Well to start with, it was a long drive home for one measley point out of
a weekend series. :-)
The Lakers played this weekend in their gold 1967 replica jerseys as part of
the Alumni Weekend celebretaion. The jerseys were gold with blue highlights
and said "Soo Lakers" on the front. At first I thought they were awful,
but they had grown on me by the end of the weekend.
I had to sign off the list to go home, but I'll assume that some sort of game
summaries have been given by the NMU & Tech fans, so I'll just make a few
comments instead of giving a complete report.
Of Friday's game, Coach Jackson said "I have to look at the positives, some of
our young kids playded really well. I was happy to see some of the younger
defensemen do as well as they did. That's a good sign because it was
probably my biggest concern going in to the game."
I would have to agree with him. In my eyes it was the proven Lakers who did
not rise to the occasion. Sean Talliare, Wayne Strachan, and Keith Aldridge
were all non-factors. I didn't even notice Strachan until he made the turn-
over which eventually led to NMU's winning goal in OT.
Of the underclassmen, Felsner was the obvious standout, with a hat trick.
However Battaglia and Laviolet (sp) also played well. Felsner also proved
that he could mix it up when the need arises. When a pushing match started
in the corner, he sent Wildcat defensemen (and Soo native) Mike Hillock flying.
Hillock is a big kid and it was a gutsy move. 8 minutes in penalties were
handed out from that incident, but none went to Felsner or Hillock, the ref
must not have seen it.
Of the MTU game, the only question is "Jamie who?"
Luciano Caravaggio was absolutely steller in net. I had a perfect seat to watch
him make save after save. Glove saves, pad saves, stick saves.....he was
amazing. Of 51 shots he was only beat twice. Well three times, but once it
was ruled (correctly) that the whistle had blown. The puck was still free,
but Shegos must have lost sight of it. He blew the whistle as a Laker put it
in the net. I can't complain though, was his only bad call all night.
I especially agree with his 5 minute major assesed against laker Dan Angelelli.
It was a stupid, dangerous play and the 5 minute penalty took a lot of
momentum away from the Lakers. Former Laker Doug Laprade was sitting right
ahead of me and I wanted to say, "Hey Doug, remember when you used to take
stupid penalties like that?" I don't mean to offend any other LSSU fans
on the list (that is assuming there areany other LSSU fans on the list:-)),
but C'mon, Laprade was a goon.
Anyway, back to the present, all the Lakers played much better Saturday and
its a shame (to me) that they didn't win. The only Laker "leader" who had
another bad game was Keith Aldridge. I think I heard that he was playing
injured, but he looked bad. Time and time again he let the puck slip past
the blue-line on seemingly routine plays to keep the puck in the zone. He
was also back to his freshman ways of taking stupid penalties. After earning
an assist on Brad Willner's 2nd period goal, instead of joining his teamates
in celebration, he punched a Tech player. It wasn't a scuffle around the net
after a goal or anything marginally understandable like that, he just skated
out to the blue line and punched a guy. I'm sure it was a payback for
something, but it was way out of place. And, of course, Tech scored on the
ensuing power play.
The only thing that I am worried about after this weekends games is
goaltending. All the other problems weren't that serious, and I'm sure that
they will be worked out, but there is still a question mark in net. Both
Sass and Grahame played very average games. The Lakers outshot their
opponents by 10 and 33 respectively, and only got one point on the weekend.
When Coach Jackson was asked during fridays post game show who would start
on saturday, he replied, "that depends on how Sean Kulick is doing on his
2 mile run which he is running right now." Apparently he didn't do well
enough to get the start.
Jeff Old
Alma College '96
GO LAKERS!!!!!
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