NLL Insider

In the Western Divisional Final, Portland travels to Calgary as both teams pulled off up-set wins in their first round playoff games last weekend. They’ll look to put on a show Saturday. Tickets to this playoff game are still available and can be purchased through ticketmaster.ca or by calling 777-000. The game kicks off at Pengrowth Saddledome at 9:30pm EST.

Portland rode a seven goal, twelve point performance from Dan Dawson last weekend to capture a 18-16 victory over San Jose.

“Dan’s a big game performer. He’s a playoff performer. And as I said last week, in the playoffs, star players raise the level of their game and that’s exactly what he did.”

“He was pretty much unstoppable in-terms of getting to the net and shooting the ball really well. And he also involved a lot of other players,” said Portland GM and head coach Derek Keenan of Dawson. “He had a huge night, but we got some secondary scoring as well – obviously when you have 18 (goals) you’re going to get that.

Ryan Powell contributed four goals, four assists and Peter Morgan had seven assists. Brad MacDonald scored the eventual game-winner and Brodie Merrill recorded two goals.

The Lumberjax went down to the Stealth 8-3 early in the second-quarter of their last game but found their scoring groove thereafter. “We managed to battle through a lot of adversity cause we got down pretty big early, and we managed to fight through that. We really played quite well,” added Keenan.

Calgary also played extremely well last weekend, as they too up-set in the first round of the playoffs with a victory in Colorado. They went on a five-goal fourth quarter run with goals from Kelly Hall, Scott Ranger, Kaleb Toth and Jeff Shatler to steal a 15-13 road victory and earn the right to host this Western Division Final.

“We’ve been playing well as of late,” stated Calgary GM Kurt Silcott. “It was a great game with Colorado, back and forth all night. A lot of goals. We’re looking forward to another battle like that on Saturday night against Portland.”

The home team won the three regular season meetings between these two clubs. Their last meeting was on Mar. 8 when Calgary won 15-12, but both teams will start different goalies this Saturday. Portland will play Matt Disher (.76) and Calgary will likely start Steve Dietrich (.69 SV%).

“There always the difficult match-up,” added Silcott of the Lumberjax. “They’re probably the biggest team in the league. Certainly it’s not sitting well with me that Dawson has really found his groove. And Ryan Powell is playing great. We know we have our work cut out for us.”

“We’re feeling pretty good (though). We’ve got ourselves on a little run here. We’ve a lot of character in our room. We believed all year we just had to get ourselves going and we’d be a tough team to beat,” said Silcott. “Lo and behold we are that tough team to beat right now. We’re looking over to that Portland team and we see a lot of similarity.”

“I’m going to say it over and over again, this game is going to be a great one… We’re looking forward to another battle against Portland.”

“You’ve got to win or you go home,” added Keenan.

You can watch the game worldwide with B2 Live TV.

Rate This Story:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...