A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Tonight’s match-up of the San Jose Stealth (1-1) at the Colorado Mammoth (3-0) will be an early season, but key, Western Division game with playoff implications. If Colorado can start the season at 4-0 and the rest of the West is .500, at best, then Colorado will be in the driver’s seat for the rest of season. The rules to win the Western Division I outlined in my season preview are holding true. You have to win at home, you have to win against the Eastern Conference (neither San Jose, Colorado or Calgary have actually been tested by this) and you have to win a few games on the road in the division. A Stealth win tonight keeps their hopes alive for a conference title. A loss puts them in an early hole at 1-2, but the Stealth will still have plenty of time to recover like they did last season.
Tonight Colorado will be attempting to “Black Out” the arena with all fans wearing black. It’s a good plan of attack to have a coordinated fan base. But the “Black” part doesn’t really work for me. Being the road team, the Stealth are expected to be wearing their black jerseys. A Black Out in the visiting teams colors seems like it wouldn’t be as intimidating compared to a “White Out”. Also, the Stealth have never shown themselves to be intimidated by visiting crowd size or noise. Arguably the biggest win in Stealth history was on the road in Denver in last year’s playoffs. When 16,000 people are cheering the energy isn’t only directed to the home team. Everyone feels it and gains from it. Last night there was only 3600 people in the crowd. They were all passionate about the game and wanted a Stealth win, but could only produce some noise and not necessarily enough energy to rally the Stealth in the fourth quarter. The Stealth won’t have this problem tonight as they’ll thrive by syphoning energy from the Mammoth fans.
Now for the actual battle between the players on the floor. There are lots of aspects to evaluate every game – Offense, Defense, EMO, Man Down, Transition, Face-offs and Goalie play and inside those areas it depends on how the players execute. A stacked roster of stars that executes poorly can be beaten by the Bad News Bears. I believe again this year, like last year, that a Stealth team that executes an almost perfect game can defeat the Mammoth at home or on the road. If that perfect executing team shows up tonight and is not missing cross-crease passes and works together on ground balls a Stealth victory will come. A Stealth team that plays like last night won’t stand much of a chance, unless Colorado also executes poorly or shows fatigue and/or wear from their Thursday night OT game in Portland. The Stealth could of course also be fatigued and don’t have the day of rest that Colorado received yesterday, but Thursday’s game seemed to be more aggressive and have more wear on the Mammoth players than last night’s game had on the Stealth players.
Also on the wear and tear side I think tonight’s match-up will be the first big test on Gee Nash’s back. The first three games he’s been very impressive for Colorado but hasn’t had to play any double headers. During the second Mammoth game when they played the Edmonton Rush the TV announcers said Gee still received a shot in his back the Thursday before that game. I think that if after taking the summer off Gee still has to get a shot in his back it is just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode in spasms during some game. It’s not too much of a worry for the Mammoth as they’d just bring in Chris Levis, a very capable keeper, but it could mean there would be a couple minutes with a ‘cold’ Levis in goal and he’d potentially let in a game deciding goal or two.
The Stealth defense will have their first big challenge of the season. Calgary has a couple solid shooters on their squad, but they can’t field five threats like the Mammoth. Gavin Prout, Brian Langtry, Jason Wulder, Dan Carey and Jamie Shewchuk will be on the floor at the same time and require all five Stealth defenders to do his job to perfection. Considering how Jeff Shattler torched Cosmo and the Stealth last night, I’m more than little worried about what Langtry will do if he shoots on target.
Prediction:
I do believe that the Stealth were looking past the Roughnecks last night and will be better prepared and play better tonight than last night. The Stealth can and will win this game in another shootout. Zywicki, especially, takes pride in silencing road crowds with big road goals and will do it again tonight to make up for his less than stellar performance last night. Stealth 15 – Mammoth 14.