Montreal (#3) wins over Dutchland (#9)

By Vile Love It

In the first consolation bout of the Sugarbush Showdown, Montreal’s New Skids on the Block (#3), Montreal, Canada met up with Dutchland Rollers (#9) Lancaster, PA.

Photo by Manish Gosalia

These two teams have met every Saturday of regional tournament play for the last three years. When they met at last year’s Nightmare on the 95, Montreal came away with a significant win 225-124.

“We have a long history with Montreal and are always happy to play them. They have a lot of talented skaters,” said Dutchland’s Josie Cuervo. “We are here to gain some experience and build some depth in our bench and have a good time. You can’t skate against Montreal and not have a good time.”

Dutchland lost several skaters and their coach in recent months, according to Dutchland’s Skid Ho, and they have brought up some players from their B team to fill in the spots.

Montreal, still smarting from their loss at the hands of London on Friday came out strong and focused.

“After yesterday we tried to refocus. We had a lot of meetings and tried to rethink our strategy and see what went wrong and what went right in yesterday’s game,” said Montreal’s Apocalipstix. “We redid some of our lines, too. Today we played as a team.”

Dutchland’s game was fraught with cycling trips to the penalty box. Their jammers spent a combined 8 minutes in the box, compared to Montreal’s 4 minutes. Montreal needed no encouragement to stop on the track and fully capitalize on each of those power jams.

Montreal had 13 jams where they scored more than 13 points including four 24 point, a 30 and 34 point jams.

Montreal’s skaters showed their strengths with the quick transitions from defense to offense and even when Dutchland’s blockers could hold or get a hit on a Montreal jammer it didn’t help for long.

Dutchland struggled to put out any significant offense even when they had a power jam. The passive offense did not work in their favor when their lone jammer was struggling against 2, 3 or 4 Montreal blockers. But, when they tried to get into the pack and assist their jammer Montreal sped up the pack until it was out of Dutchland’s control.

During the second half Montreal continued its iron hold on the track and Dutchland took joy in smaller victories: holding Monreal’s Apocalipstix for half a lap in a solid four-wall, well-timed hits on Montreal’s blockers to open a hole for their jammer, a swift mohawk turn around Montreal’s blocker.

As the game came to a close, in the face of the looming 300 point spread Dutchland kept positive and both teams showed obvious respect for one another as they chatted on the line before the whistles blew. Once the whistles did blow though, it was all business.

Montreal (#3) 413
Dutchland (#9) 98