ECDX: (1) Gotham Grounds (3) Denver, 242-117
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Photo: Dave Wood.
FEASTERVILLE, PA --Gotham's match-up with Denver was thought to be one of the most contested of the weekend--and while Gotham swept to a 125 point win 242-117, Denver fought throughout--and in the end, they were mostly undone by their own jammer penalty trouble.
The bout opened up in the most appropriate way possible with both teams’ captains facing off against each other on the jam line. Despite Juska nearly escaping, Bonnie Thunders got lead and grabbed four points--but not before Juska had scored two of her own.
In jam two Gotham took the front as Denver held Suzy Hotrod at the back--and after two laps Rangeon finally escaped for lead. Rangeon got boxed on her scoring pass though, letting Suzy in to take the jam 5-4. A 4-2 pack advantage for Gotham gave Bonnie Thunders lead jammer before she hit the pivot line, and she put up five before Rangeon escaped--and four more on her next pass after Rangeon escaped Gotham's grasp to take the score to 18-9.
Rookie Slambda Phage took her first turn with the star in this game for Gotham Girls. OMG WTF held up Sharpless to let Phage get out first, but both jammers got minors on the way through, causing the jam run the full two minutes, increasing the score to 27-14.
Eight points for Juska with Bonnie stuck in the Denver pack reduced the deficit to five points--but Rangeon was boxed again in the next jam. Akers did her best to stop Bonnie, but she extended Gotham's lead to 24 before Rangeon got out of the box. Rangeon got a major cut before this jam ended and found herself in the box. Claire D Way then had her first jam for the Gotham Girls in this bout, but had her scoring prospects severely diminished by Rivas and the rest of the Denver pack, who limited her to five points, taking the score to 60-22 as the first period approached its halfway mark.
Thunders put up four over Adams before Denver took a time-out, as they tried to find a way to halt Gotham's momentum, but to no avail. Sharpless was boxed in the next jam, and could only watch as Suzy Hotrod took Gotham into an 88-22 lead. The differential would have been deeper had it not been for some exceptional blocking from Rivas.
Thunders extended Gotham's lead before Phage and Rangeon shared a 0-0 jam with the score at 92-22 and eleven minutes left on the clock. Slaydie held Adams up at the front long enough for Thunders to add one more as pack speed rose dramatically.
Juska then got Denver's first lead jam call in about ten minutes--and put Denver's first points on the board to end Gotham's 66-point unanswered run. Juska and Thunders then traded 4-0 jams. Next, Rangeon scored 15 unanswered points before Suzy Hotrod could escape from the Gotham pack, and added four more before being forced into a call, leaving the score at 97-50 with under five minutes on the period clock.
Sexy Slaydie did a number on Sharpless in the next jam, though, letting Bonnie Thunders take Gotham into a 114-50 lead. A two-minute jam between Juska and Phage closed out the first half. Both jammers were boxed at almost the same time on their scoring passes after neither got lead, and the half ended with a 123-59 score.
Slaydie and Donna Matrix helped Bonnie make the first jam of the second half 1-0 to Gotham. Phage got stuck in the pack on the next jam, letting Rangeon take the score to 124-72--but she was boxed for another major back block at the death, which allowed Thunders to line up unopposed, and she got lead again before she hit the pivot line. Rivas, Cruz and Akers kept Bonnie's scoring down to 15 as she seemed to struggle with the increasingly slippery floor.
Adams was boxed on a major back block of her own at the start of the next jam, letting Suzy Hotrod stretch Gotham's lead to 149-72, with Long holding Suzy up at the front of the pack as Gotham's passive offense failed to pay dividends.
Several scrappy jams followed, pushing the score to 157-80 before Juska and Rangeon picked up 9 in a four jam, scoreless run for Gotham. Single-digit jams were traded as both teams kept the penalty box officials busy, but Denver got the better of a scrappy passage of play to reduce the deficit to 64. When Barret got boxed for a low block, Bonnie stretched the lead to 84 before Barret got out to steal four points and make the score 186-103 with under ten minutes left.
When Sharpless was sent to the penalty box with around five minutes left on the clock, Phage helped Gotham past the 200 mark on one pass, and into a 100-point lead on the next, and grabbed five more before Sharpless was released to pick up some points, ending that jam on a 214-112 score.
A 9-0 for Thunders, as Rangeon was beaten up by Slaydie and Mick Swagger, took the bout into its last three minutes, after which Denver took their penultimate time-out. Denver got lead after their time-out, but only scored one point in the jam. Sharpless visited the penalty box almost immediately in the final jam, allowing Thunders to push the Gotham lead to 125 and closing the bout out, 242-117.
Bout Stats courtesy of N8.
