The Wranglers meet up with the River City Jaguars on Friday and Saturday nights this coming weekend. The Jags were recently bumped down to 5th place and out of play-off contention recently after losing to Seattle, Tri-Cities, and Eugene. So, they are going to be wanting a couple of wins to try and get back into play-off contention. Seattle and Eugene are securely in 1st and 2nd place, leaving 3rd and 4th place for Puget Sound, Tri-Cities or River City. Three teams vying for two places. So, the latter part of the season will be competitive for these teams. The Wranglers are out of play-off contention and can only play the role of spoiler for the above teams. Which would be fine with me.The Wranglers play River City 3 more times, Tri-Cities 4 more times, and Puget Sound 2 more times. Wouldn't it be oh so sweet if the Wranglers could win 2/3 of the above games, which would give the Wranglers a minimum of a 7-41 season. Of course, I would love to have the Wranglers win all of the above, but I'm trying to be realistic. The Wranglers have 20 games left in the season, and any win is "gravy" over this losing season. Unfortunately there is no way the Wranglers can turn this into a winning season.
Could the Wranglers do it? Yes, I believe they could easily win 6 or more games over the above teams. If the Wranglers played the way they did against Eugene recently they could definitely win several games. In fact, I'm kinda angry now that I know how the Wranglers played against the Generals and why they didn't play that hard and aggressively in earlier games. In case you missed it, the Wranglers played the Generals well, very well. Good passing, cycling the puck in the offensive zone, good defensive hitting, and skating were done by the Wranglers. My question was why? Was it because it was Eugene? Or was it because of the Christmas break? My suspicion was that it was a combination of both. Sure the Wranglers would love to spoil a game, and the players wanted to go home.
Again, the Jags are coming to Wrangler-town to win and get back into play-off contention. They do not want to lose to the hapless last place NorPac Wranglers - nobody does. The Jags know how to score, Kevin Nighbert is #15 on the NorPac scorer's list, and 7 players that have more scoring points than the top Wranglers. The Jags top goalie, Sean Buckley is #12 on the NorPac top goalies list with a 4.45 GAA and 0.894 save %. They've beaten the Wranglers 4 times already.
We all know what the Wranglers have to do to win. Play hard as they did against Eugene. That is, hit, skate, pass, shoot, and score. The Wranglers have got to keep the mistakes to a minimum. Honestly, I think the Wranglers can beat the Jags, not once but twice. It's up to you boys. Let's start the new year out right with a couple of wins. GO WRANGLERS!
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Player notes: Seems like a few Wranglers didn't want to go back to practice on time and instead decided to skip practice altogether. Consequently the Wranglers will be playing with a very short bench, probably only 14 players against River City this Friday and/or Saturday night. I wouldn't look for Abera, Blase, Guzman, McCormack, Miglioretto, and a few other forwards who decided to play "hooky" instead of hockey. That's too bad. What kind of message does that send to the rest of the team? "We don't care, we don't have to?" Congratulations to the boys who did make it to practice. You're winners in more ways than you know.
