Category Archives: Game Review

Game review: Buffalo 9 @ Toronto 12

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It ain’t over yet.

The Rock sent that message loud and clear on Friday night, taking down the Buffalo Bandits 12-9 at the ACC to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. Despite being without Colin Doyle (who is out for the year because of a fractured vertebra in his neck – HE BROKE HIS NECK people), Brett Hickey, Patrick Merrill, Scott Johnston, Jamie Batson, Damon Edwards, and Bill Greer (did I miss anyone? Probably), the Rock managed to get it done against the top team in the East. That said, the Bandits didn’t really look like the top team in the East.

We’ll start from the outside and work our way in. Nick Rose was outstanding, yet again. I said a few weeks ago that he might be my pick for Goaltender of the Year, though Evan Kirk and Mike Poulin are right up there too. There were a couple of goals that he allowed on shots he didn’t see – at least I’m guessing he didn’t see them since he didn’t move at all – but he also made some really outstanding saves. Anthony Cosmo also had a strong game, making some great saves himself but just wasn’t quite as good as Rosey. The Bandits backup goalie, Steve Priolo (what, you thought it was DeRuscio? HA!), also made a great stop on the one shot he faced when a Rock player had a wide open cage with Cosmo on the bench.

Buffalo’s defense was generally good, with a few lapses here and there. Kasey Beirnes got a couple of goals from in close, and somebody (Sanderson?) was left alone on the doorstep at least once. Their transition was typically fast, but the Rock countered by sometimes leaving a defender down at the other end and going with only four O guys. This didn’t help the offense, but prevented the Buffalo transition from racking up the breakaway goals.

Nick Rose

Toronto’s defense was excellent. The Bandits had lots of shot clock violations, shots from distance because they couldn’t get any closer (though Steenhuis did score one from the restraining line), and dumping the ball into the corner. They never scored more than two in a row, and had five leads in the first half, which all vanished. The only stat you really need to know: Dhane Smith was held to a single goal (Buffalo’s first goal) and a single assist (on Buffalo’s last goal). His goal was beautiful though – a bounce shot that was perfectly placed to hit the ground right under Rose’s dropping leg. Any slower or any further forward or back and it would have been stopped. Smith is by far the league’s leading scorer and hadn’t scored fewer than five points in any game this year. It’s amazing that a 4-10 team was able to keep him to only two points.

Neither offense was really clicking. There were lost of missed passes on both sides, and the Rock in particular seemed to make a lot of passes to someone who was completely covered or even double-teamed. Sure, if the pass is completed, you’ve got a man in close and a quick shot could surprise everyone, but it’s still a low-percentage pass and far more often than not led to turnovers. Dan Lintner and Turner Evans seem to be fitting in well with LeBlanc, Hellyer, and Sanderson (and Ross who played about half defense and half offense). If Sanderson and Doyle (BROKEN NECK) decide to hang ’em up after this season, Lintner and Evans won’t just step in and replace these two Hall of Famers without missing a beat, but the future of the Rock offense still looks pretty good.

As I mentioned, Dhane Smith was held to just two points; in fact nobody on the Bandits had more than four. They were doing less of the “pass it to the guy who’s double-teamed” thing than the Rock, but still missing players with passes and shooting wide of the net. Smith in particular missed the net a number of times. I remember watching him wind up and thinking “it’s Dhane Smith, this is going in” only to see him miss the net by a foot.

The injuries troubles continue for the Rock too. Right after the face-off to start the third quarter, Brock Sorensen was hit or turned his leg funny or something and fell to the ground, screaming in pain. My seats are 17 rows back from the Rock bench and despite the music playing, I could clearly hear his screams from centre floor. Play was immediately stopped and the ACC was silent for several minutes as the trainers tried to figure out how to get him off the floor. In the end, they mostly carried him, though he was able to hop on his right leg a little. His left leg never touched the ground and he did not return. Hopefully it looked worse than it was.

I wouldn’t say the Bandits got into penalty trouble, though the Rock did score three PP goals. But Buffalo got the same needless delay of game penalty twice. The ref whistled a change of possession, and Daryl Veltman immediately dropped the ball, but didn’t move. When the Rock player picked up the ball, Veltman immediately checked him. You can’t do that. He went to the box (a place with which he’s rather unfamiliar, see below) and Toronto scored on the power play. About six minutes later, Alex Kedoh Hill did exactly the same thing and also went to the box, though the Bandits managed to kill that one. Sometimes taking a penalty is necessary, in fact Luc Magnan took one in the third that probably prevented a Bandits player from being in all alone on Rose. But the delay of game one is not one of those. It’s completely avoidable and taking that one is kind of dumb.

These two teams meet again tonight in Buffalo, and my sons and I are making the trek across the border. As a Rock fan I’m hoping for a repeat performance, but as a realist I’m not expecting one. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Dhane Smith pull out 10+ points and knock the Rock out of the playoffs.

Other game notes:

  • Nice to see Adam Will get a goal in his NLL debut, though having a guy named Will and a guy named Hill didn’t help me figure out who was on the floor.
  • Daryl Veltman’s delay of game penalty was his first penalty since 2012. He now has nine penalties totaling 24 minutes in his entire career – eight seasons. Not bad.
  • Weirdest challenge ever – Buffalo was credited with a goal which Toronto immediately challenged. The replay clearly showed the ball never went in the net at all. The ref who called it a goal was in the perfect position to see this, so I’m not sure how he thought it was a goal in the first place. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt though – in real time, it could have looked like it went in and bounced out very quickly. We’ve all see those goals before.
  • When Chad Culp got called for holding in the first quarter, some Rock fans near the penalty box did the Buffalo “B-O-X B-O-X” chant. Sweet.
  • At the beginning of the game, Bruce Barker announced something like “Let’s show the Buffalo fans how loud Toronto can be!” The clear answer: if we’re winning, not bad. If not, pretty damned quiet.
  • Announced attendance: 9,237. Maybe if they included all the players, coaches, and peanut and beer vendors. No way there were 9,000+ fans at that game.
  • Cool to see the @LacrosseBoss up on the Jumbotron, winning some power tools!

Game Report: Knighthawks 6 @ Rock 17

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Now that’s more like it.

After last week’s back-and-forth squeaker victory over the Bandits broke the winless streak (which I didn’t write about – sorry, just ran outta time), the 2016 Rock turned into the 2015 Rock for one night, blowing the Knighthawks out of the water 17-6 on Saturday night. On Stephan Leblanc bobblehead night, Leblanc had a great game with 8 points, Colin Doyle had 9 and Rob Hellyer had 11, his third game out of his last four with double-digit points. But the star of the show for the second straight game was Nick Rose who was seeing the ball very well all night and kept the Knighthawks to only 6 goals despite facing 58 shots.

