The old saying goes it's tough to beat a good team three times in a year and it certainly rang true once again. The Barrage used five goals by Matt Striebel, along with four from Roy Colsey to easily eliminate the Boston Cannons, 17-12. Mid-season acquisition Paul Cantabene won 15 of 27 face-offs for the Barrage, while All-MLL goalie Brian Dougherty came up big with 15 saves in net.
Carson, CA – In a similarly intriguing match-up as the early game, the Philadelphia Barrage had been beaten by the Boston Cannons twice this season. The last match-up was on June 29th, when Boston could do little wrong and dominated every aspect of the game running over the Barrage, 16-5. A lot has changed since then, namely the Barrage made a huge mid-season acquisition in getting face-off specialist Paul Cantabene. Last time they battled, the Barrage won 10 of 25 face-offs, and just 16 of 35 in the first match-up. With Cantabene in the line-up, that stat flipped to a 55.5% and really paid dividends for the Barrage.
This game was Philadelphia’s pretty much from the start. After a 1-1 tie, Philly stretched the lead to 7-1 using a hat trick from Matt Striebel. Boston would battle back as expected and cut the lead to 7-4 and then 7-6 on a two-point goal from Chris Fiore. Philly would extend the lead to 8-6 at the half on a last second goal from Michael Springer. Midfielder Matt Zash had the ball at the midline with about 5 seconds to go. He hit Ryan Boyle, who found Michael Springer on the doorstep as the clock showed 0:00, but the buzzer hadn’t sounded yet. The goal counted.
Coming out of the half, Cantabene gave Philadelphia a boost on the offensive side. Just :07 into the second half, he scored off the face to give Philly a three goal boost.
“It was interesting, the one at the half, where you usually think you go charging into the locker room that was a great sort of stop the tide that had turned a little bit. So we weren’t as jacked up as you may have thought, but that’s a huge two-goal swing right there,” said Philadelphia head coach Tony Resch. “No time on the clock and then come right out and get a 2-on-3 and make that one go. That’s great and obviously Boston was just going to keep knocking and not go away at any point. So anytime you can get a little bit of breathing room on them, with two-pointers and guys that can bring it, is great.”
The game would continue to go back and forth, with Philadelphia fighting to pull away and Boston doing what it could to keep it close. The 12-10 score following Chris Fiore’s 2nd two-point goal with 3:34 to play in the 3rd quarter would be as close as it would get. Philadelphia would get the next four goals to put it out of reach.
“I think they’re tough because they’re the type of team that you know what’s coming and it’s still hard to stop. You know Fiore, you know Conor Gill, and they have excellent balance themselves offensively. We just said we wanted to work a couple of match-ups,” said Resch. “We were trying to get Greg Peyser, who’s a good, strong, fast guy, on Fiore a little more. We thought our match-ups down low with Brian Spallina did a nice job with Conor (Gill), you never totally control him, but I thought he scrapped him real well. So there were the little match-ups, but we could play better certainly in that 2nd half. So just playing steady lacrosse.”
The Philadelphia offense and tough defense was summed up best by Coach Resch following the game.
“We really feel offensively we’re very balanced, so we just need to find the right match-ups and get good opportunities. Our guys sort of play off each other very well. Defensively, we’re playing solid. Doc had a great game. The face-off X is always critical. He had probably one little rough stretch and that’s when they made their run, and he got it back and controlled with a goal at the beginning of the 2nd half. That’s when he shut it down and it became a huge play, it got him back in the game. Kind of all phases, we’re playing steady lacrosse,” said Resch. “I don’t think we’re doing spectacular things, I just think we are doing consistent steady smart things.”
The disappointing statistic of the night was the announced attendance of 3,223. This was disappointing on a couple of levels, mainly because I doubt how true it is. It seemed pretty elevated. It was also disappointing because it was less than both First Four events that have been held in California (even if those numbers were elevated too). The 2006 event held in San Diego featuring Duke vs. Loyola and Navy vs. Bucknell had a reported 5,683, while the 2005 event held at the Home Depot Center (the same place as the 2006 MLL Championships) was reported to be 7,182 (again a highly suspect number). The event didn’t even make it (rightfully so judging by the fan turnout) into the main stadium at the Home Depot Center. Instead it was relegated to a smaller venue designed for Track and Field that was poorly lit for a night game.
It was easy to predict the failure as the Anaheim Storm franchise bombed with attendance, mainly due to the nature of Los Angeles and traffic. It is safe to assume most 30 minute drives in LA should be doubled or tripled. On Friday afternoons, you might add a couple hours. While the Home Depot Center is in a part of Los Angeles that lies between the two big areas of lacrosse (Orange County and the San Fernando Valley with San Diego being two hours south with little traffic) around LA, there isn’t much lacrosse played actually around it.
Why was the game not in Denver? It has a first class facility and organization. The AVERAGE attendance for Denver home games was more than three times the amount that saw the semifinals in Carson. Boston too averaged higher than attendance in LA for this season. That’s also considering the fact there is reason to believe that all of the Riptide’s home attendance games were drastically exaggerated.
Tony Resch shed some light on the interesting scouting practices that go on in the MLL following the game.
“We’ll go inside, it’s interesting as much as we watch the other teams, we really do rely on the players. Someone will say ‘oh, I played Mundorf in college’ so we go through that process. With the longpoles anyway, so I think we’ll get some input on those guys and see how it works out,” said Resch. “We do go over the numbers and we’ll say whatever these are the top scorers, but these guys know each other so well. All these guys are top-notch players, whether it was in college, in this league, the US team, they know each other. Even with a team you haven’t seen, there’s not going to be any surprises out there. They know who’s who, and we know who’s who. So it’ll be what you like to see, the team that plays better as a group will hopefully come out on top.”
The first match-up between the two teams should be interesting as it pits the MLL’s #1 defense in Philadelphia against the MLL’s #1 offense in Denver.
“It’s a team we haven’t seen this year. I watched most of the first game, but I know some of those guys very well. They can run, they have great finishers. It’s going to be a handful. But we really feel like throughout the year our D and goaltending has been strength for us, so it’ll be an interesting match-up, from I guess the #1 offense in the league and the #1 D. So we’re looking forward it,” said Resch.
“And again a great match-up is their face-off guy (Cercy) against Cantabene. I think that’s going to be critical. I think in this league if you get more possessions and get your offense going, I think we can score goals against them, but if they keep getting it, they’ve shown that they can build up too.
Not sure if it was evident on the TV games, but each team had a theme song played after every goal they scored. For the Denver Outlaws, “Outlaw Baby” by the Lordz blasted after their 23 goals. The Philadelphia Barrage had “Philadelphia Freedom” following their 17 tallies. The Boston Cannons had to deal with “More than a feeling” from the band Boston. The Cannons hit at least three pipes in the fourth quarter while trying to make a comeback, I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded hearing the song instead of the metal ding of the pipe. San Francisco’s song was more obscure and couldn’t be found, although that’s really just me excuse because I didn’t realize the same song was being played after each goal until in the late game I got tired of hearing “Philadelphia Freedom.” Then it clicked…
