Everyone’s a winner! Well, at least coming into this week’s contest, but the Outlaws and Hounds got to go for ice cream after last week’s wins. The Denver John Grant Juniors took down the Rochester Rattlers in a 22-21 OT thriller, while Charlotte upset the previously undefeated New York Lizards. Both teams should be riding high from those wins and looking to build momentum.
Charlotte needs to win out to be able to even sniff the playoffs. Meanwhile, Denver has been on the snide lately but the Rochester win may have been the U-turn the Outlaws were looking for.
If we look at the tale of the tape between these two teams (stats courtesy of Joe Keegan at LaxDirt) there are a few items worth noting. So let’s disregard each team’s record for the moment and consider how they fare in a few different metrics.
When it comes to offensive efficiency (points per possession) [note: higher numbers are better] Denver is fourth in the league, sitting at .31 while Charlotte is in seventh place with .27. The league average is .30 so the Outlaws have a slight advantage in this department. But, Charlotte’s season average doesn’t account for the change after Joey Sankey showed up. Pre-Sankey, the team’s offensive efficiency was even worse at 25%. Add the former Tar Heel to the mix and that number jumps to 31% with him in the lineup.
Despite seemingly poor averages from the Hounds, they actually lead the league in offensive rebounding, which is when a shot on net produces a reset for the offensive team. The Hounds rebound on offense 38% of the time. The second closest team? Boston at 32%. The league average is 29%. The longer a team is on defense the more likely they are to allow a goal, and Denver’s defensive woes could be exploitable if Charlotte is able to get multiple resets.
Flipping the script to the defensive side of the field and defensive efficiency (points allowed per possession) [note: lower numbers are better], these two teams are much closer. Again the league average is right at .30, but Charlotte clocks in at sixth with a .31 and Denver at seventh with .32. Talk about neck-and-neck. Sheesh!
Another area where these two teams are evenly matched is when it comes to turning the ball over. Denver is last in the league with 181 turnovers on the season at this point. Charlotte is seventh with 175. Yet, when it comes to opponent turnovers Charlotte is at the top of the table at 179 (putting them +4 on the year), while Denver is fourth with 164 (putting them -17 on the year). It’s no surprise that Denver has been a turnover machine this year. If Charlotte can force Denver to turn the ball over like the Outlaws did at Chesapeake earlier this year it could work to the Hounds’ advantage.
So what does this all mean? Well, without getting too existential, it means that these teams are pretty evenly matched. Joey Sankey makes a huge difference for the Hounds offense. I’m not ready to say he’s in Jordan Wolf/Rochester territory yet, but he’s not far off. Perhaps it’s fortunate for the Outlaws that they faced Wolf last week during their Grateful Dead night [sidebar: Denver Head Coach B.J. O’Hara said his favorite Dead song is probably Bertha. Solid choice coach!] and held him to his lowest totals of the season.
Denver didn’t dress a dedicated faceoff specialist last week and the results were about what you would expect. Don’t expect a repeat of that this week.
I wouldn’t expect either team to run away with this one. I can see the margin of victory being between one to three goals, but which team comes out on top is a toss up.
