By DAVE CARTER, Montreal Gazette; August 16th, 1974
Dave Litzenberger was the difference at the Forum last night as he scored four goals and assisted on five others to lead Les Quebecois to a 17-16 win over the Maryland Arrows before a crowd of 7,575.
“I played my best game of the season,’ “I couldn’t do anything wrong tonight,” said Litzenberger. “All Fergy (coach John Ferguson) said was that we’d better not lose and we played like a real team,” added the game’s first star.
Actually, though, Les Quebecois played only two periods of good lacrosse, the first and the third. In the second they were outscored 9-2. They ended up winning though and that satisfied Ferguson.
“We would have been in trouble if we would have lost tonight,” said Fergy. “This has to be the biggest win of the year.’ It was one of Fergy’s changes which paid off and contributed to the win.
GOOD JOB
Fergy decided to sit out Serge Loiselle and replaced him with Billie Nunn. “Nunn did a good job covering (Paul) Suggate,’ explained Fergy. “I told Ossie (Gord Osinchuk) on that he would be on too. that every time Suggate was but (Rick) Bossely and (Jim) Lynch jumped on. So I told Gord at the end of the second period again that every time he (Suggate) was on he should be too.”
It took Suggate. the league’s leading scorer just over one minute to net his 100th goal of the season and he added three more for a total of 103, but in his case, four goals is good coverage.
“I wanted to show Ossie that I could beat him more than once out of ten,” said Suggate, referring to Osinchuk’s statement the last time Maryland was in town when he said that Suggate would only beat him once in every ten tries.
“Our whole team seems to get fat heads when we’re ahead,” continued Suggate. “Last game in Toronto we were ahead by six going into the third and they beat us by the same score.”
Montreal led 64 after the first period but the Arrows started to feel out the Quebecois defence and by the end of the second period Maryland led 13-8.
“Our defence was very weak in the second period.” said Ferguson, “but in the third we lightened it up and they had to go around.” “The defence was the big change in the third period.”
Montreal scored nine goals in the third while limiting the Arrows to three. “When the defence is hot, then I play well,” said goaltender Ernie Mitchell, who blocked 53 Maryland shots. “Suggate came so close a few times though.” Although Suggate scored four goals, he might have had another three if it weren’t for Mitchell.
