A victory tonight gives the Washington Stealth a chance to do something they haven’t done this season.
Take a deep breath.
A Stealth win over visiting Edmonton, which defeated Washington 14-13 in overtime two weeks ago, locks up the No. 1 overall seed in the National Lacrosse League playoffs, meaning Washington (10-4) has a chance to play five straight weeks at Comcast Arena.
The Stealth, who moved to Everett from San Jose last June, close out their first regular season in the Northwest next Saturday at home against Rochester.
“We have had a great season so far, there’s no question,” Stealth head coach Chris Hall said. “At 10-4, I can’t be anything but pleased with where we are and where we stand and the opportunity that presents itself this weekend to really be the number one overall seed in the league.”
A win would give the Stealth players a brief respite from a challenging campaign.
“I don’t know if you ever can take a breath in this league,” Hall said. “Maybe if we were to win this weekend and wrap that up, we might be able to take a small breath for the last regular-season game, but we’re certainly still on task to try and get that number-one seed, so there’s no rest yet.”
The Stealth, who expect to have Jeff Zywicki back in the lineup after the high-scoring forward missed the past two games with a lower-body injury, hope to maintain the excellent form they demonstrated in last week’s 17-7 win over the East Division-leading Orlando Titans.
Against Orlando, Washington’s defensive unit, which has been inconsistent this season while battling injuries and suspensions, played perhaps its best game of the season. The Stealth will need a similar effort against a Rush (9-5) team that has won three of its past four games.
“We weren’t happy with our defensive performance in the game against Edmonton (on April 2) and a couple games before that I just don’t think our defense was playing to the best of their capabilities,” Hall said, “so we challenged them and we worked on some things to improve what we were doing back there and we came up with a great effort in Orlando. We really played well from front to back, from goaltending to defense to our special teams and offense, that was probably our best overall performance.”
When Washington and Edmonton met April 2, Edmonton’s Ryan Powell scored a late equalizer and tallied the game-winning goal 6 minutes, 7 seconds into the overtime period. Washington’s Lewis Ratcliff, who leads the NLL with 39 goals, scored four times and collected five assists in the loss.
“They’re a hard team to play against,” Edmonton head coach Derek Keenan said of the Stealth. “We were a little bit fortunate a couple weeks ago. We got some very good individual performances, but from a defensive perspective, they’re probably the most difficult team in the league to play against because there’s not one guy you can focus on.”
The teams opened the contest with a 20-goal first half that surprised both coaches. After a 10-10 tie at halftime, Edmonton scored three fourth-quarter goals to send the game into overtime.
Hall said he hopes for a better performance tonight and is pleased with the prospect of holding home-floor in the playoffs.
“The guys love playing in the building (Comcast Arena) and are really thrilled that fan support is growing every game,” Hall said. “It’s becoming an exciting place to play for us.”
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