The Vancouver Stealth dropped a tough decision in Calgary on Saturday night as they fell back into some of the traps that plagued them early in the season.
At times, the Stealth had no answer for many of the heavyweights in the ‘Necks offense. Curtis Dickson scored a whopping seven goals and Dane Dobbie added another seven points (three goals, four assists) to give Calgary their first win of the season.
The loss isn’t the end of the world for the Stealth, but they again failed to control the bulk of possession – they controlled 47.4 per cent of total shot attempts. It’s still a marked improvement of their previous lacklustre losses, but if this team wants to be competitive in the playoffs, they need to do a better job of controlling possession. That certainly isn’t helped by winning only 42 per cent of the faceoffs.
Improvements must also come from stopping team’s big game players. Although there’s a short rotation of offensive players coming out of the front gate, the Roughnecks top three offensive players – Curtis Dickson, Dane Dobbie and Shawn Evans – had 37 of Calgary’s 57 shots on goal.
Dickson scored five of his seven goals in the second half and often times it seemed as if the Stealth didn’t have an answer for “Superman” Dickson. He also scored four times on the power play; the Stealth need to force the ball away from opposing team’s stars to stay efficient on the back end.
Tyler Richards was again asked to stand on his head, but the rate at which he can do that is decreasing quickly. Of the nine goalies who have played over 250 minutes this season, Richards ranks eighth in save percentage. Richards hasn’t had a season this poorly in his NLL career, stopping just 73.1 per cent of shots coming at him. He was below that mark on Saturday, stopping 72 per cent.
With no reliable back-up, the Stealth haven’t got the goaltending needed to allow so many shots on a consistent basis.
But until the defense gets back to full health, it will be the same ol’ Stealth, struggling to put a string of wins together as they navigate a complicated NLL landscape.