That said, Rosey’s point production did drop by 100%. He did have an opportunity near the end of the game with the Knighthawk net empty but wisely chose not to shoot it. In general, I think that if the game is close enough that you pull your goalie, then it’s close enough for the other team to score an empty-netter. That’s the risk you take. If it’s the goalie that scores, so be it. But I’m not entirely sure why the Knighthawks had pulled their goalie, considering they were down by about ten and it wasn’t a delayed penalty situation. Having the goalie score on them at that point would have been showing them up in my opinion, and not terribly sportsmanlike so I’m glad he pulled back.

Toronto had it all working on this night. The offense was crisp, the defense was strong, and the goaltending was outstanding. It’s certainly possible I’m misremembering but the only shot clock violations I remember from the Rock were on the PK or near the end of the game when they were running out the clock, and they didn’t have any 8-second violations.

Nick Rose

The Knighthawks did not have it working at all. Dan Dawson was a little off all night – missing the net with shots, missing teammates with passes, and losing his head and taking penalties. He took two in this one – intentional off-ball contact (by giving Billy Hostrawser a good shove after the whistle) and head-butting. Heat-butting? Is that really a thing? Yup, though this was only the fourth head-butting penalty in the NLL since 2005. Cody Jamieson also took two penalties – one for slashing and also one for off-ball contact on the same play as Dawson’s. As a Rock fan, seeing both Dawson and Jamieson walking to the penalty box at the same time while the Rock only lost Hostrawser was pretty sweet. Even the Rock themselves thought it was a good trade-off.

In the 4th quarter, Knighthawk captain Sid Smith took three separate slashing penalties in just over five minutes. The Rock scored on two of them. Toronto scored eight power play goals on the night.

Matt Vinc wasn’t on his game either. He was yanked after 14 minutes and 7 goals, though Angus Goodleaf had a pretty good game in relief. He did give up 10 goals but made some timely saves that on a night when their offense was working (and he wasn’t staked to a 7-goal deficit already) would have kept his team in the game. But any time you have Dawson, Jamieson, and Vinc all struggling on the same night, the Knighthawks are unlikely to win. The Knighthawks’ struggles were summed up at the end of the first quarter when they were down 7-1. Scoring on your final possession of the quarter would be a good way to kill any Rock momentum, right? Nope. With just over 30 seconds left, they took a lazy 8-second violation, giving the Rock the final possession of the quarter.

Toronto playing like they did on Saturday almost guarantees a win. Rochester playing like they did almost guarantees a loss. When both happen in the same game, you get what we saw: total dominance. It looks like the Rock are back, and now we have to see if they can get out of the huge hole they dug for themselves in the first six games.

Other game notes:

  • At the Georgia game, the Rock didn’t play the Mission: Impossible theme in the 4th quarter after I asked them to stop. This week they didn’t play the annoying “Holla Holla” song before the game, a couple of weeks after I asked them to stop. What should I ask for next, folks? Free drinks? Box seats? A pony?
  • I love Bruce Barker’s announcing of Rock games. He’s never once made fun of the opposing team or any opposing players, and always keeps it classy and respectful. But when the Rock score a goal that puts them up by 12 with a few minutes left in the game, I might have held back on the “Toronto: Do you want another?” call.
  • Bill Greer got lifted off his feet and deposited into the Rochester bench, and then he was given a penalty while the Knighthawks who shoved him (Hossack and someone else) got nothing. But then I wondered what rule was broken that should have resulted in a penalty to the Knighthawks. It wasn’t exactly boarding, but surely that would have qualified as roughing, no?
  • Dan Lintner had a great game, scoring a beauty near the end of the second and adding a few assists. I keep associating him with Kevin Crowley and Garrett Billings since Lintner was acquired for Crowley who was acquired for Billings. But Lintner’s game is very different. He’s not firing top-corner bullets like Billings or plowing through defenders like Crowley. Lintner’s game is to squeeze between or around defenders to get in close and it looks like he’s pretty good at it.
  • Odd: In 2015, Dan Dawson had four penalties all season. Two of them came in one game, a game in which Dawson scored 1 goal (on the power play) and had 3 assists but the Knighthawks only scored 6 goals. In 2016: same.
  • It looked (to my friends, I didn’t see the play) like Billy Hostrawser either broke his arm or dislocated his shoulder near the end of the game. I’ve been hard on Hostrawser in the past for taking dumb penalties, but I thought he played a great game. Solid defense, gritty without taking dumb penalties, and the one penalty he did take was justified since he took Dan Dawson and Cody Jamieson to the box with him. I hope he’s OK.

Game report: Georgia 20 @ Toronto 17

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So Rock fans, we have good news and we have bad news. The good news is that the offense has finally woken up! 17 goals including 3 by Hellyer and Hickey and 4 by Leblanc, 7 assists from Hellyer and 6 from Doyle, even a couple of transition goals from Brodie Merrill and Rob Marshall. After four games featuring 7 or fewer goals, this was quite welcome.

The bad news is that the fairly solid if unspectactular defense we saw in those four games vanished. When you give up 20 goals, it’s hard not to blame the goaltending and indeed, Rosey didn’t have a great start and Miller wasn’t an awful lot better in relief. But for the most part I didn’t think goaltending was the problem.

Ironically, the Rock offense still didn’t look as good as we hoped. As Colin Doyle said in a post-game interview, they were getting into the middle more and giving themselves better scoring chances, which was good. But just like the previous couple of games, there were a lot of dangerous passes. Many more of them found their intended target than previous weeks (hence the increased scoring), but they were ripe for being picked off, deflected, or missed. I thought the offensive guys were too rushed, continually taking what looked like desperation shots with plenty of time left on the shot clock, and they must have hit MacDonald (or Higgins) square in the chest twenty times. He’s not going to move out of your way, shooters. Shoot it where he ain’t.

Many times, the Rock players held onto the ball too long and ended up getting it stripped away from them. Not everybody can be Mark Steenhuis and hold onto the ball while being triple-teamed – and it’s especially unnecessary when you’re not killing a penalty and there are people you could pass to. It wasn’t just the offense guys, many of the transition plays looked like this as well.

As for the Rock defense and transition teams, they were not on their game either. They were certainly missing Jesse Gamble and Damon Edwards but Swarm forwards found themselves open much more often than they should have. In one case, the Swarm were killing a penalty and Chad Tutton found himself with the ball right in front of Miller, and with no defender anywhere near him. He had an eternity to decide where to shoot and of course, he scored. There’s no way a five-man defense covering four men should allow one of them to be wide open like that.

Dave Thomas/Toronto Sun

But I don’t want to put the loss all on the Rock D and discount the excellent play of the Swarm offense. Even if the Rock was playing at their defensive best, they’d have had a tough time on Friday night. The Swarm had five players with 6 or more points (including two in double digits), and that doesn’t count Randy Staats’s four goals. They were passing well, they were shooting well, and like I’ve said before, they really do look like they’re having fun out there.