GOTHAM: 242 pts, 22/42 LJ, 24 PMs, 1 Jammer PM
Bonnie Thunders: 12/19, 111 pts, 5.84 PPJ, +74 JPD, +3.89 JPDPJ, 0 PM
Suzy Hotrod: 5/10, 76 Pts, 7.60 PPJ, +46 JPD, +4.60 JPDPJ, 0 PM
Slambda Phage: 2/7, 37 pts, 5.29 PPJ, -9 JPD, -1.29 JPDPJ, 1 PM
Claire D. Way: 3/4, 18 pts, 4.50 PPJ, +14 JPD, +3.50 JPDPJ, 0 PM
DENVER: 117 pts, 14/40 LJ, 34 PMs, 10 Jammer PMs
Heather Juska: 8/13, 45 pts, 3.46 PPJ, +15 JPD, +1.15 JPDPJ, 1 PM
Sandrine Rangeon: 2/14, 40 pts, 2.86 PPJ, -46 JPD, -3.29 JPDPJ, 4 PM
Amanda Sharpless: 3/8, 28 pts, 3.50 PPJ, -58 JPD, -7.25 JPDPJ, 3 PM
Krisana Barret: 1/1, 4 pts, 4.00 PPJ, -19 JPD, -19.0 JPDPJ, 1 PM
Julie Adams: 0/4, 0 pts, 0.00 PPJ, -17 JPD, -4.25 JPDPJ, 1 PM
Comments
I felt sorry for Denver
My take is that Denver was defeated by Denver instead of Gotham. I think it's always preferable to play your best and lose than play poorly and defeat yourself. The current stats link in this article doesn't work. If there are stats I want to look at the penalty differential between the teams. I wouldn't say that Denver would have won without their penalty troubles but they would have had a chance. Gotham didn't look nearly as tight as last year, perhaps due to the weakness of their bout schedule thus far this year. If Rose can stay out of the box tomorrow, in my mind there chances against Gotham have risen based on what I saw in this bout.
Bout stats
Sorry about that, pulled the link. Bout stats are only available for the Rink 2 bouts - unfortunately, Gotham / Denver was a Rink 3 bout.
foes cause penalties
"Team XXX could have won if they hadn't defeated themselves by going to the box."
At the elite level between generally well-matched teams this analysis doesn't hold water. If Denver had played Ketchup City, they wouldn't have gone to the box at all. Forcing the other team into the box is what the elite teams do to each other as part of their fundamental strategy.
My rule of thumb is, teams
My rule of thumb is, teams tend to accumulate more penalties when they're playing at an equal level because they're pushing themselves beyond their actual level at the time of the game. They're able to put the playing down, but without the margin for error of the other team if they're not getting as many penalties.
The conversation at our house goes:
B: Team B is really pushing themselves hard to stay up with Team A
T: Yeah, that's going to cost them when the penalties start to pile up in the second half.
And it becomes especially true if/when the team manages penalties and holds back their top skaters to keep them out of the box, and digs deeper into their roster. 110% does not come without a cost.
Penalties and fitness
I'm going to take a tack related to Busta's. I've noticed that penalties decline as strength and fitness increase. It's called a bout for good reason, one must be able to take and dish out a battering from and to your opponents. As one tires of this battering, mistakes (penalties) increase. Penalties often are a function of relative fitness between teams.
Want to reduce your penalties? More core and endurance training, yes, more off skates training.
Not strictly true...
This is the case in some cases, and in the long term -- but in the short term I can actually see extensive training make penalty problems worse. You want to get fewer penalties? Spend more time working with refs, working on your rules knowledge, and getting that situational awareness down pat.
If you don't know when a cut is going to be minor or major because of when blockers are going down or out and you're not playing it safe, you're going to go to the box more. If you don't properly understand how refs see contact, you're going to get called out on forearms and backblocks more.
Players tend to pick up penalties when playing at the limit of their abilities, especially when those abilities are increasing and they don't quite know where the edges are.
Players / teams (in my experience) will often go through penalty-heavy phases as they're getting better, before shaking them off and getting back on track in better shape than they were before.
That having been said, if you're chasing a game, you're just going to take more risks, and go to the box more--and when your jammer's in the box your blockers will go to the box more with the current powerjam offense being so good at drawing direction of gameplay, out of play, and pack destruction majors off the defending side.
As for penalties being caused by your opponents -- sometimes. Gotham and other high-level tactical teams are good at generating penalties from other teams as their tactics are specifically engineered to put the opposition at risk.
And more
In addition to getting tired, and lack of rules knowledge, and taking more risks, I would also add to the list of Reasons Skaters Accrue Penalties the following: Level of Awareness.
I doubt there are many (any) skaters that don't know the difference between a minor and major cut. What they don't know is, at the moment they went out of bounds, where was every other skater relative to their position? This is an awareness training, and it's heavily grounded in simple experience. Many other penalties (Out of Play penalties, especially those involving no pack situations) are also heavily influenced by a skater's awareness.
In summary, there are lots of reasons penalties become a problem. It varies from team to team, and from skater to skater.
In some cases...
For instance, if a no pack is called when they're going off, people are prone to get confused. if the person who hit them out is called out of play, or someone who was ahead of them goes down, or looks to be being sent to the box...
The rules as they stand are simple enough, but actually knowing every edge scenario is a different matter entirely.
But yes, I absolutely agree with your analysis -- it varies so much. I was just painting a few scenarios where it can be worse then normal.
Depends on the team I think....
I'm not so sure about that. I have seen plenty of teams play other top level teams as well as lower level teams and their penalty minutes were really the same. There are some players who tend to commit a certain penalty, and they commit it regardless of who they are playing against.
My name is Rev. Norb and i
My name is Rev. Norb and i approve this headline.
Fitness?!!
Some of our most penalty-prone skaters are absolutely the fittest, and the most educated about fitness. Also, I don't think I've ever seen DRD called out for fitness before - our crosstraining is pretty burly. *shrug*
I prefer to think of myself
I prefer to think of myself as overweight/out of shape and with no working knowledge of the rules.
Dave Wood!
The photo of Suzy accompanying this article is GORGEOUS. And it's not like there aren't a bazillion pictures of the girl...but this one is really something. Nice work!
Suzy!
The photo of Suzy accompanying this article is GORGEOUS. And it's not like there aren't a bazillion pictures of the girl...but this one is really something. Nice work!
Just popped over to DNN and there was my name at the top of the "Discussion" list. :)
Thanks for the kind words! Suzy's a treat to shoot, that's for sure. I rather like this one from the Team USA scrimmage...
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150915452468757&set=a.101509154...