no time to create a graphic this week :(
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<div align="center"> Midway Woes for Scarecrows </div>

With ten games left to go in the regular season, what once was a fiery hot St. Louis Scarecrows team seems to have cooled off. After initial success, St. Louis decided to "up" their roster by making a few changes, including removing Stefan Digrio, Riley Jako, and Marcus Nyquist from the active roster and adding Sinn Nolan, John Langabeer and Teddy Cuddles to it. However, the honeymoon period after roster changes was short lived. After hitting the half-way mark, the Scarecrows are a mediocre 6-6-3, being outscored 37 GF-41 GA during that time frame.

Overall, the Crows as a team post middle of the road stats, typically finding themselves third or fourth in most stats columns. They break this trend in mainly two areas of play: physicality and face-offs- St. Louis leads the league in face-off percentage (53.25%) and shots against per game (lowest value, 23.58), while they place second in overall hits (708). Yet, while the team’s stats may be mid pack, many individual stat categories are topped with a Crow:

Goals: A Crossfit Jesus (22)
Assists: Matthew Auston (27)
Hat Tricks: C Louie Garrett (2)
+/-: A Crossfit Jesus (19), Matthew Auston (19)
Hits: Brett Kennedy (115, tied for 1st)

While holding the league’s 3rd best PK and goals against, we’ll be looking to see if the Crows can improve their goals scoring and power-play abilities (both 4th). If this can be done, St. Louis may not recapture first place, but it will help them balance their already decent defensive capabilities with an equally good offense. If they build on this, it would bode well and perhaps infer a deep run into the playoffs. As next year will see many core components of St. Louis leave, this may be the do-or-die moment, not just for this season, but for years to come.