Another problem for the Rock was penalty trouble. They took three (three!) too many men penalties and Billy Hostrawser had five (five!) minor penalties, though no majors. As a result, the Swarm had five power play goals. Then again, the Rock scored eight (eight!) power play goals. This has been a common complaint (or at least a common comment) about the Rock in past years – they’re not as good five-on-five as many other teams, but they’re deadly on the power play.

But despite my mostly negative comments above, it certainly wasn’t all bad. In particular, the team was in the game all the way to the end. The Rock were actually leading with six minutes left in the fourth, but Brodie MacDonald played really  well in the last half of the fourth to keep them from coming back. As for Miller, he made a huge stop on a Randy Staats penalty shot five minutes into the fourth quarter to keep the Swarm from taking a three-goal lead. Such a lead might have been deflating considering the Rock had scored three straight to get back into it at that point, but Miller’s stop helped keep the Rock’s momentum and Toronto scored the next three to take that brief lead. It won’t get him any Money Baller points but it was a clutch play nonetheless, so kudos to Miller and the Rock offense for keeping them in the game.

Colin Doyle summed it up perfectly:

The offence was there tonight. Maybe the defence wasn’t. But we certainly can’t say anything because they were there for us the first four games and we weren’t there for them.

Other game notes:

  • No player intros, just “here’s your Toronto Rock!” and the whole team came out. When the team is 0-4, I guess you try anything to shake things up.
  • Of the Rock’s five losses, they’ve scored first in four of them, and taken 2-0 leads in three of them.
  • This was a game of runs. Starting from 5:17 of the second, Toronto scored four straight in less than five minutes, then Georgia scored seven straight over about 15 minutes, then Toronto scored six in about eight minutes, then Georgia finished up with four in six.
  • Dan Lintner scored his first career goal… again. In game 1, Lintner scored a goal but it was called back after a review because his foot was in the crease. In this one, the goal was also reviewed but held up.
  • Maybe the game was just so fast that it was inevitable, but the Rock seemed to have a lot of people on the “wrong” end of the floor. A number of times we saw four Rock offensive players passing around the Swarm net and Glen Bryan or Brock Sorensen setting picks, or Kevin Ross trying to get in Shayne Jackson’s way in front of Miller.
  • I did not hear the Mission: Impossible theme during the fourth quarter of this one. Maybe someone at the Rock offices read my last game report. Now if they could just get rid of that annoying “Holla Holla” song they play before the game starts.

Game report: Rochester 12 @ Rock 7

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The Toronto Rock started 2015 with three straight wins. That possibility was gone after game one this year. The 2015 Rock won 10 of their first 12 games. While that’s still technically possible in 2016, I’m going to go out on a limb and call it unlikely.

The Rock’s first two games had different expectations. One was against a team that finished well under .500 last year and missed the playoffs. They are a much improved team this year, but it was still a game that the Rock probably thought they should win. The other was against the perennially strong Rochester Knighthawks, 12-6 last season and only a year removed from three straight Championships. Nobody would count the Rock out entirely, but even they would probably agree that a win in that game was slightly less likely than the Georgia game. But regardless, the outcomes were the same: for the most part, they were barely in either game and lost them both 12-7.

There were also a number of similarities in the two games besides the score. Colin Doyle had two assists in each game, Turner Evans had one. The goalies saved around 3/4 of the shots they faced (Rose 74.4%, Miller 73.3%) while the opposing goalie was well over 80% (MacDonald 83.3%, Vinc 85.1%). They scored a single goal in the second half of game 1 and two in the first half of game 2. Put another way, they went over 71 minutes scoring 3 goals.

In the first quarter, both teams were missing the net all over the place. At one point a few minutes in, there had been about 8 shots between the two teams and only one didn’t miss the net entirely. The Knighthawks got better. The Rock didn’t. They were missing the net a lot but also missing passes and being intercepted and as Mike Wilson said on twitter, they were playing like they’d never played together before. They were rushing transition chances, shooting early in the shot clock, and there seemed to be a lot of cross-floor passes through traffic, many of which never reached their intended target. They really needed a quarterback out there to set up plays and settle things down when guys wanted to shoot early, but Josh Sanderson, who’s filled that role very well for years, was obviously not available.

A beautiful goal by Vitarelli. Photo from Dave Abel/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Colin Doyle has also filled that role in the past, but he just didn’t seem up to it on Thursday. Quite honestly, he looked old and slow. He’s never been Mr. Speedy anyway, but there were times where he’d cut to the middle, receive a pass, then miss the net. Or cut to the middle and miss the pass entirely. By the fourth quarter, it looked like each of Doyle, Hellyer, and Hickey were thinking “I need to score a couple to get us back into this” and so they’d be shooting when they probably shouldn’t have been.

Now, they were also facing the Knighthawks defense and Matt Vinc, so you can’t fault them too much, but I’ve seen many games where an offensive unit is playing well but the defense is just too good, and this wasn’t that.

Brandon Miller played pretty well, for the most part. He made a few “OMG how did he stop that?” saves, but also let in a few “OMG how did he not stop that?” goals too. The first two Rochester goals were identical shots over his left shoulder, and the third was under his left arm. He seemed to have a three minute span in the first where he couldn’t see anything and let in three goals, but then settled down after that and most of the rest of the Knighthawks goals were scattered.

Dan Lintner made his NLL debut and almost scored, though his foot was on the crease line so it was reversed. He’s small and quick and totally not the same player as Kevin Crowley but he may fit in well on this offense, assuming this offense begins playing at the level they’re capable of. I’m not sure if Luc Magnan is a defender who’s fast or more of a transition player (generally defined as “a defender who’s fast”). He did play some solid defense and had a couple of transition chances though didn’t bury them. He’s no Damon Edwards but since Edwards is injured, you could do worse than having Magnan to replace him.

The bottom line: The Toronto Rock have the biggest home floor advantage in the league. The vast majority of Rock players (possibly all of them?) live near here so very few of them have to travel great distances for games here (then again, that’s true for some visiting teams too). They have a great practice facility and lots of veteran players. There’s no excuse for not being prepared for this game, especially after getting beaten the week before, and they weren’t.

