Game Six: Stonecutters vs. A Sieve (02/21/2011)

Game Four of Stonecutters Floor Hockey!

The Matchup: A Sieve (home) vs. Stonecutters (away).
Date and Time: Monday, February 21, 2011, 7:30 P.M.
Location: Gates Field House (located inside Ritchie Center), University of Denver.

Last Meeting: n/a
All-time record vs. A Sieve: n/a

The playoff race heats up as the final four spots are in contention heading into tonight's games. With a win tonight and a Dunder Byfuglien loss, the Stonecutters will vault back into fifth place and have a shot at locking up a playoff match against the Yetis in the postseason.

However, they will have to get through an angry A Sieve team that suffered a 10-2 defeat at the hands of the Glove Sniffers last week, and there is no doubt that they will have revenge on their minds as they take to the court tonight.

This marks the first meeting between these two squads, and the stats between the clubs are virtually identical, with A Sieve narrowly holding onto the sixth place slot in the division by a matter of two goals.

A rebound game against the Yetis last week--resulting in a 9-6 loss--may signal the beginning of a turning point for the Stonecutters. After falling behind by three goals in the first period, the Stonecutters clawed their way back into the game by simplifying their game and forcing the Yetis back.

Can they build on that performance tonight?

Discuss tonight's game right here!

Awesome job last night everyone! From the opening until the last second, we played hard and continued to fight.

Next time we play them, we need to keep a better account of number 15. Seemed like he scored 5 of their 6 goals. He also tended to be a little bit of a show off with his stick handling (could've sworn he did a couple of behind the back passes to himself). One of the things that I noticed last night was that it seemed that as a team, A Sieve did a lot more stick checking then we are used to seeing (even the women were doing it). Nothing too major, just something I personally haven't seen too much of out of an entire team.

One of the things that I think will separate us from other teams in the future is the willingness of our women to step up and be physical. Be it on the defensive end or the offensive end, our women bring it both ways. In at least half of our games, the gals on the other team seemed to be lacking that physical presence/ability and it looked like they tend to hang back and let the guys do the work. That's not the case with our team! Keep up the hard work ladies!!!!!!

Kudos to Matthew in the goal last night. They had quite a few odd man rushes and he did a great job of minding the net. Let's keep fine tuning our game and do some damage next week and into the playoffs!

What I want to know is why did that guy(#15)have so many breakaways? Was it because everyone jumped up into the play? I know he was cherry picking but come on. Once again bad defense hurt us.

There were a couple of times where it looked like our entire team got caught in A Sieve's offensive zone. On others, the guy just blew by the defender that went to center court to try and provide an outlet and cut the ball off from going all the way to our end.

It's a mix of both things.

We had a few defensive lapses when it came to the odd-man rushes. Too many times we pinched all four skaters in the offensive end, leaving no one to cover defensively. Other times, A Sieve sprung #15 with a good pass and he was off to the races, blowing past whoever was hanging back.

Oftentimes--and I've seen it on the video--players seem to be caught standing around in the offensive zone when our opposition gets a fast break and play is coming back into our end. Everyone needs to hustle back and backcheck, put pressure on the opposition so they don't have time to set up any shots or passes.

Stuff like that has to stop if we're going to have a chance in the postseason. I won't name any names, but we all know of one former player who fit that description fairly well. That is not Stonecutters hockey.

A two-way style of play going to burn more energy, but everyone needs to learn how to play both sides of the game. If a player is one-dimensional and can only score goals, they don't have as much versatility as one who can play defense and score goals.

The more players that can play a two-way style, the more dangerous we'll be.