Seattle’s Season at a Crossroads

[Bojovnik 487]

MOSCOW, December 5 (Shaiba.ru) - We’ve reached the halfway point of the S86 regular season, and things are looking a little shaky for the Seattle Bears.

 

The Bears dropped their last three games amid a downturn in form that has seen the Washington state-based club fall from third to fourth in the North American Conference.

 

It’s difficult to find fault in the play of goaltender Dusty Wilson and the team’s defence. Everyone knows the sort of game that Seattle is going to play. They clog the middle, and hound the puck. As a result, they have the second best defensive record in the entire VHL, conceding just 90 goals in 42 games.

 

On the flipside, the team can’t score goals regularly. Seattle’s second unit has been notoriously poor when it comes to finding the back of the net, and the team’s 97 goals through 42 games is one of the worst markers in the league.

 

Winning now is important for the Bears. Why? They traded away the Los Angeles Stars’ first round pick to the Toronto Legion at the start of the season in a move for wily veteran defence Ryuji Sakamato. At present, the Stars have the second worst record in the league, which means that the Bears are going to have to start making some noise for this trade to go down as anything other than a loss.

 

“It’s hard to say how we’re going to get out of this hole,” Yaroslav Bogatyrev, rookie forward for the Seattle Bears, told reporters after his side’s loss to London United on Sunday.

 

There have been some rumours of further trades to come for the Bears ahead of next week’s trade deadline. As it stands, some offensive firepower is definitely needed, although it remains to be seen how much of Seattle’s future management is ready to mortgage for a run at the Continental Cup, when many aren’t looking at Seattle as a contending team at this time.

 

“I think when we look at how we’re doing off the puck, things are good. We just came off a great three-game run in which we only conceded one goal across 180 minutes of hockey. However, when we’re not at our top defensively, our offense isn’t able to get us one of those games. For that I’m partly responsible,” Bogatyrev said.

 

Despite coming into the VHL with a large amount of hype around his name, Yaroslav Bogatyrev has struggled in his first season in the best hockey league in the world. The big-bodied Russian forward has only managed to tally 18 points in his first 42 VHL games. When he scores, he scores in bunches, such as a four-point game earlier this season. However, the Nizhnii Tagil native has developed a worrying trend of being held off the scoresheet for multiple games in a row.

 

“I need to be better, just as the team as a whole needs to be better. We’ve still got some time to figure out what is going wrong, and how we can be better. We have to keep working at it,” he said.