Other game notes:

  • On a rare Thursday night, the announced attendance was 9387 but I doubt that many people were actually there. Didn’t look like 9k to me.
  • Dan and Paul Dawson were both wearing white leggings and mismatched shoes. The leggings were weird enough but the shoes were dark on the inside (i.e. the left side of the right shoe and vice versa) and light on the outside (right side of right shoe, left side of left). I noticed at least two other Knighthawks (Searle, Llord) who were wearing the same shoes.
  • Rob Hellyer must have tried the ol’ roll (not shoot)-the-ball-through-the-five-hole trick at least four times. Never worked.
  • For the second straight game, the Rock seemed to lose their discipline right at the end of the game and in both cases, it was unexpected players that got involved. In game one it was Colin Doyle, in game two it was Brett Hickey. After Hickey and Jon Sullivan were sent to the box, Derek Searle cross-checked some Rock player (don’t remember who) in the back, and Billy Hostrawser took exception. They fought and Searle took his hits and went to the box. Rock owner and GM Jamie Dawick wasn’t happy about it, calling Searle “some rookie punk” and said that he got his ass kicked and deserved it. While I don’t entirely disagree with him (though the fact that Searle’s a rookie doesn’t play into it – hitting someone from behind at the final buzzer when you just won by 5 is a dick move regardless of your NLL experience), I’m still unsure how I feel about an NLL executive making those kinds of comments. The fans, definitely. The coach or players, sure. But the GM? He’s got to keep a cooler head, in my humble opinion.
  • I know I’ve said this before but the music guy needs to change things up. When the Rock are down late in the fourth, playing the theme from Mission: Impossible is probably not the message you want to send. Play it when the Rock are winning (by a few) or don’t play it.

Game report: Edmonton 15 @ Toronto 9, NLL Finals Game 1

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On the Addicted to Lacrosse show this week, I picked the Rock to win Saturday night’s game because of what I saw last weekend. When the Rock hosted the Knighthawks in the division finals, they came out fired up in game 2, slowed down a touch in the second half, but then came out fired up again in the tiebreaker. They got to Matt Vinc, one of the best goaltenders anywhere, scored a bunch against one of the best defenses in the league, and kept Dan Dawson off the scoreboard (i.e. 0 goals). Any team that can do that, and has the motivation that the Rock has, will be hard to beat in the finals, especially at home. So they should win game 1.

Great logic, except it didn’t happen.

I don’t know what was said in the Rock dressing room before the Rochester game that got them so fired up (presumably it was more than just “let’s win it for T!”), but it didn’t work on Saturday night. They did come out looking pretty strong, scoring the first two goals and keeping the Rush offense from getting many decent shots, but the first two goals were the only ones in the quarter for the Rock. After Mark Matthews scored on the power play, the Rush were kept off the board for another 5 minutes before scoring 3 in under two minutes to take the lead. A fifth with under a minute left gave them a 3 goal lead at the end of the first quarter. I tweeted that the Rush were leading 7-3 at the end of the first quarter last week, and they lost. But last week they stopped playing as well as they did in the first, and the Calgary D stepped up. Neither of those things happened in this one.

The Rock weren’t terrible, mostly, but certainly not as strong as we saw last week. Miller was OK but wasn’t seeing the ball well. Rose replaced him in the second and again in the fourth and was better. The Rock D in general was also OK but had some serious lapses in judgement here and there. The Rush D, on the other hand, was stifling, and Aaron Bold was great. He was stopping almost everything from way out (that didn’t get blocked by a defender), and the Rush D wouldn’t let the Rock forwards get in close, so there was basically no way to score on him.

The Rock offense had their moments, some crisp passing and nice goals, but for the most part they were shut down by the Edmonton D. Continuing the trend that Rochester started in the semifinals, the Rush blocked an awful lot of shots. Edmonton’s forwards were generally good but holy cow, Mark Matthews was outstanding. The guy was everywhere – plowing through defenders like they weren’t there, and firing bullets at Miller or Rose. Robert Church had a good night, but I thought Jarrett Davis was very good as well. Davis was the Kasey Beirnes of the Rush: getting into the middle, setting picks, and getting pounded pretty good so that the big O guys (Matthews, Church, Greer, McIntosh) could get better looks at the net.

But the difference in the game was the transition. I couldn’t count the number of times the Rock would get a transition chance that turned into a 5 second possession after a bad shot through two defenders. Basically the Rush defense got out there so fast that the “chance” wasn’t much of a chance once they got near the net. Similarly, Rock forwards got caught on defense a lot because the Rush transition was so fast that there wasn’t time to change. Crowley isn’t bad on defense for a forward, and Josh Sanderson is a better defender at 38 than he used to be, but he’s still not great. But one of the Rush goals in the second half was scored with Sanderson, Hellyer, and Leblanc as three of the defenders. That’s just not their thing.

Game 2 goes next Friday in Edmonton and if the Rock play then like they played on Saturday, this one’s over and congrats to the Rush. But if they play like they played last week, then we’ll have a series.

Other game notes:

  • Attendance was listed as 9257, or about a thousand less than last week. The difference looked and sounded like a lot more than a thousand.
  • The Rock seemed to be dropping the ball a lot on offense. Not missed passes, and not (always) Rush defenders knocking the ball out of their stick, just plain dropping the ball.
  • Kasey Beirnes’ first goal was nice but the pass was even better. Rob Hellyer was lining up to fire a shot until at the last possible moment he saw Beirnes open beside the net. He changed his shot into a pass to Beirnes who buried it. Nice unselfish play.
  • Similarly, Mark Matthews made a beautiful pass in the third to a streaking Zack Greer who put it behind Rose (or Miller, don’t remember who was in at the time). The timing of the pass had to be perfect or Greer, who was being covered by a Rock defender, wouldn’t have gotten it. But it was perfect.
  • Near the end of the game, when the comeback was still possible, the Rock kept losing their own possessions because of moving picks. C’mon guys, when every possession is that important, don’t waste them.

Game reports: Rochester 8 @ Toronto 11, Rochester 2 @ Toronto 8

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I almost feel like I have to apologize to the Toronto Rock. I did pick them to win this series and head to the Champions Cup final, but not with much confidence, and I actually changed my pick since I originally had Rochester. (Note that the IL Indoor “NLL staff Picks: Division Finals Game 2 and 3” page has my picks listed incorrectly – I picked Toronto to win both game 2 and the mini-game. I also picked Calgary to win game 2 and Edmonton to win the mini-game. 4 for 4, baby.) But the way Toronto played on Saturday, there was almost no doubt from the opening whistle that Toronto was the better team.

The game started with something odd – rather than announcing each player one by one like they always do, they simply said “Here’s the Toronto Rock!” and the whole team ran out at once. Maybe they decided that they wanted to be viewed as a team rather than a collection of individuals and so they dispensed with the introductions.

The Rock came out on fire. They scored on their first two shots (both by Brett Hickey) and then Stephan Leblanc scored to make it 3-0 just over 3 minutes in. The Knighthawks got on the board then and the Rock calmed down a little, but the Rock had possession down in the Knighthawk end for the majority of the first quarter. In the second, Rochester seemed to get frustrated and got into a bit of penalty trouble, leading to two Rock power play goals. Stephen Keogh scored his second of the night with just a couple of seconds left in the half to cut the lead to 8-3, but it was clear the Rock was in control.

