The Iroquois Ironmen are set to lock horns on Friday in a rubber match with the Ohsweken Demons. The Ironmen are a in a battle with the Barrie Blizzard for the sixth and final playoff spot with three games remaining for both teams. Friday is the last regular season game for the Demons and then they’ll have to sit back and wait to see where they will end up in the Canadian Lacrosse League standings.
The Demons are coming of a hard fought game last Saturday in Durham versus the TurfDogs in what many are calling the game of the year. It was back and forth action with both teams giving it their all. The big thing Ohsweken has to work on is moving the ball into their opponent’s offensive zone a lot quicker than they have been. Against Durham they were taking upwards of 15 seconds to get down the floor which means half the shot clock is already wasted, giving them hardly any time to set something up. This happened on almost every possession and it’s an area that they definitely need to work on against Iroquois.
Although the Demons sit first in powerplay goals (50) they also sit second in shorthanded goals against (9) and need to work on their defense while on the man advantage. They get caught way too many times and we saw it happen again last weekend in Durham. They need to better anticipate their turnovers and have a man ready to run back into their defensive zone. Too many times we see their top man get caught flat footed while the shorthanded team goes the other way for a scoring chance. We even saw some shorthanded 2 on 0’s from Durham last week which should not happen when your team is a man up. Having someone ready to run back is a little fix that will make a big difference for this Demons squad.
Iroquois has been struggling all year but they’ve been fired up and ready to play in both games against Ohsweken this year. They kicked of the CLax season against each other back in January with the Demons edging the Ironmen 18-15 but the game really could have gone either way. They didn’t meet again until almost two months later in another war at the Iroquois Lacrosse Arena. Once again it was a high scoring game but this time the Ironmen got the better of the Demons as they took that one 17-14.
The Ironmen are struggling to find the back of the net this year and need to start generating some more offense. Last year’s league leading scorer Chris Attwood has only tallied 46 points so far which is well off his pace of from last year’s total of 72. Josh Johnson sits second in team scoring with 27 points while Mike Longboat rounds out the top three with 21 points. On the other side the Demons have 7 players with 21 points or more and their top three scorers (Delby Powless, Wayne VanEvery and Cory Bomberry) have over 50 points each. With that being said, the Ironmen have scored at least 15 goals in both meetings with the Demons; something they have not accomplished against any other opponent this year.
Their previous meetings have been hard hitting and high scoring so expect nothing less on Friday when they fight for bragging rights of the season series. Game time is 8pm at the Iroquois Lacrosse Arena in Hagersville Ontario.
