Although one its hot hands, Iathan Ianucci, is still missing in action, the Chicago Machine utilized other newcomers to decisively drop the San Francisco Dragons 17-11 at Toyota Park for the franchise’s third win. Eric Pittard had four points on 3 goals and one assist, while Pat Heim, nailed 3 goals, one of them a two-pointer coming early in the game to prevent San Francisco from tying the game. Coach Leladn Rogers has been trying to develop a certain offensive system and today it worked. Rogers likes to employ a 3-3 setup and with the low wings getting quick touches hear one pipe and then feeding across to the far pipe to a cutter standing ready at the far pipe. It worked today and looked good on man up opportunities, although Chicago only had 1 of 6 successful, but in even up situations, Chicago was able to feed fast and sharp, tallying 13 of their 17 goals via assists.

Kevin Leveille and Seam Morris were the other big contributors, with Leveille notching 5 scores and one assist and Morris dishing the ball off 4 times for scores, once to Heim for a score outside fot he two-point arc, and tallying once himself. Leveille was fed by four different players for Rogers’ system does not rely upon any single feeder, but it puts the players into positions to dump. This is a good start for Chicago, albeit much too late in the season for any effectiveness. Chicago’s draft picks and acquisitions have produced as expected and from here on in, it’s a matter of fine tuning by the coaching staff.

Some rookie mistakes were made, most notably by Matt Karweck who insisted upon rolling the pipe hard from below the GLE, without any effort to dump the ball. Karweck consistently drew doubles and wilted under the pressure of the double, coughing up the ball twice. Notwithstanding this habit, Karweck had three good touches when he was the target of a feed, but the Dragons’ defense closed him out and Matt Vallone twice came out off the pipe to shut Karweck down. Vallone had 12 saves to Mike Gabel’s 18. Gable played one of his best game for the franchise today, timing his moves out onto the crease to shut down rollers. The Chicago defense played very well keeping Ryan Powell at bay and limiting him to one goal but letting him have the assist total (four) for San Francisco. Powell fed fellow Orangeman Liam banks three times for his three goal and then dumped one to Mitch Alrich for one of hi two scores. Banks and Alrich were the only multiple scorers for San Francisco.

Chicago Machine vs. San Francisco Dragons

Chicago Machine

0

Scoring

Saves

Current Record
Chicago Machine	2-4

San Francisco Dragons

0

Scoring

Saves

Current Record
San Francisco Dragons	1-4