| In the
World Hockey Association, it should be clear by now that the East Division is not like
Sherman's division or Patton's. The Cincinnati Stingers have just lost seven straight
games, a harsh reminder they are still only beginners in the business, but in the sleepy
East, it matters little. To endure such a nasty losing streak, they picked their spot
nicely. According to the imperfect mathematics of the East, first place minus seven losses
still equals first place."I can't figure it out," exclaims coach Terry Slater.
"I thought everyone in this division would be improved this year." Thursday night's 5-3 loss at Minnesota left the Stingers with a 9-11-0
record, good enough for fourth in the West Division or fifth in the Canadian Division or
first in the East, tied with Cleveland, pending the outcome of Friday night's
Crusader-Indianapolis Racers game. "I still think these teams are improved, Slater
declares. "It just seems like when one team is losing, all the others start losing
too. Nobody has been consistent enough to take over. That's going to be short-lived,
though," he believes "You'll see some gaps opening up in the next few weeks, and
I hope we're one of those opening them. "We've had a lot of little problems with
injuries and things and we've made some stupid mistakes, but they haven't hurt us too bad
yet. It was the right time to slump. If we can get things back together now, we'll still
be in good shape."
The Stingers will try to get themselves back together tonight,
Family Night at Riverfront Coliseum. The opponent will be the Toronto Toros, who
understand what it's like to lose, though not what it's like to be in first. In the
awesome Canadian Division, the Toros, 5-11-2, are farther behind the fourth place team
than they would be behind the first place team in the East. Slater calls Toronto "a
very explosive team that plays wide open, goal-scoring hockey. They score a lot and give
up a lot when we played them a week ago, they went ahead, 7-2 and we made a comeback and
then lost 8-7. That's the type of game they play....wide open."
Recently it has also been the way the Stingers have played. In fact
they've given up more goals that any other team in the league for a corresponding number
of games. But Slater feels last Wednesday's 11-3 loss to Winnipeg was the low ebb and now
his team is on the rise again. " I feel better than I have in a long time even though
we're still losing," he says. "We played a good game Thursday against Minnesota.
A few breaks and we would have beaten them. In fact we should have beaten them. We had one
line going real well for us - (Pat) Donnelly at center with (Rick) Dudley and Gene
Sobchuk. It looks like that could be a fine line."
"The we put Locas and Larose back together with Dennis Sobchuk
on the right side and that seemed to work well, although they gave up some goals. Dennis
has now played all three positions and I'm not sure the right side isn't best for him. He
really blasted one goal. No goalie in the world could have stopped it. That's the way we
know he can shoot and he hasn't been doing it until now. He's showing signs he's starting
to come around. Our biggest problem is still in goal. We haven't been able to get a hot
goaltender. If your goalie can't stop a puck, then everyone gets scared. They start laying
back on defense and trying to play the goal themselves instead of going down and scoring.
It ruins your whole system."
"If we don't come around, we're going to make some deals next
week," Slater promises again. "We'll trade someone else or claim a waiver or
call up someone from Hampton. I don't know just what yet. There are a lot of
possibilities. We have to pull ourselves out of this thing. We've been lucky so far that
we aren't already buried in the division. But the other teams are going to wake up soon
and we have to wake up too." |
