A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Friday night the Stealth go to Philadelphia to take on the upstart Wings and their high octane offense lead by MVP candidate Athan Iannucci. Nooch has been Michael Jordan like this season. He’s the league’s leading goal scorer, the defense knows that he is going to score, but it doesn’t matter what they do, he gets his goals. If the Stealth were to lose this game but hold Nooch to one goal I think that would be a good victory in itself. Since the Stealth are going to win and hold Nooch to one goal it is going to be like two wins for one.
In the Wings last outing they were torn apart by the Buffalo Bandits. Buffalo conceded face-offs to Geoff Snider the entire game and instead of coming out of draws in unsettled situations the immediately dropped back to a settled defense and disrupted the Wings offense. This game was also the first time all season the Wings had to play two games in one weekend and they may have been fatigued. Their usual game style, as I saw when they played the Mammoth on Altitude, is fast fast fast with a big helping of near full court pressure. This doesn’t lend itself to multi-game weekends, but that isn’t case this time around.
The Stealth on the other hand have won three in a row thanks to an offense that is hitting their end of season form and it’s not even April yet. The Stealth offense is playing great and the defense has been equally effective the past two games, only giving up 8 goals in both matches. In between the offense and defense lies the transition, and transition is where the the Wings destroyed the Mammoth and the Stealth have to prevent the Wings from winning the game. The Stealth have a better roster compared to the Mammoth to match up with the Wings. The Stealth are young, American and ready to run. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as long as the guys on offense get off the floor in time our young defense can get back and cutoff Nooch’s fast breaks the Stealth won’t have much to worry about.
Friday night is forward AJ Shannon and Brendan Miller’s first game as a Wing after being traded from Edmonton and Chicago two weeks ago. The Wings were very active the past couple weeks leading up to next weeks trade deadline. They mainly dumped players who hadn’t already played in all their games and AJ Shannon is the only addition to the Wings day to day roster. Shannon is a good veteran and should pretty seamlessly integrate to the Wings high powered offense. The Stealth on the other hand have made no moves this season and aren’t expected to make any moves. The roster has been set since training camp and is central to their best start in four seasons.
This is the Stealth’s final game against an Eastern Conference team and a victory is key to maintaining the drive to 1st place in the West. Just like I said at the start of the season, if you don’t win your Eastern conference games you most likely can’t win the West. The Stealth are 2-0 and the Mammoth are 0-1 and still have to play Buffalo and Rochester to go. Going 3-0 compared to 0-3 is a huge difference the maker the Stealth can’t let slip away from them.
Prediction:
Another close game, but it will go in the Stealth’s favor 14-12. The Wings are rested and this is the second week in a row the Stealth have travelled or else I think the game would be closer to the Buffalo-Philly result. Cosmo is the game MVP for all the saves he gathers against the Wings’ 70 shots on and off goal.
Go Stealth!