                      
|
Friday, January 22, 2010 - 7:30 pm CST
|
| West | W | L | GB | +/- | East | W | L | GB | +/- | |
| Washington | 2 | 0 | - | 17 | Toronto | 2 | 0 | - | 11 | |
| Calgary | 1 | 1 | 1.0 | 3 | Rochester | 2 | 0 | - | 7 | |
| Minnesota | 1 | 1 | 1.0 | -3 | Orlando | 1 | 0 | 0.5 | 5 | |
| Edmonton | 1 | 1 | 1.5 | -7 | Philadelphia | 1 | 1 | 1.0 | -1 | |
| Colorado | 0 | 2 | 1.5 | -10 | Buffalo | 0 | 2 | 2.0 | 7 | |
| Boston | 0 | 3 | 2.5 | -15 |
| Minnesota | Overall | Home | Road | Home-2009 | Road-2009 |
| vs Colorado | 0-4 | 0-3 | 0-1 | 0-1 | 0-1 |
| vs Colorado-Playoffs | |||||
| Total | 0-4 | 0-3 | 0-1 | 0-1 | 0-1 |
| Numerical Roster | Picture Roster | Stats |
| Goaltenders | Defense (Left) | Defense (Right) | Forwards (Left) | Forwards (Right) |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
| General Manager | Head Coach | Assistant | Assistant |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Roster | Picture Roster | Stats |
| Goaltenders | Defense (Left) | Defense (Right) | |
| 41-Andrew Leyshon | 11-John Gallant | 48-Rich Catton | |
| 88- Neil Tyacke | 28-Tom Ethington | 5-David Morgan | |
| 20-Bruce Murray | 24-Ryan McFadyen | ||
| 14-Steve Forsythe | |||
| 26-Matthew Wilson | |||
| Transition (Left) | Transition (Right) | Forward (Left) | Forward (Right) |
| 8-Nick Carlson | 19-Nenad Gajic | 9-Ilija Gajic | 6-Brian Langtry |
| 18-Brad Richardson | 85-Jamie Shewchuk | 91-Cory Conway | |
| 7--Chad Culp | 33-Peter Veltman | ||
| 27-Cliff Smith | 10-Alex Gajic | ||
| 1-Jed Prossner | 77-Shawn Dhaliwal |
| General Manager & Head Coach | Assistant | Assistant | Assistant |
| Steve Govett | Dan Perreault | Dan Pratt | Ward Sanderson |
When we last saw your and mine favorite local professional indoor lacrosse team, the Minnesota Swarm (1-1), Nick Patterson was the unequivocal answer to the question, "Who's that goaltender" and the defending NLL champions, the Calgary Roughnecks (1-1), were being rendered defenseless by the boys in blue.
This week, we see our heroes take on the prehistoric elephants from Colorado, aka the Mammoth (0-2), at the blue honeycombed adorned Xcel Energy Center on Friday night, January 22 at 7:30 pm. The Swarm have the opportunity to win their second straight game overall and to win more than one game in a row at home which has not been the case since their six game home winning streak that ended after an April 12, 2008 win.
The Swarm come into this game with a lot of momentum from last weekend. Four players (Aaron Wilson, Callum Crawford, Zack Greer and Ryan Benesch) lead the team in scoring with seven points each. Add Tim Campeau, who had four points last Friday, Sean Pollock who scored three in his season debut and Kevin Ross who got his first goal of the season last Friday, the Swarm have a very balanced attack going forward. The power play which struggled last year has already scored on five of its nine chances this year. They haven't had many opportunities being a man up, ranking tenth out of eleventh in power play chances in the league, but they have delivered when those opportunities have arisen.
The reason why the Swarm have not had many power play chances is because they are being required to spend a lot of time killing penalties. Just last week, the team killed six of ten power play chances against Calgary, which in the NLL is pretty good. The hope for the Swarm is that they get a new crew chief to do their game as they have had Todd Labranche as the crew chief for both of their games this year. I have heard that Labranche is not a favorite amongst the Swarm so maybe the team can be assigned a new crew chief for at least one game this year.
Ryan Cousins is back in the running for NLL Defensive Player of the Year with strong performances in both games while scooping up fifteen loose balls. Josh Funk is drawing praise on NLL Insider with his defense of Josh Sanderson last weekend and Richard Morgan is running through and over anyone in his way. It seems as though the defense is acquiring a bit of an edge to its play, maybe even intimidating opponents a bit. Definitely something Swarm fans hope will continue this season.
The Mammoth have had a slow start to the season and on Tuesday Head Coach Bob McMahon lost his job because of it as he was let go. General Manager Steve Govett is now the head coach for Colorado and will make his head coaching debut against the Swarm. I think you will see an energized Mammoth team but considering that Govett himself has put the team together himself, I don't think the players are necessarily playing for jobs because these are guys Govett wanted to start with.
Ilija Gajic, drafted one spot ahead of Greer, in the 2009 Entry Draft, is the new emerging star for the Mammoth. Very capable of playing both ends of the floor and willing to throw down, Gajic is one to watch. The Mammoth are a relatively young team with six of the draft picks in the 2009 draft making their team, so the learning curve is steep as they have given up 15.5 goals per game. They have struggled in net as Andrew Leyshon has only made 63% of his saves and his back up Neil Tyacke, played junior A lacrosse this past summer and has never played a NLL minute.
Even with the Mammoth struggling this year, the Swarm have never beaten the Mammoth in their history going 0-4 against them including three home losses. However, just like last weekend against the Roughnecks where the Swarm broke a four game losing streak to them, look for the Swarm to break their four game losing streak to the Mammoth. Rumors when these two teams played against each other in the preseason were that things got a bit tempestuous so we may get the first fight of the year. If the Swarm can get to Leyshon early, the Swarm should have more than enough to fend off the young but promising Mammoth who will be playing twice on the road this weekend.
