More on Thursday's lacrosse game
Here's what the
Newsleader has to say: "There are royal butt kickings and then there’s the Royal City butt kicking the Coquitlam Adanacs administered to the New Westminster Salmonbellies Thursday night." Yup. That's about right.
The Newsleader also provides some clarification on
McEwen's gross misconduct: "Following the fray, Darren McEwen of the Salmonbellies was issued a gross misconduct for abuse of officials, which carries a two-game suspension." Just what the Bellies don't need: no Conn, no Disher, and now no McEwen. Interestingly, we still don't know what McEwen did. I think Ref Radar was just in a bad mood. He lost his temper several times. Heck, when he was leaving the box post-game, a fan yelled out that the bench-clearing brawl was all Radar's fault. Radar looked like he wanted to throw the fan in the penalty box, too.
Labels: Craig Conn, Darren McEwen, gross misconduct, Matt Disher, Ray Durante
I want my money back
Well, it's hard to believe that what we witnessed at Queen's Park Arena tonight was the first game of the WLA finals. Where did the top-rated Bellies go? They were awful tonight. Again, they had no defense, their shooting was off, and they dropped the ball (literally) far too many times. Final score: 15-5 for the Adanacs.
The Bellies had a few--a very few--good plays. Peter Morgan scored a couple of times on powerplays, Iannucci made a beautiful one-handed goal after picking himself off the ground in front of the net, and Shibild made a lot of good saves, particularly in the latter part of the game. Shibild was looking a bit discouraged in the first period, and even made a direct in-front-of-the-net pass to Adanacs' Colin Doyle, who promptly placed the ball in the net.
The Adanacs played a much stronger game, however, and totally dominated all three periods. Their star player tonight was Ray Durante, mind you, a ref who's got a bit of reputation for favouring whoever happens to be playing against New West. I'm not saying that the Adanacs didn't deserve to win. They played hard and they played well--consistently. But Radar was annoying. He failed to call an illegal pick on an Adanacs player, and when a Bellie from the bench pointed it out, he got two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct. Radar also missed calling a Bellies' goal in the last couple of minutes of the game (not that it would have changed the outcome). Then, on the buzzer, Iannucci shot straight into the net. An Adanacs player started roughing him, and both benches cleared for a fight. And somehow, after all that, Bellies' Darren McEwan gets a ten-minute abuse of officials gross misconduct. I'm pretty sure a lot of fans wanted to abuse Radar tonight too. As for McEwan, I'm not sure why he was the only one who ended up with a penalty from the brouhaha. In fact, I didn't even find out about the penalty until I got home and compared my notes with
Pointstreak.
Post-game fight
Adanacs' Captain, Bruce Murray, after the fight
Here's to a better game Sunday night in Coquitlam.
Labels: Athan Iannucci, Canadian Lacrosse Association, Colin Doyle, Peter Morgan, Radar, Ray Durante, Ron Shibild, WLA 2007
