From Blowout to Battling for Survival, Swarm Best Thunderbirds, 17-16

Interviews with Thunderbirds Head Coach Mike Accursi and Swarm Head Coach Ed Comeau

You’d be forgiven for immediately thinking after Michael Grace’s empty net goal at the end of the third quarter put the Georgia Swarm (9-5) up 15-6 that the remaining 15 minutes of game time were a formality. Nobody told that to the Halifax Thunderbirds (5-9), who nearly wrested victory from the Swarm with a 10-goal fourth quarter.

Swarm captain Jordan MacIntosh, as he’s done all season long, put the team on his shoulders and delivered the go-ahead goal in transition with 18 seconds left in the contest, and the defense survived one final Halifax possession to escape Gas South Arena with a 17-16 win on Friday, March 20.

The previous 45 minutes of action were all Swarm. A penalty-filled first quarter saw the Swarm jump goalie Warren Hill, chasing him from net after four quick goals and picking apart the Thunderbirds defense. Drew Hutchison didn’t fare a better fate, as Shayne Jackson’s transition marker off the short bench to start the second quarter chased Hutchison from the net, the score now 8-1 and Hill placed back between the uprights. Georgia tacked on another pair of goals, up 10-1 with 41:49 min. left in the game.

The Thunderbirds went on a short run down nine, with Austin Blumbergs scoring off the short bench in transition. Cody Jamieson delivered off an excellent on-ball draw of two defenders by Jason Knox in the middle to get Jamieson time and room for his shot, and Jamieson capped the run after an extended power play was fruitless, scoring on the first settled shift after their wealth of multiple possessions. Richie Connell burned his defender by the benches collecting an errant loose ball, running down hill to score his lone goal of the contest and put the half’s scoring at 11-4 in favor of the home team.

Back from the locker rooms, the Swarm kept steady pressure, boosting their lead to 10. Halifax used transition and extra attacker situations to chip the differential down to eight. An early 6-on-5 shot with what should have been the final possession of the frame burnt the Thunderbirds, as Grace received the long feed with four seconds left in the quarter and beat out Hill’s running kick save attempt, scoring the empty netter and putting the score at 15-6.

Clarke Petterson led the comeback, recording eight of his ten points in the final quarter. He kicked it off with a power play goal and transition marker off the short bench. Stephen Keogh scored what would be his first of four goals in 15 minutes before Kaleb Benedict netted a power play goal, putting the score at 16-9. Swarm Head Coach Ed Comeau pulled Brett Dobson with the seven-goal lead, letting Devlin Shanahan try and land the plane in the final 6:32 min. of the contest.

It was disastrous. Will MacLeod was left all alone on the low left island after a scrambly play higher up drew the defense’s attention there, scoring on the first shot on goal against Shanahan. The floodgates opened, with the Thunderbirds regularly taking advantage of the Swarm’s defensive miscues. Halifax scored at will, using transition to whittle the differential away. After Keogh’s transition hat trick following a missed shot on the empty net for the Swarm, Dobson was placed back in with the score now 16-15 with 1:17 min. left. Shanahan had made 3 saves and given up 6 goals in his 5:15 min. between the pipes.

Jake Withers won the draw, as he had done nearly all night long, only losing one draw in the entire contest on a violation, and the Thunderbirds went back to 6-on-5. On their second possession with the extra attacker, Keogh aggressively signaled to pass the ball to him in the middle of the floor three steps above the doorstep, back to the goalie. Petterson nailed the connection, and Keogh did what Keogh does, going between his legs and Dobson’s while facing the wrong goal. From down 16-9 to tied up, the Thunderbirds were nearly about to pull off the impossible.

Withers won the next face-off, but their possession was fruitless. MacIntosh wound up with the loose ball and pushed up the floor. Seeing Jackson streaking off the short bench, he fed to the assistant captain, who sent it back to the team captain. MacIntosh made no mistake, burying the transition tally for the go-ahead goal and getting slammed into the boards by a defender for his efforts.

