Marcus Holman had a game-high five goals and Tom Schreiber led the visiting Ohio Machine with seven assists on a chilly Friday night in Denver, en route to an 18–12 victory over the Denver Outlaws. The loss was Denver’s first home loss since July 4th, 2014, and only their second since midway through the 2012 season. Brian Phipps led a stalwart defensive effort for the Machine with 10 saves, several of which were on shots from point-blank range.
The first half of the Denver-Ohio game played out the way that many expected. Two heavy weights exchanging body blows. Drew Snider scored less than a minute into the game and all signs pointed toward a shootout. Marcus Holman finished the first frame with a hat trick, and Ohio led 4–3 after one.
Denver’s Mike Bocklet, who threw a wrench in the Machine’s gears the last time these two teams met this season, played the same role in the first half of this contest. Bocklet the Elder matched his previous effort with four goals, all of them coming before the break. Yet it was younger brother Chris who broke open the tie game, scoring off a feed from John Grant with nine seconds remaining in the half to put the home team up 8–7.
That’s about as good as things got for the Outlaws. The second half saw the Machine shift from body blows to uppercuts, going for the kill. Phipps really stood up in the third quarter, making 6 of his 10 saves in Act III, denying several would-be goals that had the potential for momentum swings.
By the time the fourth quarter rolled around Ohio feasted on the Outlaws like a hyena devouring a freshly killed antelope. Machine rookie Jimmy Bitter completed a hat trick in the fourth quarter, as the visitors outscored the home team 6–3 to end things.
Ohio’s killer instinct cannot be denied. They put up 20 points last week without Steele Stanwick or Peter Baum. Sure that was against the struggling Launch, but to lay 18 down on the defending champs at their house while once again with the services of Baum deserves a round of applause. Ohio had two goals challenged as well, and both were determined to be no-goals, but the point being that the Machine were able to get to the rack and get there often.
So let’s not use the excuse of the Outlaws having a bad night, which they certainly did, detract from what Ohio accomplished on this evening.
Now that we’ve sung the praises of the Machine, let’s shift to what went wrong with Denver.
If you look at the box score it will tell you that Anthony Kelly won 20-31 faceoffs, but what it won’t tell you is how sloppy the Outlaws looked in that facet of the game. Greg Puskuldjian was able to wrap up Kelly enough to prevent fast breaks, but the Outlaws shot themselves in the foot time and again with poor groundball play and bad turnovers in the middle of the field.
On top of this, the defense was atrocious. Lethargic might be a good adjective to describe what Denver fielded on Friday night. You’d think that the defense were playing in the fields of Passchendaele in the spring of 1917 with how slowly they were moving out there.
To pile on to this Jesse Schwartzman pretty much put down a picnic blanket and invited the Machine offense to score at their leisure. It’s never an easy decision to pull a goalie, especially an all-world twine-minder like Schwartzman, but Wesley Berg’s first goal of his MLL career brought the game within 3 with about 10 minutes left to play. Ohio scored 3 goals in the next three and a half minutes. Dillon Ward should have seen the field at some point during that Ohio run, especially given Schwartzman’s body language. If lacrosse has NBA Jam-style commentary, the entire game would have been “he can’t buy a save” for Schwartzman all night.
A solid offensive performance can bail out a poor defensive one on occasion, but this was not one of those times. Eric Law found himself on IR with a lower body injury and his chemistry with Grant was noticeably absent. Phipps was dialed in to the Denver shooters, and the Outlaws killed themselves time and again with bad turnovers. Phipps picked off at least two passes during the game, and Ohio defenders snagged a few more.
Ohio is clearly surging right now, and they might be one of the top contenders at the moment to mar New York’s perfect season. One bad game does not a season make, and Denver will bounce back, but tonight’s performance is one that the Outlaws will want to put behind them quickly.
