Nothing has come easy to this team all year, so it’s only fitting that they’d have to work hard…maybe harder than they needed to to nail this one down.

After sitting through a Montreal playoff game than ended poorly, I was primed for a big night at Rexall. Other than the TV sound getting turned off for the tunes, because oddly enough, even the best sports bar in town (the T & C when you know the boss) doesn’t build its Saturday night around the Roughnecks. Shame on them.

Anyway, loved the early attack off transition. If you follow this space, you’ll know goals off transition are just about my favourite thing in lacrosse. Well done Mike Carnegie and Chris Seller.

Back and forth, back and forth. Power play and short handed. The goals kept coming. Come the second half, the backup goaltender came on. Again, faced with a lack of audio, there’s no way just yet to tell if the move to swap out Steve Dietrich for Pat Campbell was a MIke Keenan style move of genius (I have a gut feeling my multi-million dollar go to goaltender needs to get pulled because I’m so brilliant…unlikely) or a move spurred by either injury or a Troy Cordingley epihany that he didn’t care whether it was going to be San Jose or Coldorado in the playoffs. I’m thinking number three until Troy tells me otherwise.

Ahhhh…sidetracked. The important thing is is come the 4th quarter, the Roughnecks piled on the goals. Outscoring the opposition 4-1 in a game you’re already leading is something that hasn’t come been as easy as A-B-C for the Riggers, but for the last three weeks, it’s been something that’s been happening with a pleasing regularity. Happy happy joy joy.

Now, on to Denver for a date with a team the Roughnecks should have a winning record against but don’t because:

A-Week one was the first of many 4th quarter collapses.
B-Of Gavin Prout’s 67 assists, it seemed like 66 of them came against the Roughnecks as he was allowed to dictate the pace of the game all too often.

Things have changed. This isn’t the same squad Coldorado embarrassed 11-6 6 weeks ago at the “Dome. It’s a team that belives in itself, a team with confidence in its goaltending, and a team with a healthy leader that he’s helped to make believe in itself.

Find a way to follow the game next weekend. It’s gonna be good.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.