As much as I was enjoying the lead and the intensity with which the team was playing, I had to keep my enthusiasm in check. I have seen enough lacrosse to know that being up by 5 at the half is no guarantee of a win. Not to mention that even if they wiped the floor with the Knighthawks in game 2, there was still the mini-game to play. Momentum (and penalties) might carry over, but the score would not.

In the second half, the Rock seemed to let their foot off the gas. They still seemed in control for the most part, but Vinc played a lot better and the Knighthawks started to get back into the game. By a minute into the 4th, they were only down by two. I don’t know about other fans, but I started to get a little nervous. But then the D clamped down again and the Rock got a couple more by Vinc. I thought the Knighthawks were going to pull their top players to rest them up for the mini-game, but they didn’t; they seemed to continue playing for the comeback win, even when it got to the point of needing four goals in 3 minutes or so.

Photo credit: Jack Boland/Toronto SunBrandon Miller was playing very well but I thought the defense in front of him was outstanding. I also thought that Rochester wasn’t making the most of their possessions; they’d frequently shoot when there was more than 10 seconds left on the shot clock. Matt Vinc had an uncharacteristically bad game. He was better in the second half than the first, but he was giving up goals that he normally wouldn’t. It wasn’t that he wasn’t making the “holy crap” saves that he usually does, he wasn’t even making the “normal” saves that most goalies usually do.

Stephen Keogh came to play, scoring 6 of Rochester’s 8 goals and really looking good. He took a penalty right at the end of the game, which carried over into the mini-game, though I don’t think he knew that. He came out of the box after game 2 ended, and was told by the refs to go back. Some folks on twitter suggested the Knighthawks should have scored on their own net before game 2 ended to negate the penalty, but apparently there was a memo from the league before the playoffs saying that this would result in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, as it should.

I was a little worried about the mini-game, since (a) Toronto had only scored 3 goals in the second half, and (b) Matt Vinc was looking much more like the Matt Vinc we expected to see. But the mini-game looked more like the first quarter, as the Rock came out on fire once again. I did not vote for John Lovell as Coach of the Year (well, I put him on the ballot but at #3 or 4), but now I think he should have been higher. They scored 7 goals on 8 shots in less than 7 minutes and completely deflated the Knighthawks. Vinc was finally pulled in favour of Angus Goodleaf but the damage was done by then.

So there have been 5 mini-games in the league in the past 2 years, and I’ve seen two of them. Have to say they’re very exciting to watch, but are they a good idea in general? That I’m not so sure of, but I may get to that in a future article. We’re now down to 2 teams and the first best-of-3 series since 1998. The Rush will be visiting the ACC next weekend, and I am looking forward to it.

Other game notes:

  • Only 10,000 fans at the game, but it was certainly the loudest I’ve heard the ACC in a couple of years.
  • There were several busloads of Rochester fans at one end, cheering loudly for the ‘Hawks. Unfortunately for them, “Hawks” and “Rock” rhyme, and so their chants of “Let’s Go Hawks!” quickly turned into chants of “Let’s Go Rock!” by the hometown fans. I thought it was great to see such a large group from Rochester, just like I love seeing tons of Bandits fans when they play in Toronto. It was a little disappointing to see that about half of them had left before the tiebreaker game was even over. Where did they go? Were they afraid the buses were going to leave without them? Also nice to see the Knighthawks salute them before they left the floor.
  • Kevin Crowley is not just a great forward, he plays some pretty great defense too.
  • Just like last week, Rochester’s defense intercepted a whole bunch of passes, but they really only scored one transition goal all night.
  • A number of those intercepted passes came from Colin Doyle. I also noticed that Doyle took more shots through traffic than many others; he seemed to want to shoot even when it may not have been a good idea.
  • Patrick Merrill took a penalty shot in the mini-game because the Knighthawks took a too-many-men penalty with <2 minutes left. In that case, the Rock could have chosen anyone on the floor to take the shot, so I’m curious why they chose him.

Game report: New England 12 @ Toronto 15

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Overall, this was a pretty entertaining game and not just because my team won. There were a bunch of interesting moments in this game, as well as a few frustrating ones, one scary one, and for me, one that was terrifying.

The Black Wolves have shown a number of times this season that they can play with the big boys. In their first two games they were not only good but dominant – beating the Bandits and crushing the Knighthawks. Then they lost 8 of their next 9 but other than a couple when they got smoked, they looked pretty good even in most of the losses. They certainly put up a good fight in this one as well, and if making the Rock fans nervous in the last few minutes of the 4th quarter was their goal, then mission accomplished.

But that’s not to say that they kept up with the Rock’s level of play throughout the game. Far from it. The Black Wolves actually outplayed the Rock for most of the first half, despite holding a lead for less than six minutes. Their defense was stifling, and Toronto had trouble getting shots off. Many Rock possessions ended with the ball being harmlessly tossed into the corner or just put on the ground since there was no chance of even a desperation shot. The Rock did get a few goals, but all of them from special teams. The Rock’s first seven goals of the game consisted of 4 power-play goals and 3 shorthanded ones. Their first 5-on-5 goal happened five minutes into the third quarter, and in the end only five of their fifteen goals were 5-on-5. When both teams were at even strength, the Rock were simply outmatched. If New England’s power play wasn’t so terrible on Friday, things might have been different. I was almost waiting for the Rock to start chopping at people to get penalized since they were playing better with only 4 players than with 5.

My terrifying moment came during the second quarter when the Black Wolves tied it at 4 and I realized that not only were the 12-4 Rock getting outplayed by a 4-9 team, but that the Rock were 3-3 in their last 6 games and other than against Vancouver, haven’t looked as dominant as they did in the first part of the season. I remembered Melissa asking on a recent Addicted to Lacrosse show whether the Rock had peaked early and would head into the playoffs on a downside slide – the terrifying moment was when I thought that she might have been right.

And then we got to the second half.

The Rock’s offense was better in the second half than in the first, but still wasn’t clicking as well as earlier in the year. I wondered if they were really missing Rob Hellyer, but it could also have been the strong play of the New England defense. (I also wondered if the distraction of learning they might get Colin Doyle back and then finding out just before game time that they wouldn’t might have been a factor, but I don’t think that was it.) I didn’t think the Rock D played great in the second half (I remember two plays when Jeff Gilbert got beat 1-on-1), but Brandon Miller stepped his game up a few notches. He was not fantastic in the first half, but good enough to keep his team in it. In the second half though, he was lights-out and was much of the difference in the game. This seems backwards since the Black Wolves scored 4 in the first half and 8 in the second half, but they also took seventy shots on the night. Seventy.

Brett Hickey had a great game. His 3G 5A brought him to a league-leading 46 goals (tied with Curtis Dickson) and he’s now in 12th with 76 points. Stephan Leblanc’s 1+7 bumped him into a tie for 4th with 86 points, but I have to give kudos to Leblanc for his work ethic. At least twice I watched him fighting in the corner for a loose ball near the end of a Rock possession, while 2 or 3 defenders were pounding on him and most of his teammates were already heading towards the bench. One of these times led directly to a New England penalty, and the Rock scored on the ensuing power play. Nice job Steph.

