On Saturday night, Toronto and Philadelphia could have switched team names. The Rock were flying while the Wings dropped like a stone.

Toronto

Troy Holowchuk made his home debut as the Rock’s full-time starter, and this was an important game for him. Considering the number of Rock fans who seem to think that Nick Rose was a crappy goalie who got lucky a lot, winning them over will take a lot of work, so it was important to make a good first impression. More on this later. Then again, there were Bandits fans who thought Matt Vinc was washed up two or three years ago, so maybe the Facebook crowd isn’t who the NLL GMs should be listening to.

Anyway, back to the game. Holowchuk had a great game, allowing only three goals in the first 39 minutes. The Wings finally got their offense working a little bit after that, but even then they only scored five in the last 21 minutes. By that time it was basically over. The defense was outstanding as well, preventing shots, causing turnovers, intercepting passes, and generally making life uncomfortable for the Wings offense. As per usual, Latrell Harris and Brad Kri were the stars of that show.

No Schreiber or Matthews? No problem. There have been games this season where the Rock offense looked like they forgot most of those things they talked about at practice, but this wasn’t one of those. Josh Dawick continues his amazing breakout season, Chris Boushy was Chris Boushy (by that I mean scoring goals as well as clearing out space in front of the net, and not takin’ no s**t from nobody), Dan Craig was hot, Challen Rogers and Corey Small each only scored once but had some helpers, Nathan Grenon scored twice, and there were a few transition goals as well. Confidence was high and it looked like they were having fun. Of course, winning tends to have that effect.

Chris Boushy having fun

Philadelphia

For the Wings, all of those things except not. Damude had a rough start and was pulled in the first quarter after three Rock goals in five minutes. He did come back later in the game but didn’t have much more success then either. Deacon Knott had a pretty good game overall and started off strong, only allowing a single Rock goal in his first seventeen minutes of work, but then the Rock got to him as well, taking an 8–2 lead into the half.

I’m not sure of the best word to describe Philadelphia’s offense. “Unsuccessful” is the obvious one but “scattered” comes to mind as well. This is a group that consists of Joe Resetarits, Mitch Jones, Brennan O’Neill, Michael Sowers, Blaze Riorden, and Sam LeClair, any one of whom could go off for a handful of goals in any game, but only LeClair had more than one and Jones and Riorden had none. There were a lot of missed and dropped passes, and a great number of shots missed the net entirely. Some of that was thanks to the Rock defense forcing those bad shots, but not all of it. That said, O’Neill’s jump-through-the-crease-behind-the-back goal early in the second was a thing of beauty.

There was one incident last night that seemed to capture the frustrations of the Wings this season. Early in the fourth, Shane Simpson had a good transition chance but didn’t shoot, and then threw the ball away. As the Rock ran the other way in transition, Simpson went to the bench and looked like he was going to smash his stick on the half-wall or floor or something, though he didn’t. The Rock scored on that transition play.

Then a minute later Simpson had another transition chance and buried it. That made the score 11–6 Rock with over twelve minutes to go, so it’s not like the game was completely out of hand. But the Wings celebration of that goal made it look like it the score was 18–6, not 11–6. They just seemed to have no confidence that the comeback was even possible.

The Wings should be at least a middle-of-the-pack team, and they looked even better than that early this season, but now they’ve lost seven straight and have basically taken themselves out of playoff contention. The Rock are the other way around; they should be a better than middle-of-the-pack team but took themselves out of playoff contention with a horrible start.

The two teams are both 5–9 and tied for twelfth in the league so they effectively have an equal, if low, shot at the playoffs. But last night, the Rock looked far more likely to make a run at it than the Wings.

Quickies

• I remember being impressed many years ago when I noticed Colin Doyle standing still and singing O Canada at Rock games. I’ve seen a few players do it since then, notably both Mitch de Snoo and Mitch Jones last night. Props, guys. No word on whether the other Mitch in the league, Mitch Wilde from the Thunderbirds, sings the anthem.
• The Rock Captain America jerseys were amazing, probably the best of all the Marvel jerseys we’ve seen over the last couple of years. Yes, the idea of a Canadian team wearing Captain America jerseys is a bit weird, but I’m sure it was because of Tom Schreiber. The fact that he was on the IR made it a bit more difficult to capitalize on that but regardless, the jerseys looked awesome.
• The Wings continue to allow zillions of shots, making life hard on their goalie. At one point in the first quarter, the Rock were leading in shots 15–2. They ended up winning the shot battle 57–41.
• Holowchuk may actually have an easier time winning over Rock fans than Rose did because of their styles of play. Rose is one of the best “positional” goalies in the league. He anticipates where the shots are going to come from and gets himself in the best position to cover the angles and block as much of the net as possible. This way, he makes a lot of saves while barely moving, because the shooter has nothing to shoot at. This may make it look like he’s just standing there and getting lucky because the shot hits him.

  Holowchuk is more “reactionary”, waiting for the shot and moving to stop it. Neither is better or worse than the other, they’re just different styles, but the “reactionary” goalies move around a lot more (think Christian Del Bianco or Rylan Hartley) and so it may look like they are “doing something” while the positional goalies aren’t. But Rose didn’t win Goaltender of the Year last season because he was lucky.