A couple of notes on yesterday's game:

We opened the game with two fast breaks. On the first, Saraceni skipped the ball nicely to Foster on the pipe who threw a couple of fakes and then was stoned by the Naz goalie. On the next one, Mike passed to Charley Howe on the low righty pipe, and he was also denied. They proceeded to dominate the tempo, time of possession and score. They did a nice job executing their offense, creating high percentage shooting opportunities for their very talented shooters. With them possessing the ball, their goalie playing well and us not playing great, the margin of error was going to be slim on defense and we were not up to it.

They were going to get some nifty feeding goals, so we could not allow any soft goals or goals created by our mistakes if we were going to win. We gave up a couple of dodging goals that we should not have and they were the back breaker on top of the nice goals they created. We were a little flustered defensively by their success and let our poise get away from us. We did not help ourselves with face offs, ground balls or with great offense either, so it was a team effort that left us with a 9-5 halftime deficit. We did make a 2nd Quarter run that brought us to within 1 goal, but they scored 3 late in the 2nd to gain all of the momentum back.

The second half saw us play better on defense, doing a better job on the inside and scrambling better with team defense to recover when they were banging the ball around. However, we never did get into a good flow as a team or as an offense and we could only muster 3 second half goals. They scored the first two of the second half to go up 11-5, so that certainly did not help our cause.

In summation:

They won 15 of 24 face offs.

They beat us on ground balls by over 10.

Their goalie had 13 saves, many nice ones, 5 in the 4th Quarter. They cleared effectively, so our typical riding/ground ball advantage was neutralized. We turned the ball over too much.

Great career by the seniors and a great job this season of turning the team around from some mediocre mid-season performances. They have left a strong legacy as many seniors before them have done as well.

Next year's team will have big shoes to fill:

Saraceni, Howe and Tobey graduate from the Attack

West and O'Connor graduate from the defense

Krieger graduates from the goal

Bob Wannop, an unsung hero, graduates at shortstick d-mid Bastis and Gio graduate from the midfield Rob Borden, Adam Carlson, Pat Kane and Andrew Helming were not starters, but quality role players that graduate as well.

It is always fun to see who will step up to fill these vacancies...