A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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I wasn’t too rushed to put out this review since we lost. But we lost in interesting fashion, so there’s a couple things to talk about.
It was our first game against a higher ranked opponent since we started our winning streak we played with the Sting well, but not well enough. It was really an issue of failing to capitalize on the great opportunity Cosmo and the defense gave us. Arizona didn’t score a single goal in the 1st or 3rd quarters. We shut them out for half the game and still couldn’t win. That’s pretty rough. All we could muster during those quarters was a couple of Luke “Thud” Wiles goals. (We started calling Luke “Thud” because he’s got a cannon for a shot, but he misses the cage a lot. And when he does “Thud” goes the ball off the boards).
So we clearly won the 1st and 3rd quarter by a mighty 2-0.
Then the 2nd quarter was a scoring bonanza. We flew out the gate with 3 goals in the first 1:40 of the 2nd quarter. Now we’re up 4-0 and in control. This control continued for another couple minutes until the under 10 minute TV timeout happened. That TV timeout really zapped the flow of the game and gave Arizona the time to regroup and pull their heads out of the desert sand. The remembered that Dan Dawson is one of their forwards and we’re not able to play body on him, just lunge at him while he swims past us for easy looks on Cosmo. Curt Malawsky also dinged us for a couple goals in the second quarter. We finish the half tied at 5-5.
We regrouped for the third quarter when we shut them out again. But it felt like we were playing from behind, not tied or with a one goal lead, but behind. Everyone was really tight, afraid to make bad pass. The game was close and everyone was afraid of that fact. They didn’t want to be the guy that caused the error that let Arizona take the lead. In the games against Portland and Edmonton everyone was so much looser. They just shot when they were open and weren’t afraid of the consequences of maybe having a bad pass. We’d out hustle people and get the ball back. Not on Saturday though. Everything “had to be perfect” for anyone to be comfortable.
Something I noticed, and not just from this game, is that we don’t get open when Doyle draws a double or triple. Colin will drive high across the field from a screen and he’ll get double or triple teamed. At the same time he’s double or triple teamed no one is open… they’re just clumped in the pile with everyone. Darren Halls did this in the Portland game perfectly, he picked for Colin and rolled to the cage WIDE OPEN. He finished his move and all was good. But when Rosy, Sedgwick or Burkholder are out there it gets clumped, Doyle gets mugged and nothing comes of it.
Burkholder also still appears to be slightly injured from when he went down in Portland. He missed the Edmonton game, but was in the line-up on Saturday. In all previous games he acts as a spark plug. He’d make an inspiring one-on-one move, go to the cage and probably score. Not once against the Sting did he make that first step. He was more of a placeholder out there, and that’s not where he’s productive. Hopefully this week he gets back up to speed or he rests to be ready for Colorado. Whatever is the case, if he’s not 100% and able to fly by someone who over plays him, I’d rather he rested up.
The game was really close and honestly could have gone either way. Just a better positional defense on Dawson (I know I said to let him score and shutdown his assists, but his scoring was way too easy). Only one of his four? goals did he have to try to get past his defender. The other three were effortless, just a swim move and he left his defender in the dust. I’ve never seen it look so easy.
The result of the game combined with the other action in the West is that we’re in 4th place right now, 1/2 a game behind Calgary and 1 game ahead of Edmonton. I think we can lock out Edmonton by beating them next Saturday, and still catch Calgary hopefully as well. I’d love a rematch against Arizona based on how Saturday’s game went.