A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
This project is maintained by tfitch
A full regular season of lacrosse is complete. Time for the second season of lacrosse to begin. One and done time.
As soon as the pairings were decided on Saturday we booked our flight to make sure we were there to cheer the boys on. Thank goodness this is tax refund season to fuel the playoff travel and tickets needs. Next we need home games though. This will be a bit much every year.
Anthony Cosmo was featured today in a USA Today interview. The thing I loved about his comments is that they show no fear of the Mammoth. After last week’s games I don’t think any of the Stealth fear the Mammoth.
Both teams were shuffling their line-ups in both games, so we didn’t see a square match-up of the starting lineups yet. But we were missing Jeff Zywicki both nights and they weren’t resting the same people. On Friday the Mammoth rested their key players who have been injured, Gee Nash and John Gallant, and that’s when we beat them. It did make a difference in their defense.
I predict a tough game, but the penalties will be reduced because it’s playoff time. The Stealth had 50 minutes of penalties in the game on Friday. Theoretically that’s 5 out of every 6 minutes of the game we could have been man down. That’s 15 penalties that we had to kill. Our Penalty Kill was good, but 15 penalties is exposing ourselves to too much liability. We should tone that down this weekend to help ensure the win.
On offense we get Zywicki back. Luke Wiles has destroyed the Mammoth in the two meetings, so if the Mammoth over compensate for this that’ll leave Zywicki with a weaker defender to take apart. Looking at the stats Wiles had almost twice as many assists as goals, he’ll enjoy have Zywicki back. Before the first two matches started I was worried about the Mammoth defense and how they matched up with us. After the last two matches I’m not. We were able to still get points on them, especially on the Man Up. Half our goals on Friday came on Man Up. The Mammoth can’t afford to get any penalties the way they played Man Down.
Lastly I need to mention “The Man”. Our leader Colin Doyle, everyone in the league had taken notice to the effect he’s had on the entire Stealth squad. He’s taken the entire team of young players and made them winner, even without NLL experience under their belts. Last year the Stealth didn’t have a single player make it on the Top 25 in league scoring. This year we have 4. This is all because of Doyle’s leadership and experience he had with the Rock.
The playoffs are a different beast from the regular season. Unfortunately the Mammoth core all have experience of a playoff run from last year. They know what they’re getting in to and they’re at home. Our players really haven’t played an NLL playoff game, except for the leader Colin Doyle. He’ll be guiding all our players, telling them what to expect and what to do. If we follow we’ll win. It can be done.
It’ll be another one goal game. It’s the only way we know how to play it, and we’ll come out on top after a quick start or half by the Mammoth. Final score, Stealth 12 and Mammoth 11. If we get crushed, it’ll be all right. Our expectations for the year is to be in the playoffs. We’ll surprise people by going further but I think we can do it. We’ve really started something.