A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Tomorrow night the Stealth go to the Madison Square Garden to face-off against the expansion NY Titans. It’ll be a reunion for four former Stealth that played with us last year and we shipped off either through the expansion draft or trade. These are Ryan Boyle, Jarett Park, Matt Alrich and Matt Vinc.
Boyle and Richey went to NY in the trade for the #1 draft pick, where we took Ryan Benesch. Jarett and Vinc were top picks in the expansion draft. Losing Jarett in the expansion draft was a real bummer. He’s a New Yorker and being available to NY in the expansion draft was a no-brainer that he’d be taken. If I was the GM, I woulda kept Jarett on the protected list and left Kevin Fines unprotected. Fines probably still would have been taken too, maybe not, but I’d rather have had Jarett on the roster instead of Fines. But that’s just me. Jarett is also a SF Dragon, so having him play his year round home games in the Bay Area made sense. Maybe he was homesick and wanted to spend more time in NY. It’s tough to say without actually knowing the guy. And once Dec. 27th came, it didn’t matter because Fines was a required piece of the Colin Doyle trade. So if we’d kept Park instead of Fines in the expansion draft we’d have needed to give up Jarett for Doyle, or something along those lines. Yet another ‘and’ to this thought process is Kevin is from Ontario, so his trade value to Toronto was higher than Jarett’s was. So they’re both gone, but I miss Jarett.
As for the trade for the #1 pick of Boyle, Richey and Vinc went to NY for our back-up goalie Aaron Bold and the #1 pick which was Ryan Benesch. Bold is nice to have around, he was great in relief in the one win at Calgary when Cosmo got tossed for telling the ref the goal scored by the Roughneck was illegal. (Refs are blowing the calls on those behind the net scores. They need to either enforce the no touching the goalie rule, make the shot totally illegal or make the shot totally legal with no restrictions. One of those three, because last week Steve Dietrich had a Phill shot from behind _clearly_ go in off his shoulder and should not have been a goal, but was still called good. That rule or enforcement needs to change.)
Anyways, what I’m getting at is the actual cost of Colin Doyle. It wasn’t just Kevin Fines, Chad Thompson and Ryan Benesch. Looking above, Ryan Benesch = Ryan Boyle and Matt Alrich (Vinc for Bold is 1-to-1 wash on the trade value). So Colin Doyle is all the above players. That’s alot. Doyle’s had a load of assists this year, but his goal production is lower than the past. All the opposing D is focusing on him so much this was bound to happen. He’s still getting lots of points though. So it’s good.
Finally, the preview – our Stealth are coming off a two week break and haven’t played a game in three weeks now. Three weeks in the middle of the season? How does this scheduling actally happen? We’ll either to totally rested or totally out of sync. If we’re rested and playing well we’ll steam-roll the Titans. If we’re outta sync we’ll be in a struggle. We’ll play 3 bad quarters and 1 really good quarter. In that case the game could go either way. This is also known as “A typical 2007 Stealth game”.
On offense, we’ve got a new wrinkle to work in. We acquired Andrew Burkholder from Colorado for a disgruntled Jim Moss during our downtime. So Burkholder’s probably only played with the team at tonight practice. His newness to the team will have some impact. I bet he has two goals, but we’ll still need to get used to him. On the right side Zywicki and Wiles will just keep doing their thing, getting a handful of goals combined. The Titan offense is lead by Casey Powell, leading point scorer in the entire NLL (who’d have picked that?) and Ryan Boyle who’s rejuvinated being back East where he’s from and more in his element than San Jose. After his Rookie of the Year performance in 2005, he slumped significantly last year. I think league defenses figured out how to guard him a little better, but this year it’s a new conference that’s not as used to him and he’s putting up points again and made the All-Star team. Watch the Titan offense and how it flows through Powell to judge determine their chance of winning.
On defense I think we have a clear advantage. We’ve got Cosmo or Bold in goal. It could go either way right now. Cos has had three weeks to get his head straight after his weak start in January. The entire D also needs to step up and support him. They seem to step up and support Bold when he comes in, because they know he’s not the starter and thus needs more help. But the D needs to give the same support to Cosmo when he’s in. Cosmo has been left 1-on-1 with open shooters way more than Bold has and the stats reflect this. The Titans TRADED THEIR STARTING GOALIE two weeks ago. Huh? Give up on your season much? They must have thought their back-ups were ready for the big time, and with Vinc in there, you’d think so. But no, the started the other guy last week against Minnesota and he gave up 9 goals in the first quarter. Whoops. Vinc game in right at the end of the 1st and held the Swarm to 8 goals for the rest of the game. So the either guy lost that game for them. Look for Matt Vinc to start tomorrow if I was the coach.
The actual defenders for the Stealth have more experience playing together that the NY team, and if they step up and don’t leave the goalie facing 1-on-1 shots we’ll own that half of the field. This also involves shutting down Casey Powell and Ryan Boyle. Making the other guys beat us. We can handle the others. I’m sure Meat is looking forward to lining up against Boyle. Last year, even when they’re on the same team they’d be a little chippy because they’re both so competitive. Which is a good thing in pro athletes.
Last up, Face-Offs. Tim Booth has been very steady for us all year, even holding up again Snider in Philly better than most. The Titans had “Captain America” Matt Zash facing off for them last week. Booth > Zash.
Actual Prediction: Stealth 14 – NY Titans 11
Getting that 2nd win and moving us ahead of the “mighty” Lumberjax in the standing will be awesome. They’re totally imploding and if we only have to catch up to Edmonton to get that 4th playoff spot I’ll be one happy Stealth fan!