Rainmen draw 2741 in their win over Montreal, January 6, 2008

2700+ is probably a reasonable expectation for spectators at a weekend game. Hopefully next season, the Rainmen can negotiate to have more weekend games. The Moose aren’t here every Saturday!

This game had its bright and its dim spots. Great show on the rebounding (I haven’t looked at the stats, but their boards, offense and especially defense, must have been much higher than average) but the Rainmen handled the ball sloppily way too many times, especially under the net.

It was great to see the 13th man actually dressed for the game, participate in the team talks and even play the final minute or so! I believe it was Barry Barnet, our provincial health minister. He certainly did not embarrass himself. Barnet even went up and down the court, kind of covering his opponent, although I think the Montreal player was mostly concerned about hurting him. This was a refreshing start in the right direction of actually using the 13th player rule. Keep it up!

Squid played a very entertaining half-time show and Bruce Guthro sang O Canada, which was cool. We have so much talent in Halifax, there should be no problem getting singers for the anthems. Having recording artists perform the anthems is an added draw that may impress some people. Every little bit helps.

Coach Lewis was actually fairly impressive in his vocality with the refs. At one point, he remiinded them about the rules about calling timeouts after a Montreal player tried to call timeout as he jumped out of bounds trying to save the ball. Even though the refs agreed with Lewis, they made up some story about “inadvertant whistle” so that Montreal retained the ball on the throw-in, then they made some bogus travelling call on Montreal to give the ball to Halifax.

While I don’t agree with the strategy of playing one line for a whole quarter at a time, I think the coach is growing in experience and the players are getting tighter as a team on the court. This is evident in their improving season record. I guess we have to remember that this is not the NBA, all the people in the game — refs, coaches, and players — are not at that top level. However, it seems like the officiating is fairly odious. The officials kept Montreal in the game by calling fouls anytime more than one Rainman was near a Royal in the key. It was pretty disgusting.

I am looking forward to seeing the Rainmen play Vermont, I hope they can at least split the two games. The scheduling for this part of the season is fairly haphazard, with all three January games occurring in a span of 4 days and a similar timetable for February. I would rather see one game a week, like the first part of the season. I guess with opposing teams folding or “suspending operations”, we are lucky to get games played at all. Go Rainmen!