A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Starting things off with today’s news. Colin Doyle and Jeff Zywicki have been named as All-Star reserves to the upcoming NLL All-Star game in Portland on March 10th.
I think Doyle was a shoe-in as a pick, what I’m really happy to see is Zywicki get picked up as well, showing his emerging presence has been noticed. I think it also helps that Gary Gait (head coach of the West All-Star team and teammate from last summer’s Canada national team that won the world title) was picking the reserves. I think he’s more aware of Jeff’s skills than Chris Hall might be.
A handful of former Stealth have also made the All-Star teams. This includes Cam Woods who’s starting defense, Brandon Miller as back-up keeper, Speedy Steve Toll reserve Transition, Josh Sanderson, reserver forward, and Ryan Boyle, reserve forward, all for the East. In the west Rob Blasdell, now the goalie at Arizona is starting for the West.
More info on the Starters and Reserves is available at those links.
My early prediction based on the line-ups. The West wins. They have more pure defenders on the roster and the East will be playing D with only a couple D guys and more Transition players. Definitely needing to bring a forward or two back to play some serious D at some point. This isn’t the NBA All-Star game where D is frowned upon, the Weat will need to step it up and they don’t appear to have the guys to do it at first glance. And will the refs call it like the rest of the regular season games, or left stuff go to open the game up and let the fans in Portland enjoy it a little more? (After the Lumberjax 2-6 start a ‘fun’ game would be a nice change up.)
Of course Snider is the damn wildcard, if the East never lose a face-off do they even have to worry about playing defense???