Up 17-16, the Swarm shaved six seconds off the clock on the next face-off, Withers immediately signaling for a timeout with 12 seconds left. A last 6-on-5 effort resulted in a shot from Jamieson that skirted up Dobson’s front, and the game died with the loose ball in the corner, the Swarm escaping with the 17-16 victory.

Petterson led all scorers with 10 PTS (4G, 6A), with sophomore Mike Robinson finishing with 6 PTS (3G, 3A). Hill earned the loss in the shootout, posting a 14.15 GAA and .684 Sv%.

Jackson’s 9 PTS (2G, 7A) were the most for the home team, followed by Lyle Thompson with 7 PTS (1G, 6A). Dobson made 41 saves in the 54:45 min. he played, a 10.96 GAA.

Thunderbirds Head Coach Mike Accursi

Obviously a game with a very interesting flow, and I do want to talk about the most exciting part of it, but I think we have to start with the front end, because that first quarter did not go your way at all. What attributed to that start?

I think we had some decent looks early. We didn't have a lot of great flow on offense, but they (the Swarm) also just scored five goals on seven shots. Need our fucking goalies and defense to show up early, and offense was slow to get going, but that's when we need our defense to kind of hold firm, and everything they're throwing on net was going in. It didn't matter whether we had Hutchy in or Warren in. They had 11, I think it was 11 goals on, I think it was like 21 shots or something like that.

Yeah, 11 and I want to say 19 saves, all told.

Yeah. Again, you're not going to win when your goalies are stopping 60%. You're just not going to win. So, that was very frustrating. There's no hidden victory here. Like, yes, we came back, and we put the effort in and tied the game up, but at this point in the season, that's not a win of confidence.

So, I'm kind of jumping around a bit with that in mind, but you still have to appreciate the effort the guys showed.

Oh yeah.

Like, even if it's last ditch, really just such a really good push for the guys.

Yeah, we're not a team of quitters, and the guys in the room, they have a belief in each other and this team. We left it all on the floor. That’s what we’re supposed to do. That's what they're supposed to do every single game. And yes, the push was good, and we kept coming, and we knew we were going to win face-offs, so we were able to kind of pull the goalie, take some chances knowing that we were going to get that ball back. So, it's great effort, too little, too late, and again, we have to learn how to start on time. We dig ourselves a hole; we have all fucking year. And you spot a team five goals, never mind 11 goals in the first half, you're up against it to battle back. I mean, I congratulated the guys on the effort, but at this point in the season, we have to be better than that.

Talking about being better, Clarke in the fourth frame was absolutely electric. I know a lot of that came against Shanahan, but he clearly led the charge. Guy I want to talk more about, though, is Robinson, because the first nine games of the season, only two goals, and he's got six in his last two. Is the shot just finally dropping for him?

We've been working on a lot of things in practice for him. His best weapon is his feet. And early in the season, he was fighting it, so then he's stopping his feet from moving him, just kind of shooting the ball instead of using his feet. Once he got back to using his feet, he was finding lanes, he was getting lanes. He's got such a great first step. He's able to create off of that. And he started hitting some shots, and that's when all that confidence comes back, right? But again, all these things are things that we work on a practice with them, and we kept believing in him and putting him in situations to be successful. Yeah, it's great that he's picked it up, because it was tough sledding for him early in the season, considering last year, he had such a great year.

Keogh, that final goal, I know we've seen that before, but just that was absolutely electric. What's the thought going through the head? Because not just the technical skill to pull off that wizardry at nearly 40, but the timing of that, what was the thought going through your head when you saw it?

Well, Keogh is one of the best guys in the middle, always has been. He can catch any ball and just kind of throws junk at the net, and it's real hard for goalies to read a shot. He has such a deep pocket that he can do stuff like that, because they just don't see it. All we have to do is create enough space to get him that ball, and we knew in that situation, throw Keogh in the middle, likely it's going to Keogh, because they're going to close off the guys that have been hot, and they're gonna be underneath Keogh for sure, so he knows that anytime he gets it, he's throwing it behind his legs, behind his back, something that the goalie can't see.

