If it only had a little more entertainment value.
The Vancouver Stealth put together nearly a perfect Saturday. The Stealth, who wound up 4-14 in their debut season out of the Langley Events Centre last year, improved to 3-3 in their sophomore campaign Saturday and took a massive step toward the National Lacrosse League playoffs with a 13-9 win over the Calgary Roughnecks before a crowd of 3,715 at the LEC.
Heck, even wrestling great Bret Hart was there, meeting and greeting with fans.
The contest was disjointed and messy for stretches, though, thanks to a combined 23 power plays. It wasn’t an overly testy affair. Referees Jason Wiswell and Greg Hart opted to go heavy on the holding and too many men calls. Calgary was 4-for-9 with the man advantage, while Vancouver was 4-for-14.
“Those kind of games are tough,” said Vancouver sniper Rhys Duch. “It’s frustrating as a player. You love all the calls on them. You hate all the ones on us. You know what? At least they were consistent, in that they made a lot of calls and didn’t just stop.
“At that point, it’s up to us to make the adjustments and neither team did.”
Calgary, who came into the night with their season in harm’s way thanks to an 0-5 record, started strong and led 3-1 early in the second quarter. The Stealth got goals from Tyler Garrison and Cliff Smith 18 seconds apart to knot the score at 3-3 midway through the stanza and then power-play markers from Duch and Tyler Digby 19 seconds apart later on to go up 5-3.
The Roughnecks cut the margin to 7-6 and 8-7 in the third, but Duch scored two to round out the frame and that was it.
The teams meet again next week in Calgary, and Vancouver can further improve their playoff chances and sink Calgary’s at the same time. The top three teams in the four-team West Division make the postseason.
Calgary, of course, went to the NLL final last year.
“Now that we’ve found our legs, we’re starting to string some wins together,” said Duch.
Digby added: “This is a totally different team from last year. That’s been put behind us.”
Vancouver was bolstered Saturday by the return of defenders Garrison and Rory Smith from lower and upper body injuries, respectively. Sure enough, the Stealth held the Roughnecks to 46 shots on goal. In their last game, a 16-13 win over the Colorado Mammoth, they gave up 58 shots.
Vancouver netminder Tyler Richards was solid throughout, though, with his 37 saves. Calgary wasn’t able to get any sustained momentum after the early going.
“It’s easy to point fingers at the goalie when things aren’t going right. He’s taken the brunt of it last season and a couple of games this season and, to his credit, he’s shouldered it. Tonight, he made some huge saves at big times and that’s one of the differences in the game,” said Duch.
Duch wound up with four goals and two assists. Digby had two goals and three helpers, and Corey Small produced one goal and four assists. Johnny Powless had four assists.
Shawn Evans had two goal and three assists for Calgary, while Curtis Dickson had two goals and two assists.
