Lots of talk this week about how this year’s playoff run compares to the Champion’s Cup year, and in a lot of ways it’s a fair comparison. A stumbling start, a late surge, and voila, one win away from the big one, possibly against the Buffalo Bandits. Again.

The big difference this time around is…well…there isn’t that much difference. In ‘04 Curtis Palidwor was on his game and ended up as the Championship MVP. Since his return from a concussion, Steve Dietrich has been lights-out for this year’s model. Taylor Wray was an emerging star on defense on ‘04, Scott Ranger’s an emerging star on offense this time around. You get the idea. Okay, I don’t think anyone’s going to confuse Chris Hall’s quiet style behind the bench with Troy Cordingley’s shall we say, more animated approach. But other than that, it’s pretty easy to draw the comparison.

The big fear going into Saturday night is the risk of taking the opponent too lightly. Given what’s at stake and given the way the Roughnecks battled down the stretch, that shouldn’t be a problem. Ask the San Jose Stealth where underestimating the ‘Jax got them last week.

No real stunners ont he lit fo things the Riggers have to do right to beat this team:

Contain the Big Gun: He’s Dan Dawson. He bagged 7 goals and 5 assists against San Jose. You might want to cover that guy.

Push: The turning point of the first home game against Portland was Kaleb Toth’s devastating yet clean hit that knocked wandering goaltender Matt King silly. Toth looked around waiting for the inevitable beating from an angry Portland D with Ranger at his back, but nothing happened. Surprising considering the size Portland brings to bear, and the fact Brodie Merrill wasn’t afraid to mix it up with Jeff Moleski and Ryan McNish on a couple of occasions this year.

Spread it around: Hard to tell where the shot’s coming from these days. Kelusky, Toth, Ranger, Shattler, Sanderson and the transition guys need to be ont he board.

There has been some grumbling about ticket prices for this game, and rightly or wrongly they have been raised, but remember brad Bannister gave away 18 thousand of these things free the last time Portland was in town and with the end of the season looming, this is the chance to pay off some bills.

As Kaleb Toth pointed out on JACK FM this morning, remember this is the only pro sports team in Canada in the playoffs right now, and we got ‘em. The championship game is in the East this year, so this if your last chance to try and cheer the Roughnecks out on a winning note.

No TV for this one, but if you can’t make it or if you’re out of town, I will be calling the B2 broadcast of the game. Link to that through the Roughnecks site or nll.com. I promise to be a little more even handed than the Altitude guys!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 9:03 am 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.