unmatched on Portland roster. My rough count of their roster found 6 or 7 guys who played on Portland’s previous playoff team in 2006 and the rest with playoff experience got it in Minnesota or Arizona. But there aren’t cohesive groups of guys who’ve played together in the playoffs. So they can built on what they’ve done during the regular season, but it’s a new season and the Jax don’t have a Colin Doyle to show them what to do on Sunday. In actuality, all the things I mention above are nice and important, but Popeye is the real difference maker in this match up and he’s ready to lead the team to victory on Sunday.
Prediction:
As noted in the last game broadcast, in this series the first team to score 12 goals wins the game. So Stealth 12 – Lumberjax 8.
Go Stealth!