A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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The new look Rush, now of Bob Hamley’s design face off against the same look Stealth tonight. The advantage clearly goes to the Stealth for a number of reasons, including – the Stealth have already beat the Rush once and the Rush have an atypically large group of players to integrate to Hamley’s systems in basically one practice.
As a Rush fan said in the Wingszone forums today, the game isn’t about the Rush winning tonight, it is about learning to play together in a game environment and then taking that experience to the three remaining games against Calgary. But that doesn’t mean the Rush can entirely be looked past at all. In the last meeting, Hamley’s first game as coach he lead the Rush to having a fourth quarter lead before Jeff Zywicki broke free for a couple of goals to lead the way to the late comeback victory for the Rush.
The Stealth made it through trade deadline week without making a single change. This is what I expected. Every other team in the league, except maybe for New York, made some moves to find the missing piece for a championship. The Stealth stood by and watched. GM Johnny Mouradian probably received several calls and offers, but wisely didn’t make any moves. The Stealth are ready for the championship run with who they’ve had all season.
Tonight’s game they’ll show off why they didn’t need to make any moves. The defense will have to work a little harder than last time, the Rush have several new scorers on offense. And the offense can just continue to do what they’ve been doing all season. If the passing is crisp like against Calgary last week Curtis Palidwor will be going side to side and on his back before several of the Stealth goals are even shot.
Prediction:
The Stealth dominate all aspects of the game and win 14-9.