A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Second time around and it was a lot closer this time around.
Portland fought hard time around. Cutting the score down to 9-7, a big step from the 17-8 beating last week.
Portland’s goon Guze did a good job of occupying Rosy, finally getting in to a fight with him with 5 mins left in the game. We were already up one goal at this point and got the final nail in the coffin with Colin Doyle scoring his goal to make the lead two and seal the deal.
The thing I noticed last week when the Lumberjax were in town I was looking at the roster and noticed that the Jax have the problem of continuity. They have a couple of guys who’ve played in almost every game and then a large number of guys who have played like 5 or 6 games. So the same set of guys is not out there every week, and they’re not used to playing together. When they’re in a pinch the guy with the ball seems to take it to the cage and hope for the best. It doesn’t work. Who’s their threat? The trade deadline has passed for Portland is stuck with the players they’ve got, which is nothing on offense and big bruisers on defense. They’re just hoping to survive.
Cosmo dominated in the second half of the game. Dominated. Portland’s last goal was 1:28 in to the 3rd quarter. That means Cosmo and the defense stopped the entire Jax from scoring for the final 28 minutes and 32 seconds of the game. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen a team stall out for a quarter, but not for an entire half. Good job Shaydon Santos, Curtis Hodgson, Eric Martin, Andrew Guindon, Ian Hawksbee, Steve “Shooter” Holmes, Kyle Sorenson, Darren Halls and Tim Booth. The roster is defensive heavy (9 D vs. 7 forwards), and it’s working out well. (Okay, I think I remember the Stealth scoring only one goal in the first half of a game last year, probably against Portland. But the first half is better than the second half when the game is being decided.)
On offense, we weren’t smooth, but most guys capitalized on their open opportunities. Dallas Eliuk made a couple nice saves, the “Save of the Game” was against Luke Wiles who found himself too open on the crease and four fakes later the shot went off Eliuk’s shoulder and high. That was mighty impressive for being hung out to dry like he was. I don’t think we had anything that was a “high light” on offense except Holmes draining the shot on his break away for the game winner. Oh yes, our man _down_ goals in the first quarter by Burkholder and Sedgwick were exciting and turned out to be pivotal in the final score.
The B2 broadcast was messed up, they played the Versus video feed and the stadium mike until part way in to the 4th quarter. So we missed out on Scott Lynn and Coach Silcott’s commentary for three quarters, but it’s nice. Because when the game in rebroadcast on Monday it’ll be new to us, I have not clue what they said most the time.
We’ve sitll got one more game in Portland on April 6th. I have no clue what to expect in that match. Portland might be eliminated from the playoffs by that time. We’ll still be trying to improve our seed, so the implications will be very different for each team.
Tomorrow is Edmonton here, I’ll have to think on it for a little bit and check their injuries. I’ll think on it for a while and put up the preview tomorrow.