Markham Pre-Game

The Markham Waxers come into town tonight to face a gradually improving Cobourg squad.  The Cougars have 4 wins in their last 9 games; not too bad considering their record of 3 and 11 to begin the season.

This improvement can be attributed to a maturing offense that has begun to spread some scoring throughout the roster.  Matt Diminie and Adam Place are tied for 8th in the league in the category of goals scored and Stefan Thompson is a respectable seventh in the assists category.

The stats start to get ugly when you scroll down the list of +/- leaders and notice that there isn't a Cougar until the mid 40's.  This team has to improve it's defensive play if it really wants to start converting the fruits of its emerging offense into victories.

Aside from having one of the greatest team names in the league, the Waxers come in with a very impressive 10-2-3-4 record and some solid players on their roster.  David Titanic (yet another righteous name) leads their team with 15 goals and 25 points while their crease is patrolled by the effective tandem of Dylan Ellis and Franky Palazzese who have both posted impressive numbers to this point.  They have lost 2 of their last 3 games (one to former Cougar Chris Azzano in an impressive 33 save, 1 goal performance!) so this is a Markham team that has looked beatable over the past week or so.

If the Cougars can play a defensive game and find some of the magic in a bottle that they unleashed against Lindsay the other night they should be able to come out of this game with at least one point.  The Waxers are a solid defensive team so goals will be hard to come by.  The key will be for the defense to contain the Titanic, who is the lynchpin in Markham's mediocre offense.  If they can do that the Cougars might actually play in a low-scoring game, certainly a rarity for them.

See you at the game!