Photo Credit: Vancouver Warriors Twitter
Country Night brought the chaos of the Wild West to Rogers Arena as the Vancouver Warriors fell 11–9 to the San Diego Seals on Friday night. The game didn’t end without its fair share of controversy, however.
As the Warriors were down 10–7 with 1:04 left in the game, Keegan Bal and Marcus Klarich scored 11 seconds apart to bring Vancouver back within one. With 19.2 seconds remaining, it appeared as if Curtis Dickson tied the game for the Warriors, but the referees called no goal on the floor, ruling that Dickson’s foot dragged through the crease. After review, they couldn’t find conclusive evidence to overturn the call, sending the crowd of 10,971 the second-largest in Warriors history into an uproar and even causing a fan to throw popcorn onto the floor.
In my opinion, it looked like a good goal, and I was shocked that they said they couldn’t find any conclusive evidence, as it appeared Dickson’s foot cleared the crease. The Warriors beat the Calgary Roughnecks in overtime last week, and it certainly looked like they were going to need overtime again in this game.
The Warriors started the game slow, as the Seals scored just 28 seconds in. Vancouver’s offence struggled to get going early, managing only 14 shots until midway through the second quarter. They were down 6-2 until the Warriors scored four unanswered goals in just over two minutes to claw back into the game in the second quarter before San Diego scored to take the lead going into halftime. Adam Charalambides was the Warriors’ leading goal scorer on the night, recording a hat trick. Charalambides mentioned postgame that he liked his team’s battle, but they need to have better starts to avoid chasing games.
“I liked (our) resiliency, I liked the hustle plays, I like not quitting, but I think as a group we (have) to grow and not put ourselves in those type of positions. Our first quarter, (we had) a slow start, (that) led us to what was that one goal battle down the stretch there.”
Charalambides also touched on some of the challenges the Seals presented defensively.
“They got some athletic defenders, some fast guys, some athletes. They like to play pressure all over the floor, and I like the way that we responded to it. We were running by certain guys and getting the ball low despite the pressure. I thought we did a good job managing the pressure.”
Head coach and general manager Curt Malawsky said the Warriors were a couple of posts away from the outcome potentially being different and, like Charalambides, liked the battle from his offence even though they weren’t scoring.
“We got a lot of veteran guys… (Jesse King) hit a bar real late, so did (Dickson), It was never from a lack of effort, (shots) just weren’t falling, some nights we have a little bit of luck on our side and tonight we didn’t get that.”
The loss drops Vancouver to 3–2, and they will go on the road for two games to face the Ottawa Black Bears and the Rochester Knighthawks in a rematch of last year’s quarterfinal. The Warriors are playing well but haven’t hit their stride just yet. All preseason, Malawsky said that the last thing that was going to come together was the offence. We saw them put up 15 goals against Vegas, but they haven’t been able to find consistency offensively just yet. But Malawsky isn’t worried.
“All the pieces are here, all the heart is here, all the compete is here, all the hard work is here, and guys who really care, Just have to work a little bit on the X’s and O’s, and that falls on my shoulders.”
Perhaps they deserved a better fate on Country Night, but there’s still a lot of season left. Fans still have plenty to be excited about with this Warriors team.
The Warriors will return home on February 7th to take on the Knighthawks.
