| Joe Crozier
was stomping mad, or else he was heartbroken. He huffed and snorted and paced. And when he
talked to you, he leaned his face right up into your face. You expected at any moment he'd
grab you by the shirt collar. He never did though. He just stomped away, and left you
wondering what he was really mad about. The former Cincinnati Swords coach and his Calgary
Cowboys had just lost Sunday to the resurgent Cincinnati Stingers. The score was 5-4 and
the game had gone five minutes into overtime at Riverfront Coliseum. The Stingers had managed a remarkable 59 shots on goal, including 30 in just
the third period to come back from a 4-2 deficit. "Thirty shots, baloney,"
snapped Crozier, who liked coaching in Cincinnati and wouldn't mind coaching here again
sometime, which accounts for the strong personal interest he takes in beating or losing to
the Stingers. "There's no way. That official scorer must have been drunk. You'd think
the Stingers played the greatest game on earth if you look at the statistics, but they
didn't, I'll tell you. How can any team playing for the third straight day get 30 shots in
one period? You tell me. No way. If he (the scorer) wants to make them look good, he would
have given them a hundred shots."
And then the Calgary coach immediately blasted referee Bill Friday,
saying, "If he worked every game here, Cincinnati would never lose....he and that
scorer." Crozier did not expand on this, but turned his back and plodded away."
Friday called eight penalties in the game, four on Cincinnati and four on Calgary. The
Stingers failed to score on any of their power plays, however. The Cowboys scored on one.
Dale Smedsmo was the hero in the game, scoring the winning goal at
4:42 of the sudden death overtime. He also contributed in the two come-from-behind goals
that tied the game in the third period. All this delighted Stingers coach Terry Slater.
"Every good team has somebody who can come off the bench and stir a team up and get
it going," he says. "Smedsmo's our guy. We went to sleep in the second period
and he went in and got the line going (with Dennis and Gene Sobchuk) and got us playing
again. A guy like that is so important in some games."
Because of his hard-checking, his fighting and his flamboyance,
Smedsmo has become unusually popular among the regular customers at the Coliseum. After
the game some lingering fans chanted so loud for Smedsmo they could be heard in Slater's
closed lockerroom. "If this keeps up, he's going to run for mayor," Slater
laughed.
The victory was the third straight for the Stingers. That ties their
longest previous winning streak. Saturday they nipped Indianapolis, 3-2 on a last minute
goal by Claude Larose. Friday they dumped New England, 5-1, in Hartford, with Bryan
Campbell scoring his 10th WHA goal. Cincinnati has now moved from last place to second in
the East Division standings and still has a favorable home schedule ahead. |
