A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
This project is maintained by tfitch
Last Friday nights’ lacrosse game was a very rough defeat to arguably the best team in the league. Despite the Stealth holding a 12-10 lead more than half way through the 4th quarter the Wings woke up and put their typical 4th quarter smack down on their opponent, scoring 5 goals in just 4 minutes to make a 12-10 game a 12-15 game.
The Stealth did their best to keep Athan Iannucci quiet during the game, but he broke loose two times for quick two goals spurts, finishing with 4 on the night. His long, long stretches of quiet time were interrupted by those quick explosions that really get the Philly crowd in to the game.
After thinking about it, the game came down to one play. Nooch’s second goal of the game which he scored 7 seconds after his first goal. Something happened in that scoring sequence that made Anthony Cosmo instantly lose his cool and he started punching Nooch in what turned in a one sided fight as Nooch didn’t really know if we could even hit the goalie back. The real travesty of the fight is that Eric Martin jumps in the fight to ‘help’ Cosmo and he automatically gets ejected for being the 3rd man in a fight. It was a bum deal, Meat really should have know better. His heart was in the right spot by defending his goalie, but it was the wrong time and place to do it and it cost the team dearly. His absence was possibly the deciding factor late in the game when he could have been out there on the field slowing down the Wings offense when they started rolling. All the other defenders did a good job, but Meat’s efforts truly are not replaceable.
Thankfully this was just a regular season game so while the Stealt loss combined with Colorado’s win in Calgary means we’re no longer tied for first place we’re still in the playoffs and still positioned to run through the West in the playoffs. The only team we haven’t beaten is Portland who the Stealth haven’t had the opportunity to pick on yet, but will three times in April. I believe we are now on a collision course to return to Philly in the playoffs and show them what we learned from playing them last week. Tim Booth did a commendable job, but we should pull a Buffalo and drop back on the faceoffs to a settled defense. If another team does this and beats the Wings then Darris Kilgour needs to get some recognition as a coaching genius to identify a way to win by losing draws. The quick goals Philly scored on draws were the scoring difference in the game. If they had been prevented it could have moved the outcome to the Stealth’s favor.
Now the Stealth can return home for the first time since February 9th, and I can return to a hopefully sunny California for an afternoon of sitting in an arena before heading right back to the airport.
Having watched the Wings play the Stealth and previously the Mammoth, I can hardly wait until April 11th when I get to see the Wings in person as they smash up the Portland Lumberjax. It is going to be quiet a show.