Swarm Run Rampant in 9-5 Win; FireWolves Offensive Woes Continue
Interviews with FireWolves GM and Head Coach Glenn Clark and Swarm Head Coach Ed Comeau
Photo Credit: Kyle Hess/Georgia Swarm
A defensive first half saw the balance tip the Georgia Swarm’s (1-1) way in the final 30 minutes of action, as their transition game broke the logjam for a 9-5 win against the Oshawa FireWolves (1-2) at Gas South Arena on Saturday night. Brett Dobson and the Swarm defense frustrated Oshawa all night long to continue the visiting team’s offensive woes another week.
Dobson finished the night with 51 saves for a .911 Sv%. Lyle Thompson led the Swarm in scoring with 4 PTS (1G, 3A), followed by Shayne Jackson with a hat trick and Bryan Cole with 3 assists.
After their scoreless streak reached 67:25 min., Alex Simmons finally snapped the FireWolves’ offensive futility. He was responsible for his team’s first three goals and tacked on an assist. A transition marker from Patrick Kaschalk and extra attacker goal from Tye Kurtz in the fourth quarter wrapped up Oshawa’s scoring. Doug Jamieson and the defense turned in another stellar showing. The 29-year-old made 37 saves for an .822 Sv%.
Photo Credit: Kyle Hess/Georgia Swarm
FireWolves General Manager and Head Coach Glenn Clark
What’s the immediate feeling after that performance coupled with the game before?
We’ve got to be better on offense. We are just not putting the ball in the net, and that’s the reality. Our defense has been great. Not only did we not put the ball in the net, but we turned over a lot of balls. I think they got five transition goals — whether it was power play or man down or even strength — from O turnovers. When you’re not generating on offense, you certainly can’t be turning the ball over like we are. We’ve got a big fix on the O end. That’s the reality.
I feel like the power play is a real noticeable weak point, think you’re 1-for-15 at this point in the season. Is it just getting comfortable, staying outside and not getting in?
Yeah, we’ll generate looks at times. We’re certainly not capitalizing, and we’re not shooting well. You give credit to goaltenders, but our last two games, we’ve put up over 50 shots, and we’re not scoring. Schematically, they’re getting looks, they’re not burying, so who knows. I don’t know. If I knew, if it was a light switch, I’d fix it, right? So, I don’t know.
Looking at the positives, another stellar performance from Doug Jamieson, but I seriously think Nick Chaykowsky needs to be up for Defensive Player of the Year at this point.
Yeah, he’s so good.
What’s going on with him this year? How has he elevated his game so much?
He did it last year, too. He played for us in Team Canada, so he’s starting to get the recognition he deserves. But he’s an elite, elite player. Our D has been ridiculously good. They gave up two 5-on-5 goals today against a good offensive team. A lot of those goals weren’t on them. There were transition type opportunities and power plays, three power play goals. We’re good on the back end; we’ve got to fix the front end. It’s that simple. Our D and goaltending are a non-concern. Our offense is our concern.
With Vancouver playing tonight, you’ll obviously watch them and all that jazz. After these last two games, is the plan more to focus on yourselves, try and figure out what doesn’t work?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Big time. We did that going into this weekend, a lot of shooting, a lot of different positional stuff, a lot of different sort of flow sets for our offense just to try and do something different, and we’re still struggling. That’s the mystery for us right now. You go back to the drawing board and try and figure it out. But that’s our issue is we are not producing on offense, and that’s got to change.
It’s got to be nice getting back home to Oshawa for your second home game.
It is. It is, but it’s still — you run out of time quickly in this league, and this is an issue.
Photo Credit: Kyle Hess/Georgia Swarm
Swarm Head Coach Ed Comeau
That had to be a gratifying win even though the FireWolves are going through their offensive struggles, just to weather that defensive first half and then pour on the pressure in the second half.
Yeah, we know with some of the young guys that one mistake can set you down a bad path, so great veteran leadership from our guys, coming out a 2-2 game, those couple quick goals makes a big difference to the confidence. Dobber was awesome, the defense was really good, and we had some timely goals out the front door. To win in this league, you need that type of effort from everyone, and to a man, when I go through the list, I can’t really think of anyone that didn’t have a good night, battled hard and contributed.
I don’t want to take anything away from Dobson tonight with his 51 saves and everything, but Michael Grace, my god, what a monster.
Yeah, I’m not sure what other rookies are doing around the league. I’m sure there are a few O guys that are doing pretty good, but he has after — I don’t know if he had any assists tonight, but he’s got five points after two games, and the goal tonight was great — caused turnover, run the floor, bury a shot — so he’s great. He’s been really good, makes some mistakes like rookies do in our league, and he’s going to learn once he starts to see these guys more and more, watching more film, but certainly really happy with what he brings. You look at our last-minute defense, we have a guy who’s in his second game in the league, he’s out there, so that tells you what we think of him.
Snagging that one Oshawa pass on the final PK, he’s delivering when you need him most.
100 percent.
It’s not just him. You talk about the rookies learning and getting better, and it feels like you can see that improvement every shift for your younger players and that’s what allowed the offense to start burying those chances later on. Fair assessment?
I think with our guys, with so many young guys like Ben Trumble out there, (Jacob) Hickey hasn’t played a full season, Michael Grace, Jack Travassos, that’s a fair number of young guys that we’re relying on out there. Every shift they play, they’re getting better and learning more about what it takes to be good in this league. Yeah, some nights, they want to score 15, but in order to score 15, you need your D to be really good, and they were good, Dobber was good. He’d be the first to say our D played really well. The shots we gave up, teams are going to get shots in this league, and they’ve (Oshawa) got a lot of good shooters. He (Dobber) made some good saves.
I know he scored and finally got off the schnide, but that right side and Lyle seem like there’s still that disconnect there. Is that part of the learning process, or is the extra attention that he gets from the best defenders a lot early on?
I think probably a combination of both. Lyle always gets a lot of attention, but he’s had that for ten years in the league. We’re working through the right side. We had a guy playing his first game last week (Carter Page), we had a guy playing his first game tonight in Kean Moon, who did a good job. It’s going to take a little bit of time for those guys. Lyle didn’t participate a lot in training camp, so for those guys, it takes a little bit of time, but all pretty dynamic and making things happen. Kaleb Benedict, we’re real happy with what he’s doing. People that are predicting the demise of Lyle’s game I think will be shocked when he starts to get going and those guys kind of figure out working together. He’s going to have a monster game coming up, we know that, and I think everyone in the league knows that he’s ready to explode.
Looking ahead, you’ve got Saskatchewan coming off a road loss where they didn’t score in the first or fourth quarters. Is it too early in the season to pay attention to them, more focusing on yourselves?
Sask was really good last year. They ended our season, went to the Finals. They’re a good team, well-coached. They’re not going to be in a good mood after losing that game that looked like they were in control of in the start of the third. That’s lacrosse. We said the same thing. We were up 7-3 at one point, “Hey, we’ve seen this script before, right?”, being focused and being ready all the time. They’re a good team, and any team that comes off a tough loss like that, they’re going to be very, very motivated, especially being at home, and they always seem to play well at home.
