Very Good Boys: The Waterdogs Are Heading Back To The PLL Championship
Boston Globe. Getty Images.It was September 19th, 2022. The Waterdogs were probably all waking up with a vicious hangover after celebrating their first PLL championship the day before. Bacon, egg and cheese on an everything bagel. Coffee, black. A gallon of water. A handful of ibuprofens. A pair of sunglasses, and probably a Bloody Mary or 4 to take the edge off. And on that very day, the quest to defend their title began.
Now here we are a year later. Technically that's 7 in dog years, but the quest rolls on. The Waterdogs are now just 48 minutes away from defending their title and reclaiming their throne after they beat the absolute fucking nuts off the Cannons 17-6 in the semifinals. Just a full blown shellacking. The boys were just having fun out there. It looked more like a captain's practice where you can dick around all you want than a semifinal matchup.
They didn't even have to break a sweat on a humid, damp, Long Island afternoon. The Waterdogs had 5 players with at least 4 points on the day, with Michael Sowers leading the way with 6. The Cannons didn't have a single player with at least 4 points on the day. That says pretty much everything you need to know about that game.
Back-to-back championships sure would be rad for the Aqua Pups, but standing in the way is a date with the Archers on September 24th. Speaking of teams who didn't need to break a sweat to get into the final game of the season, they didn't even need to play last week after getting a bye to the semifinals as the 1-seed. And then in the semifinals, the Archers spanked the Redwoods by the tune of a 14-6 beatdown in the first game of the afternoon.
We got a vintage performance out of Grant Ament with 8 points on 4 goals and 4 assists. Brett Dobson was nasty in cage for the Archers as he's been all season with 18 saves on the day. And most importantly, the defense is getting ice cream!
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Probably pretty tough to figure out what the boys were more excited about--making their first trip to the PLL finals in team history, or the ice cream. Either way, it doesn't get much better than a day like that for the Archers.
And it doesn't get much better than an Archers vs Waterdogs matchup in the championship. These two teams have already played twice this season, and both times have been unreal. The first was a week 6 matchup with Archers winning 19-18 in Dallas. The second game was on the final weekend of the season with the Waterdogs pulling off a wild 14-13 win. They were down by 2 goals with 30 seconds to go in that game, and still came away with the win. So the series matchup is 1-1, and the goal differential between the two is 0. This game is going to rule so hard, it just sucks that we have to wait 2 weeks before we get to see it.
Until then, buy some shirts.