Minnesota Swarm at Portland Lumberjax January 3rd Game Review

January 5, 2009
Author: tfitch

The Minnesota Swarm opened their 2009 NLL season with a 11-7 road victory against the Portland Lumberjax.  The Swarm’s Kevin Ross lead all goal scorers with 3 goals (5 pts total) and Sean Pollock lead all scorers with 6 pts (2 goals and 4 assists).  Kevin Croswell, the unexpected goalie starter for the Swarm had a slow start the first 10 minutes of the game but he and his defense settled down and only gave up 4 more goals in the final 49 minutes of the game.  He was voted a well deserved MVP of the game.

<figcaption id="caption-attachment-120" class="wp-caption-text">Game MVP Kevin Croswell</figcaption></figure>

Minnesota’s success despite missing two All Stars, defender Ryan Cousins and goalie Nick Patterson, is an uncertain sign of one of two things 1) the team has depth and trusts everyone on the roster to contribute 2) Portland’s offense is as bad as people feared.  Or some combination of the two.  A second game for each team will make things more clear, especially for Portland and their offense.  Peter Morgan and 40 year old Dan Stroup each scored two goals two lead the Jax offense.  Ryan Powell had zero points in his first game without Dan Dawson.  Stroup set several picks to get RP open, but RP’s shoots were pulling about a foot left of cage each time.  He’ll get that dialed in eventually, but until then he needs to be setting other guys up instead of taking 14 shots and only being on cage with half of those.

There were a couple of bright spots for Portland.  Young goalie Joel Weber got his first ever NLL minutes running on and off the floor at the end of the game.  Welcome to the NLL Joel.  Second, the Jax got their first game out of the way and next  weekend will face a Colorado Mammoth team, that despite having a scrimmage against the San Jose Stealth 3 weeks ago, haven’t played a live game themselves.

Bottom line for the Jax – the defense can play their hearts out to keep the opponent in check, but without offense it is all for not.  It’s not every game in the NLL where the winning team only scores 11 goals.  Brian Shanahan placed Portland at the bottom of the first 2009 NLL Power Rankings and it is not because of the defense.

Finally, challenges are now part of the NLL and it’s possible that Lumberjax coach Derek Keenan forgot this at the first opportunity he had to make a challenge.  I’m not positive the non goal would have turned over to a goal (from the one angle I saw the ball was on the line, but may not have crossed it entirely).  Minnesota’s coach Duane Jacobs made a successful  challenge in the 2nd quarter to overturn a Jax goal.  Shortly afterwards Keenan did make a challege for a goal where Pete Jacobs was obviously lying in the crease. It felt reactionary to Jacobs successful challenge.  My buddy Tim is convinced that in the first instance that Keenan forgot he could challenge the call.  From what I saw, I’m inclined agree at this time.