Anyway, let’s move onto the interesting moments:

  • Early in the 4th, Jesse Gamble fought with Mike Manley. While Manley was walking to the penalty box, Gamble was holding his hand up and went to talk to the refs. He then went to the dressing room and did not return. I’m 95% sure I saw him say “he bit me” to the Rock bench on his way off the floor.
  • Garrett Billings’s return to Toronto was rather uneventful. He had a goal and 4 assists, almost exactly what he’s had in each of his previous 3 games with the Black Wolves. When he scored his goal in the 4th quarter, the ACC PA guy played The Who’s “Who Are You?”
  • Sandy Chapman scored a nice transition goal in the 4th and the Black Wolves challenged it since it looked like he might have stepped on the crease line just before shooting. A replay showed that he tiptoed near the line but never touched it. He expertly danced around the crease like he does it 40 times a year. It was actually the 32nd goal of his 14-year career.
  • Also in the 4th (the 4th was definitely the most interesting quarter!), the Rock challenged a goal that had been waved off. I’m pretty sure the ref never went to the replay booth at all but the call on the floor was overturned and the goal counted. I don’t think I’ve seen a call changed without the actual replay. Maybe the other ref saw it clearly and was positive about it while the original ref had some doubts about his own call, or the original ref immediately realized he’d called it wrong and didn’t bother going to the replay to correct it. It makes you wonder if the call would have been reversed if the Rock hadn’t challenged it.

The frustrating moment:

  • The Rock took three Too Many Men penalties. Once in the third, they sent five men out when they were killing a penalty. It looked like they just forgot that they were on the PK. In the fourth, they took a “normal” too many men penalty, and while killing that one, they took another one – they just forgot again and sent out five players. That’s when Billings scored, otherwise the Rock would have been down 5-on-3.

The scary moment:

  • Andrew Suitor was covering Kevin Crowley in the New England end, when Crowley gave Suitor a fairly innocent-looking push and Suitor dropped and did not get back up. A few minutes later, he was carried off the floor and did not return. I remember watching the Minnesota game in 2013 when he blew out his knee and was carried off the floor then, and so this seemed eerily familiar. He missed the rest of that season (11 games), so hopefully this injury isn’t as bad as it looked.

Other game notes:

  • We’ve all seen the kiss cam, the dance cam, and recently I’ve seen the “show us your muscles” cam in some arenas. Ah, the joys of watching the Jumbotron feed over the internet. Anyway, the Rock started a new thing during this game: the beer belly cam. Yes, they showed men with, um, significant girth around the middle section, showing off what they had. I really hope that idea dies a quick and painful death.
  • After the game, my son spotted a wallet sitting in a cup holder a couple of rows ahead of us. He asked the guy sitting next to it if it was his, and he said “Oh, yeah, that’s mine.” On our way out, we heard a different guy frantically talking to the usher about losing his wallet. He said he was sitting “right there”, pointing to where Nicky had found the wallet. We told the usher we’d found it and she went to talk to the other guy who claimed it. She came back with the wallet but when they went to check what was in it (i.e. hopefully some picture ID so we could tell whose it was), it was empty. No cash, no ID, nothing. The guy who said it was his was nowhere to be found by then. Douche.

Game report: Rochester 11 Toronto 7

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A week after getting smoked by the Edmonton Rush 16-3, the Knighthawks were in Toronto looking for redemption. And they got it in spades. They matched their total from the previous game at 6:21 of the first quarter, coincidentally almost the same time (6:26) as last week’s game-winner. But then they kept going, eventually scoring 11 on route to an 11-7 win over the Rock. It wasn’t a rout, and the Rock were still in it until the last couple of minutes, but the Knighthawks definitely dominated every aspect of the game. Kevin Crowley made his Rock debut, and Joe Resetarits did the same for the Knighthawks. Each of them scored in their first game, with Resetarits striking first.

Brandon Miller started the game in net for the Rock and he was not sharp, allowing 5 Rochester goals in 13 minutes before being pulled. Nick Rose finished and had a much better game than Miller. He allowed three goals in 2½ minutes early in the second but then only three more over the rest of the game. Matt Vinc, on the other hand, started off strong and got better. But I think the story of this game was the Knighthawks defense. The Rock weren’t getting great looks at all and when they finally could see the net, all they could see (or hit) was Vinc’s chest. The Rochester D was just overpowering and on the few occasions that a Rock forward managed to get through them or get open somehow, Vinc was there to shut the door.

At one point, Damon Edwards and Sandy Chapman came running up on transition with Billy Greer behind them. Edwards was covered and didn’t have much of a shot and so was Chapman, so he passed to Greer. Greer didn’t have a great opportunity and is not known for his scoring touch in the first place, so why wouldn’t Edwards hold it and wait for the Rock offense to get out on the floor? The Rock were already down by at least 5 at this point, so perhaps they wanted to score to get the team fired up, but I really think they should have waited and allowed the offensive specialists to do their thing.

Then again, “doing their thing” wasn’t exactly what the offense was doing all night. Part of it was the strong Rochester defense, but the Rock offense just wasn’t clicking. I don’t know if it was the addition of Kevin Crowley or being without Rob Hellyer (though they managed OK without him last week) or something else, but they just couldn’t get it together. Passes were missed or dropped, players passed instead of shooting, shot when they had no shot, and and just seemed “out of sorts”. Kevin Crowley once tried to get in close and was pushed off to the side, then made a nice (and very Billings-like) behind-the-back pass into the middle where there were no Knighthawks defenders and… no Rock offensive players either. I don’t know if he assumed that someone would be there or just hoped. I’m still trying to decide if it was a good assumption that just didn’t pan out or a dumb pass. In general I thought Crowley played pretty well, getting a bunch of shots as well as throwing some nice picks, and even playing some D when necessary. I’m liking the play of Brock Sorensen more and more every week, and I thought he had a very strong game. Brett Hickey, on the other hand, did not. Hickey was held scoreless, his first such game in a Rock uniform.

Perhaps it was the fact that Jim Veltman was in the building, but there were pass interceptions all over the place in this game. Unfortunately, Veltman inspired the wrong team. I counted at least five Rock passes that were intercepted by Knighthawk defenders. At least one was pure luck – the defender was standing three feet from the passer and just put his stick up and the ball went into it. But most were cross-floor passes that were just caught by a defender in between.

Despite being outplayed for much of the game, the Rock were in this until the dying seconds. If not for the little Rochester scoring spree in the first quarter, the Rock might even have been able to pull a win out of this.

