The March to May continues and the playoff races got a little tighter this past weekend. Buffalo and Saskatchewan have clinched playoff spots and Las Vegas has been eliminated, but everyone else is still in the mix. Obviously some teams are in better shape than others, so it’s unlikely that Halifax will miss, and unlikely that Toronto or Philly will make it. But there are still seven or eight teams that have a decent chance of doing either one.

My Awesomes this week include three teams that are at the bottom end of the standings, but don’t take that as any kind of prediction. They were just awesome last weekend.

Awesome

Toronto Rock

I talked about this more in my game report, but the Rock played a great game on Saturday night. Solid goaltending, great defense and transition, offense clicking, even the jerseys were awesome.

Albany FireWolves

The FireWolves, like the Rock, seem to have waited until the last possible moment to start playing really well. Their playoff hopes are still pretty small, but every win bumps them up just a bit. Meanwhile holding the Bandits to ten goals and then beating them in overtime will boost the FireWolves confidence, which I’ve said a million times is critical to a team’s success.

They have certainly had a tough season with a 3–9 start. The offense hasn’t been the problem but they’ve struggled defensively, giving up 13 or more goals in six of eight games – and 15 or more in five of six – from mid-December to mid-February. But they’ve now won three straight, holding all three of their opponents to ten goals. Even better, one of those opponents is a likely playoff team in the Georgia Swarm, and another is the reigning champion Buffalo Bandits. As I said the road to the playoffs is a difficult one for the FireWolves, but if they keep playing as well as they have been recently, it’s not out of the question.

Doug Jamieson and Dyson Williams

Dyson Williams had a bit of a slow start to his career, picking up a few points here and there and waiting five games to register his first hat-trick. He’s still not lighting up the floor as much as many expected but is leading this year’s crop of rookies in scoring with 54 points, nine ahead of second-place Brennan O’Neill. He’s also scored the game-winner in both of Albany’s last two games, including the OT winner against Matt Vinc and the Bandits on Saturday.

They also had the biggest crowd in team history, with 6,724 showing up for this one. The team said last week (and continue to say) that last week’s game set a new attendance record, even though they had a game in 2022 with more, but this game beat both of those so it’s the new record. For reals this time.

Ottawa Black Bears

There’s no question that Ottawa has had offensive struggles this year – Sunday’s game was only their sixth of the season (out of fourteen games) where they’ve scored 10+ goals. Jeff Teat is on pace for 59 assists and 109 points – good for most players but 15 assists and 15 points below his career average.

But on Sunday, the offense was working well. Teat scored five and added four assists, Connor Kearnan had six points and Reilly O’Connor had five. Yes, they were facing Nathan Whittom, a rookie goaltender making his first career start, and not Dillon Ward, but (a) Whittom played really well, and (b) if it gives the Black Bears confidence, then it doesn’t much matter.

The defense with Callum Jones is a lot better than the defense without Callum Jones, though that doesn’t say anything about the Ottawa defense; that would be true of any team because Jones is just that good. I heard the names Marinier, Borgatti, and Noseworthy a number of times during the broadcast, and usually because of strong defensive plays.

Zach Higgins has had a very up and down season. He had a save percentage over 80% in five of his first seven games, and was talked about as the early leading Goaltender of the Year candidate, but has hit 80% only once in the last seven games. He was at 79.1% on Sunday but only allowed nine goals and was particularly strong in the second half.

Not Awesome

Philadelphia Wings

Again, see the game report for more details. The Wings started the season strong, going 5–2 and scoring 12+ goals in their first eight games. But they have only reached 10 goals in three of their six games since then, and have lost seven in a row. Even the addition of Michael Sowers, while exciting and fun to watch, hasn’t turned the offensive tides. Nick Damude is having one of his worst seasons statistically, the defense is still giving up a ton of shots even with the addition of Mitch de Snoo and Chris Corbeil, and the offense can’t seem to get it together. This team is an enigma.

Goalies assigned losses

In Vancouver on Saturday, Swarm goalie Angus Goodleaf played almost eighteen minutes, allowing one goal on 11 shots. This gives him a 3.36 GAA and 90.9% save percentage for the game, which is an outstanding effort. But the one goal he allowed happened to be the game-winner for Vancouver and so he was given the loss instead of Brett Dobson, who had an 18.52 GAA and 64.9% save percentage for the game.

Similarly in January, Nick Rose allowed 12 goals in 47 minutes (GAA of 15.28) against the Bandits with a save percentage of 72%. Meanwhile Troy Holowchuk allowed just two in 12 minutes (GAA of 9.34) and had a save percentage of almost 85%. But because Holowchuk allowed the game winner, he got tagged with the loss.

Did Alex Buque really deserve the loss in this game where he allowed one goal in sixteen minutes of work while Zach Higgins allowed 13 in 43 minutes?

This seems unfair. I know that a goalie’s win-loss record is somewhat meaningless – all anyone really cares about is the team’s win-loss record, not the goalies’ – and that this is how it works when assigning pitcher’s wins or losses in baseball too, but it still seems that the possibility of a judgement call should be allowed. It’s a minor thing, and relatively rare, but I found 24 cases of a goalie giving up three or fewer goals, playing less than 20 minutes and still getting the loss. Some of those, I’m sure, are justified but there are other cases like the ones mentioned above that really aren’t.