Bullfrogs Have Put Together a Different Look for the Playoffs

Blade Coach Mark Hardy looked over the lineup for tonight’s game against the Bullfrogs in their Roller Hockey International playoff opener and didn’t mince words.

“If they want to win they’re doing everything they can, whatever it takes,” Hardy said of the Bullfrogs, who have only seven players remaining from the roster with which they opened the season about two months ago.

But Hardy didn’t begrudge the Bullfrogs.

“I don’t know how they got all of those acquisitions,” he said. “I don’t know whether it is money or what they’re doing, but they’ve done everything they have to to win.”

It will take a program to tell who is skating for the Bullfrogs at 7:30 tonight in the Western Conference first-round series at the Forum. The second game of the series will be Monday night at the Pond of Anaheim. If the series is tied after that, a 12-minute game will be played immediately to determine which team advances to the Western Conference final against San Jose or St. Louis.

The third-place Blades are 2-5-3 and winless in their last five games. The second-place Bullfrogs have won seven in a row, four short of the team record set last year, but well within reach at their current pace. “We’re a much faster team now,” said Bullfrog defenseman Doug McCarthy, one of the seven holdovers.

Another remaining player, B.J. MacPherson, agreed.

“Brad [McCaughey, Bullfrog coach] saw a need for changes and he went out and did it,” MacPherson said. “It’s all business now in practice.”

In the last few weeks, the Bullfrogs have traded their leading scorer, Glenn Stewart, to New Jersey, lost veteran defenseman Rick Judson to a German ice hockey team, cut four players, traded for the rights to two more and signed three free agents.

Those moves have paid dividends during the winning streak.

Forward Glen Metropolit, one of three silver medalists from Canada at the World In-line Hockey Championships, scored four goals Saturday in the season-ending 9-8 victory over Sacramento.

Winger Hugo Belanger, the 1996 RHI player of the year and another Canadian silver medalist, has 13 points in five games.

Sean Whyte, who left the team for personal reasons during training camp only to return with eight games left, has provided solid defense and has 12 points. Canadian in-line team member Bob Woods, also a defender, has been solid.

The acquisition that galls Hardy the most was the Bullfrogs’ signing of Canadian in-line team defenseman Brent Thurston. With Thurston, the Bullfrogs have three distinct lines McCaughey can rely on.

“We were talking to Thurston,” said Hardy. “I don’t know what happened. We thought we had him and then they got him.”

McCaughey said he decided it was time for a fire sale after the team’s fifth consecutive loss, a 10-5 defeat, at last-place Sacramento July 17. Since then, Anaheim has won nine of 10.

“We started off all right as a confident team, but them some people got comfortable,” said McCaughey. “When we lost five in a row, that’s a pressure situation that we are not used to here.

“I told the guys I was going to make some changes and then I told management I was going to make some changes so we could finish on a high note, a very high note.

“If you had told me a month ago that we would be in a position to challenge for a title, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The Bullfrogs did not have an easy time with the Blades this season, despite dominating the series in years past. The Blades won three of the six games in the series and the Bullfrogs had to use shootouts to win the other three.

But now, it appears, these two are going in opposite directions.

“They are a much stronger team than when we last saw them and they’ve done that in a short period of time,” Hardy said.

In the other conference series, first-place San Jose opens on Friday at fourth-place St. Louis.