Other game notes:

  • The Rock’s first two goals were the same goal. In both cases, Kasey Beirnes was well outside the crease on the the left side of the floor and shot it into the top right corner, so hard that it bounced straight back out. Unfortunately, there were 10 minutes and 5 Knighthawk goals between those two.
  • A Knighthawk forward (I’m guessing Dan Dawson) tried an Air Gait move into the left side of the net while Rose was on the right side. But Jesse Gamble came in and made a great shoulder save.
  • Just realized that the Rock now have 2/3 of the Philly Wings all-Kevin line from a couple of years ago.
  • The first-ever Rock alumni game was held at halftime, and it was great. It was obvious that the players were having a lot of fun. Did we see outstanding lacrosse? Not especially, but there were some behind-the-back passes, breakaways, and even a patented Jim Veltman pass interception. Oddly, the vast majority of players were defenders – the only non-defenders on the blue team (Team Sanderson) were Matt Shearer and Dean Harrison (who I had never heard of). At one point the blue team’s offensive line consisted of Phil Sanderson, Drew Candy, Ian Rubel, Steve Toll, and Carter Livingstone. Toll was a transition player but the other four were pure defenders.
  • Pat Campbell came way out of his net to play the ball (as Campbell was often wont to do) and someone (Phil Sanderson?) managed to push him into the boards. I thought it might come to blows if the guys weren’t laughing so hard. In another case, Campbell tossed a long outlet pass to Glenn Clark, who was going to catch it while running forwards and looking backwards. Phil Wetherup came out of his net towards Clark and it looked like we were going to have another Corey Quinn moment. The same thing happened in a Bandits/Rock game in Toronto in 2003, when the goalie Quinn came out of his net and just levelled Clark as he caught the pass. The refs decided it was a 5 minute major penalty, and Quinn had to serve it himself. Nothing happened here as Clark missed the pass.
  • Best moment of the alumni game: Phil Sanderson scored on Pat Campbell, then stopped to take a selfie with Paddy. The ref then grabbed Phil’s camera and took a picture of the two of them. Note that play kept going while this was happening.
  • Notable missing Rock alumni: Blaine Manning, Dan Ladouceur, Pat Coyle, Dan Stroup, Chris Gill. I imagine those guys had other things to do.

Game reports: Rock and Bandits split the weekend series

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If you’re a Bandits fan, a Rock fan, or just a fan of the game, this was a great weekend to watch the NLL. The Bandits and Rock played back to back games on Friday and Saturday nights, and as expected, both games were close, exciting, chippy, and very entertaining. I got to both of these games but didn’t do a separate game report for Friday night’s matchup for reasons I’ll get to. This article will serve as a game report for both.

I decided to bring my kids to Friday’s game in Buffalo so I messaged my buddy Steve Bermel to see if he could get me tickets. He’s done this for me in the past and gave me hell once because I bought tickets through the box office (and therefore paid full price plus fees rather than Steve’s season ticket holder discount price). Steve called me back and said that Kevin Kennedy, the Bandits anthem singer, wasn’t using his tickets for that game and had donated them to me and my boys. These tickets were “row 3, behind the Rock bench” as Steve put it, so I was excited about sitting only a few rows back from the bench. It turns out that row 3 is the row directly behind the Rock bench, so we we right in the action. This was as close as I’ve ever been to a sporting event (except a spring training Blue Jays game where I was sitting behind home plate, next to the guy with the radar gun) so that was very cool, and my boys really enjoyed it as well.  We were close enough to see that Blaine Manning has a mole on the back of his head. The more you know.

Play at the far endSitting so close had some advantages: we could see that the Rock have a special stick they use for face-offs. Whenever a player went to take a face-off or came off the floor after one, they’d swap their regular stick with the face-off one. Nicky got high-fives from most of the Rock players as they came out for the second half, and one of the Rock employees gave them each a ball after the pre-game shoot-around. I could hear Brett Hickey trying to get the team fired up (“Come on guys, let’s do this. Let’s go”) as they took the floor before the game and after halftime, as well as when they left the floor just before halftime. I’m more impressed with that guy after every game and thanks again to the Vancouver Stealth for releasing him.

But sitting so close has some drawbacks too, the main one being that we couldn’t see the game. The players and coaches never sit down during the game (and I wouldn’t expect them to), so we ended up watching play at the far end on the Jumbotron (see the picture above for our actual view of the far end) and play at the near Selfie showing my view of the gameend through a maze of players. During the 1st and 3rd quarters, we were staring at Dan Ladouceur’s back (picture at right) and during the 2nd and 4th it was Blaine Manning’s.

As for the game itself, I honestly couldn’t see enough of it to have a good opinion on how the teams played. I thought the Rock offense looked kind of haphazard in the first. They didn’t seem to be getting many good looks and their ball movement wasn’t great. It was better in the second half. Cosmo played well and Rose was pretty good with flashes of greatness here and there.

Hey, remember that game where Mark Steenhuis didn’t play very well and didn’t seem to be trying very hard? No, me neither. That man’s only playing styles are HARD and HARDER.

The end of game 1 was beyond chippy. At one point, Troy Cordingley was yelling at John Lovell and had to be physically restrained from leaving the Bandits bench. Brodie Merrill came back to the Rock bench near the end of the 4th and literally punched the wall in front of the bench three times. Good hard punches too. I don’t know what he was so pissed about, but on his next shift, he fought Steve Priolo and was tossed from the game. Then a couple of other fights started as well, and it looked like it was going to get out of hand, but it stopped just short of that. The game eventually ended and the players lined up for the handshakes. Brodie’s brother Patrick Merrill led the line for the Rock, and the teams went through the line just fine until the Rock got to Cordingley who immediately started yelling at Merrill (“F**K YOU” was clearly the take-home message for Merrill here) and once again had to be pulled away by his team. It seemed like a typical Bandits “We’re losing so let’s start some fights” move, except that the Bandits weren’t losing. Again, I couldn’t really see much so I don’t know how the fights started or what Cordingley was so mad about.

Fast-forward almost 24 hours, and both teams are at the ACC in Toronto for the rematch. I was in my regular seats for this one, so I have a better idea of who played well and who didn’t. Answer: the goalies played well, the offenses not so much.

This started off looking like it was going to be a repeat of the previous night’s game. There were penalties all over the place including a fight. I imagine the refs were just waiting for Priolo and Hostrawser to go at it so when each gave the other a couple of shoves, the refs sent them off for roughing. I didn’t think penalties were warranted here and I guess Priolo wondered the same thing out loud since he got an extra 2 for unsportsmanlike conduct.

There were a few other incidents where players were almost looking for penalties. Hostrawser hit a Bandit with a full crosscheck right across the back, knocking him down, in full view of the ref with no call. Mark Steenhuis got a penalty early in the second but when they showed the replay of why he got the penalty, you got a good view of a Rock player punching Ryan Benesch in the side of the head. Someone slashed Kedoh Hill who waited a second before falling down. My son said it looked like a soccer play but the slash was called and not the dive.

