A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Two more lacrosse games for the San Jose Stealth (1-2) this week. The first half of the transcontinental journey is Thursday night at Madison Square Garden against the New York Titans (1-2). There are a few similarities between the teams, both won their season opening games on the road and then both teams dropped their next two games. The Stealth and Titans also have a large number of American based players, but the Stealth put their Americans on defense while the Titans also have an American based offense lead by Casey Powell. Finally, several former Stealth players, Ryan Boyle, Jarrett Park, Matt Alrich and Matt Vinc, migrated out east during the creation of the Titans in late 2006.
The Stealth *have* to reverse the direction they went in their two games last weekend. The offense couldn’t complete many passes and the whole team failed to work together on ground balls. And it isn’t that they couldn’t scoop up a loosie, but if they did it was instantly checked out of their sticks again because everyone but Eric Martin and Jeff Zywicki left their sticks hanging after picking up the ball. Going hand in hand with the loosies was the apparent failure of communication in traffic. Instead of doing the basic “Man Ball” communication everyone just poked at the ball hoping to snatch it up while the opponents boxed guys out and won the battles. The Titans are a small and fast team that will dominate the ground ball battle against the Stealth teams that played last weekend. The Stealth can’t let this happen.
The Titan’s Casey Powell has continued his offensive leadership and dominance that emerged last season when he returned to the NLL. But he’s not the only Titan that can be focused on because four other Titans have already scored 12 or more points in the first three games. Jordan Hall has filled the hole left by Gewas Schindler nicely. While I don’t instinctively associated the five Titan forwards as being as potent as the Stealth’s main five scorers, the top five Titans have scored 16 more points (79 to 63) than the Stealth in just three games. If there is a weak defender on the floor he is at risk of being exposed by the any of the Titan forwards. The Titans are also converting more than 50% of their Power Play opportunities, so staying out of the penalty box will be more important than usual for the Stealth players.
After the Lumberjax game, the Titans defense has been exposed as weak when playing the better offenses of Buffalo and Toronto. The Stealth offense is more on par with Buffalo and Toronto than it is with the Lumberjax, so I expect the Stealth to be scoring numerous goals against them. Matt Vinc is a stellar goalie and is actually lucky to be in New York and getting all the playing time he is at his young age. Down the road this will aid him, but he still is not matured to the point that he is a shutdown goalie that can win a game like Anthony Cosmo, Steve Dietrich or Gee Nash. Until then, I look forward to playing the Titans every year possible.
Finally I’d like to see Colin Doyle return to the point of the Stealth offense where he played last season. This year he has returned to the right side, a position he played more in his days in Toronto since the Rock had Josh Sanderson playing the point. The Stealth offense didn’t flow last weekend when Doyle wasn’t up top all the time. Please Coach Christianson, stick Doyle back up top and leave him there so the offense can return to it’s dominate 2007 form.
The X Factor:
Two Titan players will determine the fate of the game. Jarrett Park being fed ground balls by Jamie Hanford in the face-off circle. Hanford took Pat Jones to school in the Portland game we saw to start the season. As noted in my Titans vs. Lumberjax review, it wasn’t entirely Jones’ fault, despite being beaten to the clamp on most draws. Jarrett Park ran free all night when Derek Keenan failed to make any adjustments at all. Stopping Jarrett Park will slow down Jamie Hanford.
Prediction:
The Stealth will control all aspects of the game and dominate for a 16-12 victory that’ll spoil the Titans home opener.
Go Stealth!