ECT07 Final Roundup
Apologies for the delay, here’s another report from the recent East Coast Tournament in Raleigh, North Carolina.
In the second day of competition Montreal United had another 3 games slated.
Philedelphia gave a solid effort but Montreal used their speed up front and goal scoring power to over take them 9-2. This put them up against the tournament favorites NY and easily one of, if not, the most talented teams in North America. Made up of many former players from Sweden, NY is a power house with snipers that can pick a corner from literaly anywhere. Montreal came out strong and took a surprising 2-0 lead. You could tell NY was not pleased and fought back hard. Even though Montreal’s goaltender, Christian Raschle, had many outstanding saves and probably the best goaltending of the tournament, NY answered with 4 goals to put them in the finals and their eventual gold medal winners.
For the bronze medal match, this put Montreal up against their Canadian rival Toronto yet again. With a long history behind these two teams, each team came out not wanting to lose to either. The game was hard fought and remained a 2-2 tie until the last five minutes or so when Montreal broke through Toronto’s strong defense and solid positioning to unleash a final 3 goals to take the Bronze 5-2. This also made them the North American Champions, a combined total of performance at the Canada Cup and TFC, beating out NY only on a count back.
BC import, Blair Zimmerman, played his regular game of strong checking, helping out the defense along with some quick offensive breaks and the odd Zimmerama! With two pretty one timers to the top right corner on a rush, he went home happy with a record of 3 goals and 3 assists.
When asked, Blair said his favorite play was stealing the ball from Toronto’s solid D man Fahad Siddiqui. This was quickly followed up by him saying his least favourite play was Fahad stealing it right back from him!
For any BC players interested in attending the ECT for 2008 you will be guaranteed a weekend of tough, intense, competitive floorball against some the best teams and players in North America, all with that warm Southern hospitality, that is sure to leave you smiling for weeks. Special thanks to the volunteers at TFC.
