2010 Opening Weekend Recap

January 14, 2010
Author: tfitch

What a great opening night for the Washington Stealth!

A 17-8 drubbing of the Stealth’s long-time Western Conference rival the Colorado Mammoth was the perfect beginning to the season.  Both teams retooled their line ups during the off season.  One team’s changes appears to be working and one is not (yet) working.  In my opinion, the Mammoth’s issues are not just on the floor; I think Colorado’s Coach McMahon is the wrong guy for the job.  McMahon has had head coaching success in the NLL and was actually a former NLL Coach of the Year when he was with the Albany Attack in the early 2000’s.  (Why is that interesting?  Because the Washington Stealth are the Albany Attack, just two cities and one team name down the line in the franchise history.)  Back to the point, McMahon’s success came when he was paired with fellow coach Bob Hamley and vice versa.  McMahon has guided the Mammoth to roughly a .500 record after taking over for the legend, Gary Gait, who led the Mammoth to the NLL Championship in 2006.  The Colorado fans expect a winner and McMahon is not providing the Mammoth fans with this and they are getting restless.  Now, having said all that, it was just one game.  They still have 15 more games to work everything out.

Enough about the other team, let’s talk about the home team!  The Stealth played a total team game and aside from Jeff Zywicki’s (#67) 5 goals really spread the ball around with no other player scoring more than 2 goals.  It is very comforting to me when the Stealth do not need one man to do all the work.  Everyone just kept passing from one open guy to the next open guy and he buried the ball in the back of the next and it didn’t matter who “he” was.  I’m not going to be expecting 17 goals in every game, that output may have been tied to the Mammoth goalie situation and the Stealth players being jacked up for the first game in the new barn.  I am also not going to be expecting 17 goals against the more mature defense the Edmonton Lumberjax will be bringing to the Comcast Arena on Friday night.  There are a lot less rookies on the Jax (I mean Rush or do I?) squad than the Mammoth, but veteran Matt Disher is constantly on the verge of blowing his knee out which may open the way for another backup goalie (in this case the largely untested Brandon Atherton) coming in again.

Defensively, this is the most athletic Stealth squad I have seen since I started going to their games in 2005.  The defense also had an abnormal amount of passes they picked off from the Mammoth offense.  This is a situation where the game being a blowout can skew things.  The Mammoth may have been forcing passes they wouldn’t normally make to try to get back in the game, but in general the Stealth were picking passes in all quarters of the game.

Finally, how great is the new barn, The Comcast Arena of Everett?  They serve Mountain Dew!  So it’s just like we are still in San Jose and light years better than Portland with their Coke products.  Also, the fresh mini donuts were a big win.  Seriously though, every seat in the new barn has a great view and the crowd was really into it.

Questionable Mammoth Roster Changes:

Similar to the Stealth, the Colorado Mammoth made a number of roster changes involving key players from their 2009 rosters.  After watching the Mammoth play, the one move that sticks in my mind is how on earth the Mammoth let Josh Sims go for free yet they kept Bruce Murray who allowed Lewis Ratcliff (#42) and other Stealth forwards run around him and score.  The Philadelphia Wings then picked up Sims and he played with them in their first game.  Sims had trade value that was passed up for an older, slower defender.  As an outsider looking in, it appears the Mammoth front office may be too loyal to some of their roster.

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****<figcaption id="caption-attachment-295" class="wp-caption-text">Stealth Rookie Matt Beers</figcaption></figure>

Rookie Welcomings:

How about Stealth rookie Matt Beers (#2) bursting onto the scene.  To quote a certain teammate late after the game “1 goal and 2 fights.  Worst.  Rookie.  Ever!”.  Thankfully that joke is far from the truth.  It wasn’t a 5 goal debut like Garrett Billings of Toronto, but Beers isn’t a forward either.  Beers went out and played his defense and scored a goal, going above and beyond.  The bar has been set high for Friday’s game against the Edmonton Lumberjax, personally I’m expecting 2 goals (and 2 fights).  The only other Stealth rookie on the floor was forward Kory Kowalyk (#19)who failed to score a couple of goals because his feet are too big.  My size 14 feet can totally relate to him, so I forgive him.  He’ll get it next time out.

The Colorado Mammoth played with five rookies on the floor.  The Gajic brothers who are really only rookies in name because they’ve been playing successful lacrosse at the highest levels in Canada for a couple of years, Cliff Smith who is their teammate on New Westminster, Brad Richardson who I’m pretty sure is a rookie (and fought Eric Martin (#25)) and finally Ryan McFadyen who is a whole lot bigger in person than he looked on TV while playing for Duke.

<figcaption id="caption-attachment-291" class="wp-caption-text">Stealth Goalie Tyler Richards</figcaption></figure>

Game MVP:

Jeff Zywicki had a marvelous game with 5 goals and an assist.  Wick really stuck it to Paul Tutka and his NLL Top 50 players rankings.  But I am sorry, he did not end up being my game MVP.  Tyler “The Ghost” Richards (#00) and his ~84% save percentage and first quarter shutout of the Colorado Mammoth was the real difference maker in Saturday’s game.  The defense in front of Richards helped prevent the Mammoth from walking in on Richards all night, but 7 goals is well below the average goals scored output for an NLL team.

Special Player Quiz:

Which player’s father camped out and lied about his son’s age to get him registered to play hockey when he was just a “3 foot tall 4 year old with a 2 inch fuse” instead of waiting until he was 5 in accordance with the hockey association’s rules?