Chaos Offense Falls Short in Loss to Utah, Extensive Rest Coming next

Philadelphia— In the first two games of the season for the Carolina Chaos, they were able to dig deep in the fourth quarter to lift them to victories. However, that was not the case this time around as the Chaos simply ran out of gas on offense in a 9-7 loss to western conference rival Utah. With both goalkeepers playing well in net, scoring was hard to come by in the second half as the Archers out scored the Chaos 4-2.

“It’s no question it was a great game and obviously more defensive-minded than anything else,” said Chaos Head Coach Andy Towers. “I thought both goalies played absolutely incredible. Offensively, I just didn’t love the way that we shot and I felt that we generated some good shots and too often let the goalie off the hook with shots that he was able to make clean saves on.”

It seemed as if we were going to have another Carolina offensive explosion like the first few games with nearly half-off the team’s total goals coming in an 88-second span in the early portion of the first quarter. 

The Archers struck first, but less than two minutes later, Brian Minicus found the back of the net for the Chaos. Shortly after that it was Eric Dobson 28 seconds later in transition off a face-off, where the red and black have thrived so far this season, followed by a goal from Ian McKay to make it 3-1 Carolina.

The Chaos have also let up a fair amount of goals in the last 10 seconds of a period this year and they did just that as Grant Ament scored for Utah to get them within one at the end of the first frame.

Blaze Riorden played in his first game since suffering an injury in week one and he did not disappoint. He even recorded an assist to Josh Byrne to open up the scoring in the second period. Byrne shared the love on the next goal for the Chaos to Dobson to increase the lead to 5-2. The Archers then turned it on at the end of the half with three straight goals to tie it up heading into the break.

A 2-2 draw in the third quarter set up a 7-7 tie heading into the fourth quarter for perhaps the two best teams in the West. That was when the Archers showed why they were in the championship game a year ago with stifling defense, shutting out the Chaos in the period. Carolina had plenty of chances, but Brett Dobson played his best ball down the stretch finishing with 15 saves. Utah scored in the first two minutes of the fourth and then added an insurance goal late with 15 seconds left to pull away with the two-goal victory.

“If you hold a team to nine goals in this league, you should win,” Towers said. “I think our defense got the job done today and certainly Blaze got the job done on his end. I thought our poles won their respective matchups, I thought Nick Rowlett won his respective matchups, but we have a young offense. We wasted some possessions and we didn’t shoot intelligently on a consistent basis, and in the end I felt like that came back to haunt us. Ultimately I felt that was the difference in the game.”

Byrne led the way offensively for Carolina with three points coming from two goals and a helper. Dobson's two goals was also another highlight offensively. Riorden’s return saw him recording 

11 saves in net with a 55 percent clip. Nick Rowlett had a positive day at the strip winning 12 of 20 faceoffs in an  improvement from last week. He also had 10 ground balls.

“I felt like Nick Rowlett did a really great job at the face-off X tonight,” Towers added.

So what’s next for Carolina?

It’s a whole lot of rest as the Chaos will play just one more game until July 19th with a matchup on the 29th with the Waterdogs, which means they are about to get the rest they need while also having an opportunity to sharpen the knife on the offensive end for a team that showed fireworks in the first few games. The league gets the week off next week, and then the Chaos have their bye-week for Independence Day weekend in Boston.

It’ll be very important to keep the players who made an impact early in the season in the spotlight for Carolina as they make the push towards the middle of the season. Tye Kurtz, Kyle Jackson and Ross Scott have all shown great offensive performances already but all just recorded one shot in the loss, it’ll be very important to give those players more opportunities down the stretch.