So you guys stay on the road, head to Philadelphia, not eliminated from the postseason, but fate's not necessarily in your hands at this point. Like, it's obviously got to win out, but—

Yeah, I think I would disagree with fate's not in our hands. I think winning out is, getting to 9-9, I think, is—you look at the teams that are also struggling are ahead of us. So we win out and put ourselves in a position where we can get to 9-9, I think we’ve got a really good shot at getting in the postseason. It's gonna be tough. There's no doubt about it, but shoulda, coulda, woulda. We've just got to focus on what's next and play our best effort like we saw in the third and fourth quarter, put that together for 60 minutes. We're tough out for anybody, doesn't matter who it is.

Swarm Head Coach Ed Comeau

Can we start with the kind of decision to leave Shanahan in? Obviously, you need to give him some seasoning and development, especially with that wide of a lead, but when things started to get squirrely at the end…

If we look back, we say we had a couple chances on an empty net that we missed the empty net, we missed the loose ball. We bury one of those, it's not an issue, and we wanted to— every time he's gone in, he's played really well for us and wanted to give him that confidence. I thought we kind of let down a little bit, and we were on our heels. I could have put him (Dobson) in earlier, and I said that was my call, but ultimately, putting Dobber in after sitting out for five or six minutes cold, that's always not the best thing. I think a lot of coaches would say in those games, making that decision's a tough decision, but if someone dives into our crease and takes out Dobson's legs by accident or gets checked in, and we have a goalie out, then people are going to wonder why you don't do that. So, it's kind of a tough situation. Luckily we got the win out of it, but certainly it didn't help our heart conditions on the bench, that's for sure.

You talk about Dobson coming in a bit cold off of that one, but after the game that he had tonight, after the season that he's having, I feel it was going to take something insane to beat him, and Stephen Keogh went for the insane. What's kind of a thought when he gets off the shot that he does to tie it up?

It's a shot, whether it's him or Clarke or Cody, whoever it is, but he's been known to take those shots, and those are hard when you're a goalie, when the player doesn't necessarily know where it's going, it's hard for the goalie to kind of get a good read on it. So, yeah, he's a good player. We talked about him and his man-short goal, we said we know when he gets those ones in tight, he's going hard to the net. I give credit to Halifax. They didn't quit. They were down by seven, and I think we kind of took our foot off the gas. And like I said, I felt bad that we didn't probably give Shanny the best outcome, the best defense in front of him for the last little bit.

You do have to like the start that you guys had, especially after the previous two games, but one thing in particular, the power play was a lot better this time. I think you guys finished with four on the night. Was that just an energy thing, guys being more particular with their shots?

It was a little bit of a kind of rethink, regroup, retool, and look at how to play differently, try some different things. We kind of said what we're doing is not working. We're worst in the league, and so we kind of challenged our guys to say, hey, we can we can't change what's happened the first 13 games, let's, the next five games, let's make sure we're dialed in, and we make teams pay when they take penalties. So that was kind of the focus and kind of challenged the offense both on that and just 5-on-5, and they certainly delivered tonight.

MacIntosh and Shayne having the game-winning goal, just the back and forth between them. It's your veterans helping lead the way, getting you guys over that hump when necessary throughout the season. You've got Ottawa up next, you're heading on the road. How are they going to help you guys continue to build off of this?

We've got a lot of young guys, but young guys only grow through great leadership, and we have great leadership in the room with guys. Obviously, everyone was pretty disappointed the way the game finished, and we reminded them, “Hey, it's hard to win.” Those guys said, “It's hard to win in this league,” right? So, we have to—it wasn't the way we wanted to win, but we won, and I think that's veteran leadership. Like saying, "Hey, what do we learn from that? What can we take away? What can we do better?" and I think our veterans have done a great job of that this year.