One of the best plays of the game (and penalties were neither called nor deserved on this one) was Billy Dee Smith racing down on an almost-breakaway and then deciding that rather than trying to deke or shoot around Rob Marshall he’d just go straight through him. Both players are 6’3″ but Smith has 35 pounds on Marshall. But Marshall lowered his shoulder at just the right time and while he did get knocked over, Smith went down too and the Rock recovered the loosie.

I don’t know if the coaches were warned by the refs at halftime or if they both decided to just drop all that revenge crap and play lacrosse instead, but the second half wasn’t chippy at all and it turned into a great game. The Rock were up by 3 going into halftime but Toronto’s offense came out flat in the third for their first scoreless quarter of the season. Just like part of the previous night, the Rock couldn’t seem to get their offense going and couldn’t get in close. They took a lot of shots from way out and with lots of time left on the shot clock, and many of those shots hit Cosmo square in the chest. After the Bandits took the lead midway through the third, both goalies stepped up their games but the Rock managed to tie it twice in the 4th before we headed to OT.

OT only lasted a couple of minutes, but both teams had some good chances to end it. Brandon Miller and Anthony Cosmo both stood tall, as they had all game. But Brett Hickey managed to get one past Cosmo a couple of minutes in to send the crowd home happy. The Rock and fans celebrated the goal while the refs went to review it and we thought about how deflated the crowd would be if they came out and waved it off. There was even a Bandits player who got himself set up at the restraining line. He looked like he was getting ready for the ensuing face-off – which was weird because if the goal didn’t count, there wouldn’t have been a face-off anyway.

I really don’t know if there was bad blood during the handshakes on this night too but the refs were ready for it. The teams went through the line and I paid special attention to Troy Cordingley, who simply shook everyone’s hand. When he got to the Rock coaches, it looked like he gave Lovell a sincere handshake and even patted Dan Ladouceur on the chest. But then the refs came running over. I don’t know if words were said that made them think something was going to happen, or if they just saw the coaches together and thought something might happen, but nothing did.

As I said, we had two entertaining games between these two teams, as we frequently do. I like a chippy game with lots of hitting as much as anyone, but the second half of Saturday’s game was great because it had none of that. There was the potential for it to turn into a bench-clearing brawl, but instead we had some great goaltending, solid defense, and some nice goals (and some ugly ones too).

Next weekend: the Edmonton Rush are in town. This will be another great game.

Game report: New England 12 @ Toronto 13

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I said in my contribution to this week’s Winners and Losers column on IL Indoor that everything is going right for the Toronto Rock. Friday night’s game was kind of a microcosm of that – they played their worst game of the season and still won.

Now, the phrase “their worst game of the season” doesn’t tell the whole story. The Rock have played very well so far this season, and even their loss to Rochester was a solid performance – I did not see it but John Lovell said that it was their best game to that point despite the fact that they lost. So with such a high bar, “worst game” doesn’t mean they played badly. But they weren’t great.

Both teams started out strong, with both goaltenders making some pretty impressive stops and both defenses preventing the offenses from getting good shots off. Evan Kirk was lights out and the New England defense was also playing very well. The Rock offense couldn’t get much going – they managed a 3-on-0 breakaway in the second quarter as two Black Wolves defenders bumped into each other and both fell, but didn’t score. Brandon Miller made some good stops but got beat by a number of low shots and rollers.

I tweeted at halftime that “One of these teams is looking like they’re 3-4. And it’s not the Black Wolves.” I blew it a little because the Wolves were actually 2-3, not 3-4, but the idea is the same. The third quarter was even worse for the Rock, and might have been the worst quarter they’ve played this year. Four New England goals within five minutes put the Rock down by five, which seemed to be the nail in the Rock’s coffin. Brandon Miller was replaced by Nick Rose after the third of those four goals and Nick had a much better game than Brandon did. Miller wasn’t terrible but didn’t seem to be seeing the ball well, while Rose saw everything.

Then late in the third, Stephen Leblanc scored a nice shorthanded goal on a pass from Nick Rose, where he spun around and backhanded it over a sprawling Evan Kirk. Brett Hickey scored just two minutes later and the Rock went into the 4th quarter only down by 3. This seemed to energize them, and they realized that they were still in this game. Josh Sanderson and Joel White traded goals in the first half of the fourth and then the Rock offense started clicking just as the New England defense stopped. The Rock scored their own four in five minutes and took a one-goal lead with under three minutes left.

That lead only held up for a minute and a half before Kyle Buchanan’s 4th of the game tied it again, and we were off to overtime. Given the season he’s having, it’s only fitting that Josh Sanderson continued his crazy scoring pace by scoring the OT winner only 40 seconds in. It’s a great story – the former superstar player on the down side of his career who has a big comeback after the death of his father and mentor. But Josh isn’t just having a good season – he’s making a serious bid for league MVP here. I haven’t seen him work this hard in years.

There was a pretty decent fight in the second quarter, which I’m sure we’ll discuss on Sunday night’s Addicted to Lacrosse show. Jamie Lincoln picked a fight with Jesse Gamble which turned out to be a bad idea. It wasn’t exactly a heavyweight bout; Gamble is only 5’9″ and 180 lbs, while Lincoln is taller at 6’1″ but only 185 lbs. They wrestled to get their helmets off but Gamble managed to keep his on the whole fight. Gamble demolished Lincoln, landing punch after punch, but the fact that he never got his helmet off changed things a little. It’s highly possible that Lincoln didn’t want to throw bare-knuckle punches at Gamble’s helmet so he ended up just taking the punches and so the fight looked a lot more one-sided than it would have been. On the other hand, it could be that Gamble’s helmet was of little consequence because Lincoln never landed a punch anyway.

So the Rock are now leading the league at 7-1 while the Black Wolves fall to 2-4 and last in the East. Toronto plays in Edmonton next Friday night while the Black Wolves host the Mammoth on Sunday afternoon.

Other game notes:

  • Obviously the two teams scored the same number of goals in regulation time. But here’s how they did it:
    • Rock scored 2, then Black Wolves scored 2
    • Rock scored 1, Black Wolves 1, Rock 1, Black Wolves 1
    • Black Wolves scored 6 of the next 7
    • Rock scored 6 of the next 7
    • Rock scored 1, Black Wolves scored 1
    • OT: Toronto scored 1
  • After a good Brandon Miller save, Bruce Barker announced “A thrilla by Milla!” My son remarked “It’s not as bad as ‘You’ve been Roiked!’ but close”
  • (Warning: old guy comment coming) Please ACC, turn the music down. It has nothing to do with my hearing – I don’t want to feel my chest vibrating in time with the bass at a sporting event. A concert, maybe, but not a lacrosse game. Even my 15-year-old son who listens to nothing but Billy Talent and Rush thought it was a bit loud.