Bullfrogs’ Dominance of Power Continues

Talk about formalities.

The Bullfrogs showed up at the Pond Thursday night to play a first-round playoff game against the Washington Power. Calling it a game was simply semantics.

The Bullfrogs scored a 20-4 victory in the first round of the Major League Roller Hockey playoffs before an announced crowd of 5,061.

The Power (10-12), by the way, was the defending league champion.

The Bullfrogs’ run toward a second consecutive roller hockey title--including last year’s Roller Hockey International championship--continues Aug. 25 when they host the Brighton Tigers, the British Division champion, in the semifinals.

The title game, also at the Pond, is Aug. 26.

The Bullfrogs didn’t win by chance; they beat Washington four times during the season, outscoring the Power, 86-18.

“Over the course of the season if you play top-quality teams all the time you tend to be better,” Bullfrog Coach Todd Gordon said. “But I think tonight is what we needed. It got us a little sharper. We did some things we weren’t happy with in the first half, and in the second half, we allowed only [four] shots on net.”

The Bullfrogs (20-0-1) were coming off their only blemish, a shootout loss in the season finale.

The Bullfrogs played without leading scorer Mark Woolf, who left to join a Scottish ice hockey team.

The Bullfrogs didn’t seem to miss him. By the end of the first quarter, 10 of 12 Bullfrog field players had scored points. B.J. MacPherson needed only 13 minutes 9 seconds to score a hat trick. He added four assists.

MacPherson had 18 goals in 19 regular season games.

Also scoring three goals were Kevin St. Jacques (six points) and John Hanson (six points).

Tom Menicci, who had 37 points in 16 games, scored seven points, including five assists.

Woolf was replaced by Doug McCarthy (two goals, two assists).

MacPherson started the onslaught with a short-handed goal, a nifty backhanded flip on a breakaway 3:31 into the game. The Bullfrogs’ 21 short-handed goals were 11 more than any other team.

St. Jacques, Hanson and Darren Colbourne gave the Bullfrogs a 4-0 cushion before the Power scored.

The Bullfrogs led at halftime, 8-3, with Washington’s leading scorer, Dan Scardino, accounting for all the Power’s goals.

The Power managed only one shot on goal in the third quarter and fell behind, 13-3. Going into the fourth quarter, the Bullfrogs had a 54-14 shot advantage. They finished with a 68-17 margin.