Go! ‘Necks! Go!

After their harsh defeat Friday night by the expansion Edmonton Rush, the Calgary Roughnecks hopped a plane to Arizona Saturday to take on the first place Sting. I’m not the only fan that expressed a sever distaste for the way this season has been going but we were all hoping this game would be the turn around point.

To start off the game, the man-giant — at least that’s what I call him — Dan Dawson scored 40 seconds after the face off. That would end up being Dawson’s last goal of the night and the Sting’s only goal for another eight minutes. From what I can only imagine as a hunger to put another win on their belts the ‘Necks answered back with four goals in the first — Lewis Ratcliff (3) getting the first one 29 seconds after Dawson’s goal. That was followed by another one from Ratcliff, a powerplay goal from Jason Wulder (3), and the fourth from Kevin Dostie (3). Murray would be the one to close out scoring in the first for Arizona.

Riding off of the momentum from the first Dostie scored his second of the game 49 seconds in. After a five minute lull in scoring Wulder scored his second followed by Ratcliff’s third, a goal by captain Tracey Kelusky, and the fifth goal of the quarter for Calgary by Andrew Biers. Jonas Derks was the lone Sting player to record a goal in the second.

After the half the scoring slowed down, a lot. Crosbie and Maddalena put one each past Curtis Palidwor to put the Sting at 5. Taylor Wray beat Blasdell for Calgary’s only goal which had the Roughnecks at 10 for the game. The scoring wasn’t the only slow part of the third quarter though. Neither the Roughnecks nor the Sting clocked any penalty minutes during the entire 15 minutes.

That may be the first time I’ve ever heard that. It’s tough to tell if there really wasn’t that much action going on or if both sides were just that much sneakier with their dirty tricks. Anyone that watched the game feel free to enlighten the rest of us in the comments.

As the fourth started the score was 10-5 for the Roughnecks. Wulder, scoring his third of the night, would quickly make that 11-5. Arizona, in what I can only imagine as a last ditch effort, put two more goals on the board in the middle of the quarter. The first on a power play from Matt Brown and the second from Craig Conn — who scored the overtime goal the last time the Sting and Roughnecks played.

That would prove to be the final goals for Arizona though. Both Kyle Goundrey and Kevin Dostie would end up putting the final nails in the coffin — Dostie’s third goal coming off a penalty shot (which I would really like to see if anyone has any video).

This game proved a little odd for me according to the stats though. Ryan McNish was the only penalty in the entire second half of the game. The first half, on the other hand, was filled with quite a few penalties for both sides — including a fight between Roughie Jeff Moleski and Sting player Peter Veltman. Conn was being especially brutal with two illegal cross checking penalties and the Sting’s Murray adding a check from behind. The Roughnecks weren’t so innocent though. They managed to rack up a short list of players getting called for holding and slashing.

The reason this seems odd to me is simply for the fact that most of the chippy penalties and roughhousing happens in the final quarters of the game — usually as a last ditch effort to throw the winning team off their game and frustrate them. In this case it seems that both teams kept their heads in the game — which is quite the statement for both teams.