Go! ‘Necks! Go!

It’s a sad day for Roughnecks fans around the world. In a home-and-home series against the Colorado Mammoth to finish off the regular season — and set the scene for the playoffs — the Roughnecks lost both games. The expansion Portland Lumberjax clinched the West Division title with an 11–5 record. Second place Colorado Mammoth closed out the season with a record of 10–6.

Losing 8–11 on Friday night in Colorado, in comparison, wasn’t too bad. The scoring started off evenly but the second quarter is where the Mammoth took a three goal lead and kept it throughout the rest of the game. Looking at the scoring stats the second frame is the only one in which both teams did not score an equal amount of goals.

El Capitan, Tracey Kelusky, Kyle Goundrey and Kevin Dostie all scored two goals each with Lewis Ratcliff and Callum Crawford scoring one each to round out the Roughnecks total. On the other bench, Brian Langtry got a hat trick while Josh Sims and Chris Gill managed two each. Dan Stroup, Andrew Burkholder, Gavin Prout and Nick Carlson all had singles.

Saturday nights game was a different story. While Colorado got on the board first, the Roughnecks took the lead five minutes into the opening frame. Three minutes into quarter number two was the last time Calgary would have the lead though, ending the half down by one.

Even though the third quarter started off strong for Calgary with a goal by Jason Wulder, Colorado just fought back harder and put the ‘Necks in the coffin — and started to nail it shut. By the third quarter intermission it was 12–6 in favor of the Mammoth. I consider the last ditch effort by the Roughnecks in the final quarter pretty lackluster. Managing to score only once the entire quarter, it stopped being a game and turned into a slaughter.

Low points

Since there weren’t too many highlights about the game on Saturday, here’s some of the low-lights.

Penalties — Holy crap. Some penalties were richly deserved but quite a few of them, at least to me, were questionable at best. The highest called penalty for the night was roughing. Obviously there is some discretion involved on the part of the officials but come on. The Roughnecks ended up getting seven penalties against them and the Mammoth only ended up with three. Maybe the game play was a little rough for these officials but at least call it on both sides.

Colorado being a bunch of pussies — When you have the balls to trash talk and open your mouth you better have the balls to drop the gloves too. Not the case for the Mammoth on Saturday. On at least four separate occasions Mammoth players would talk shit, get involved in the pushing matches but as soon as a Roughneck glove dropped the Mammoth player scurry off to the bench. Seriously, grow a pair.

Passing — Reminiscent of our only loss to the Edmonton Rush, the passing absolutely sucked. Not just the long-bomb passes on the transition either, there were several times that the short pass was given up and play moved back into the Roughneck zone.

Highlights

Although few and far between this weekend, there were a couple highlights worth mentioning. The first, Kaleb Toth getting two nice goals. It would be nice to see more but this is a start. Second, and more importantly, was definitely Jeremy Cheyne scoring two goals in his very first professional lacrosse game dressed as a Roughneck. I wish the rest of the team had the drive that Jeremy did on Saturday.

The final highlight, Curtis “The Door” Palidwor’s amazing diving save in the second half. During play, coach Chris Hall called Palidwor to the bench for an extra attacker. As was true to form that night, the Mammoth gained possession of the ball. In a race to the ‘Necks goal between Palidwor, the Mammoth player with the ball and one defender — trailing behind by more than a few steps — Palidwor dove across the net as the Colorado player took his shot at a practically empty net. Out of pure luck Palidwor’s stick deflected the ball and prevented the goal. In the end, luck or not, it was an awesome site to see.