BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The first half of the Buffalo Blizzard's 13-10 victory over the Baltimore Spirit last night was either a catastrophe or a delight, depending on which team's coach was doing the talking.
"Our performance in the first half was inexcusable -- poor, very poor," Spirit coach Dave MacWilliams said about the opening 30 minutes, which saw his team fall behind, 13-2. "I told them at halftime that anyone who was not willing to work on this team would be sent to the showers at the end of the shift."
"In my opinion, it was the best half we've played this year," said a much-happier Blizzard coach, Jim May.
The Spirit at least did make the game interesting in the second half, scoring eight straight points to get within a three-point goal of a tie with less than six minutes left. But Baltimore could not get any closer.
An announced crowd of 5,187 saw the Spirit's modest two-game winning streak come to an end. Meanwhile, Buffalo now has won five in a row. The Blizzard closed to within a game of the second-place Spirit in the American Division.
Baltimore was clobbered, 30-14, by the Blizzard on Dec. 9 in a game that saw the Spirit set club records for futility. So there were good reasons to assume that the Spirit would be ready for a big effort right from the start last night.
Instead, it was the home team that began strongly. Paul Dougherty did all of the first-period scoring. He had a two-point goal at the 2:21 mark, and added a shootout score to make it 3-0 about six minutes later.
The Blizzard's Michael Collins and the Spirit's Kevin Sloan traded goals early in the second period. Buffalo then increasingly gained e control of play.
The Blizzard scored the next four goals, each one prettier than the next, to take the 13-2 margin at halftime.
The Spirit finally showed some offense in the third quarter. Franklin McIntosh hit a three-pointer, and Jon Parry added a power-play goal to reduce the margin to 13-6 after three periods of play.
Still, the game didn't get interesting until Sloan and Brad Smith scored to cut the lead to 13-10 with six minutes left.
"In the second half, we broke down. We got spread out in the zone, torn apart tactically," May said.
MacWilliams hoped that the results of the two halves taught his team a lesson. "On every shift we have to play like it's our last," he said. "If we do that, we'll be fine."