A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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I just watched the Portland @ Colorado game that aired on Versus this morning.
Portland has definitely dropped off this year. The roster is fairly intact from last year, so I think they got “figured out” by the rest of the league. This is something that usually happens at the player level, not at a whole team level.
A rookie will come on the scene that is an unknown, like Ryan Boyle in 2005 because he was a field player, they score a bunch of goals that no one fully expected. I think the league is still small enough that the teams got get film sessions like they do in the NFL. So from week to week, Boyle keeps chugging along at a great rate. The other teams see the numbers, but arent’ sure how he’s going it. Once the season is over, the opposing teams have the time to figure out what Boyle did. And figure it out they did. Boyle’s 2006 number dropped noticeably. That’s my theory as to a player being “figured out”. On a side note, watch out for Dan Carey, he put up big numbers last year and is still putting up big numbers and sweet outside shots in his sophomore campaign.
But this year, we’re seeing it happen to the entire Lumberjax team. That was most unexpected. Brodie Merrill was a cover boy for several season preview publications. Portland was coming back to finish what they started last year. They won the West last year, this year they’re 2-8 through their first 10 games. 2 wins in 10 games. Mega ouch.
Is Brodie Merrill hurt or sick? They said he only played the first half Friday night at Edmonton and then sat out. And he didn’t play at all on Saturday. Now that I’ve seen the game I’ll go read about it, the missing info might be there.
Colorado is a team on a mission. It started with avenging their defeats to Portland 3 times last year. This year they steamroll Portland in all three of their regular season meetings. I’m not excited that the Stealth’s last two regular season games are a home and home with Colorado. Hopefully a playoff spot won’t be dependent on the Stealth winning those games. And even if we do make the playoffs, we’ll probably being the 4th spot going to the #1 seed to play a game – Colorado. Three straight games against the same team. Those should be a real treat, that much close contact with each other should bring up a fight or two.