Chairman How's Glorious Army
Significantly Lowering the Bar Since 2008.

The excitement of last night can only last so long. It’ll be over probably about 7:05 tomorrow night, down in the small burb of WBS. Can the Crunch embrace their current momentum and make it 5, maybe even 6, wins in a row? There’s no rest for the wicked, boys and girls!

The Crunch head into Pennsylvania off a strong and convincing win Wednesday night, a victory that was probably one of our best away games so far this season. The Crunch started behind in the first three minutes of the game, tied it, pulled ahead, got tied again, and then took the ending of the game all the way to the bank, cashing in on three power play goals and a strong appearance from goaltender Kevin Lalande. The boys done did good.

Unfortunately, none of that matters worth a damn going into this weekend, other than the slight confidence boost the team should be feeling. If this whole scenario is sounding eerily familir, it’s because it should: two weeks ago, the Crunch had a home game against WBS, coming out of the All Star break. Just the week before that, the Crunch had seen their four-game winning streak snapped by losses against Rochester and Hershey. The game against WBS was supposed to be a new start for the Crunch, proof that this team was a different group and that we could pull out of the two game losing streak we were muddled in.

That, of course, didn’t happen. The Crunch would drop that game 6-3 and then would go onto extend their losing streak to four games with another loss the next night, this time against Worcester. It was a shootout win over Toronto that tugged the Crunch out of their newest nose dive. That Toronto game would also be the start of our current winning streak. But can the Crunch keep it going?

Things to keep an eye on this weekend:

The points situation: Every weekend we talk about how important the games are going to be. Well, this weekend is no exception. As a matter of fact, the points we could gain are CRAZY IMPORTANT. The Crunch is currently in 6th place, with 46 points. The Phantoms, our Saturday night opponent, are in a points-tie for 4th place with…wait for it…wait for it…you guessed it:  the Baby Pens. Both clubs have 48 points. The good news is that the Phantoms play one of the powerhouse teams this season (Manchester) tomorrow night. So the Crunch’s fate is really in their hands: at the end of this weekend we could, however temporarily, be in 4th place in our division–or at least be tied for 4th place–and that much closer to playoff contention.

The scorers: I am really sick of writing about these same players. However, that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Dustin Jeffrey, Mark Letestu and Luca Caputi still lead WBS in scoring. Between them, they have 48 goals and 78 assists. Holy shit. On the Phantoms side of things, Jon Matsumoto, David Laliberte and Patrick Maroon lead the pack, with a combined 36 goals and 60 assists. Former Crunch member Stefan Legein continues to excel–he now has 17 goals and 3 assists in 41 games. Up front for the Crunch, we have Derek MacKenzie, Dan Fritsche and Jarad Aulin (I’m skipping Brendan Bell because his combined stats are still skewing things). D-Mac, Fritsche, and Aulin have scored a combined 36 goals and 53 assists for us so far this season.

A defensive mess?: Defensive liabilities aren’t just problems on the Crunch’s ice this year, although don’t expect this weekend to be a cake walk because of that. The Baby Pens are pretty tightly defensively–their lowest d-man is Ben Lovejoy, with a -5. But while Brenden Bell’s horrific -24 stat leads the Crunch, the Phantoms feature a slightly floundering Marc-Andre Bourdon, with a -11, and Sean Curry, with a -13.

Dueling goaltenders: The Crunch’s top goaltender is Kevin Lalande. Lalande has a 14-11-2 record, with a 2.98 average and a .909 save percentage. The Baby Pens’ number one is John Curry, who has an 18-14-1 record, a 2.71 average, and a .898 save percentage. The Phantoms apparent number one is currently Johan Backlund, who has a 14-10-2 record, a 2.62 average and a .913 save percentage. I hate to sound like one of those cheesy “Keys to the Game” lists, but these goaltenders are pretty evenly matched. Now granted, I have no idea who the teams are going to put in the net, but this weekend is important for everyone so I’d personally go with the best each team has.

These should be close games, Crunch fans. We can only hope the team is ready to play, the bounces go our way, and we’re not gripping our sticks too hard. Right? Right!

GO CRUNCH!