Go! ‘Necks! Go!

Hot off the heels of being served up an overtime loss to the Arizona Sting the Roughnecks traveled to Portland to face the 2-1 Lumberjax. With our seasonal pattern of win-loss-win-loss I was silently crossing my fingers that the trend would continue, luckily it did. This also proved to be the game that brought both Lewis Ratcliff and Kaleb Toth out of their shells.

Now, in the past I’ve said that games have started off with a bang but this is the topper. Just 27 seconds into the opening quarter our boys – Ratcliff and Toth – teamed up for the first goal of the game (Ratcliff getting the assist). This would be the first of many goals set up and scored by the dynamic duo. About a minute later Portland’s Ryan Powell tied it at one. The rest of the quarter was all Calgary – Toth, Ratcliff, Travis Gillespie, and Kyle Goundrey rounded out the scoring for the Roughnecks.

The second quarter turned out to be the opposite with Dowling, Morgan (2), Dwane, and Stewart scoring for the Lumberjax. Tracey Kelusky and Devan Wray had the two Calgary goals. This put us at 7-6 for the Roughnecks at the half.

By comparison the second half of the game was started off a little slow. Portland came on strong with two goals – Powell and Merrill – while Ratcliff provided the lone Roughneck goal. On the other hand, I would have loved to have watched the fourth quarter. If anyone has video of it let me know. Our boys had 4 unanswered goals that quarter and I’m wondering if the expansion Lumberjax actually started crying during the game. The goal scorers for us in this quarter were Ratcliff, Toth, Gillespie, and McNish.

Looking at the stats for this game is seems that our accuracy is improving – 46 shots on goal against the Jax versus 50 shots on goal against the Sting. Yeah, it doesn’t really sound all that impressive but any improvement is good.

The Roughnecks next game is against our bitter rivals from the east, the 1-4 Toronto Rock. Game time is 1:30pm on February 5th. Get there early and support our boys by wearing red.