The battle for the east was hard-fought and close, as expected, with the 4-4 Wings coming into Toronto to play the 4-4 Rock. The winner would take first in the east as well as win the season series between these two. The Rock took an early but short lead, and the teams traded goals in the second, but the Wings pulled away in the third and held off a late Rock rally to win 12-10.

Kasey Beirnes gave the Rock the lead 3:48 into the first, but only eight seconds later Wings captain Brodie Merrill tied it up. Toronto never led again in the game, though they did tie it up three times in the second. One of those tying goals came with less than a minute left in the first half, which ended at 5-5. Drew Westervelt then scored early in the third to give the Wings a lead they’d never give up. The Rock scored two goals in 44 seconds with less than three minutes remaining to get within one, but that was as close as they’d get as David Brock put the game away with an empty-netter.

The Rock were playing catch-up all night, and did make a game of it, but Philly wouldn’t let them get any kind of momentum. Of the Rock’s ten goals on the night, five of them were followed by Philadelphia goals less than a minute later, and two of those were less than ten seconds later. It’s pretty deflating when you score and think “we’re making progress, only one more and we’re tied!” and then the other teams scores before your goal has even been announced.

The streak of Rock losses with Colin Doyle in the lineup continues. They have not won a game this year that Doyle has finished. That’s not to say this loss was his fault; I thought Doyle had a pretty good game. But it seems that the offense settled itself pretty well while he was injured, and once he returned they changed everything to allow him to run the show, rather than fitting him into the system they had used successfully. Stephan Leblanc’s frustrating season continues as well, as he was kept off the scoresheet entirely. Leblanc took 12 shots on net, but 5 missed the net completely and the rest hit Brandon Miller right in the chest. Garrett Billings took an amazing 19 shots, though only 8 of them hit the net, and only one went in. But most of Billings’ shots off net hit Philadelphia defenders before they ever got to the net. There were an awful lot of blocked shots by the Philly D.

Brandon Miller was excellent in the Philadelphia net, and the defense in front of him was very solid as well. The Rock passed the ball a lot because they couldn’t get shooting lanes (except for Doyle, who passed up shooting lanes for passes on a number of occasions). On the few occasions that they did manage to get clear shots, Miller shut the door. At the other end, Matt Roik made some good saves as well but let’s face it, he let in some that he really should have had. On Philadelphia’s ninth goal, he was way out in front of the crease trying to stop Kevin Crowley, but Crowley passed to Mike Hominuck on the right side of the crease and Roik was way too far out of position to have a chance to stop it. He stopped a lot of direct shots, but anything that bounced seemed to beat him. I get that you don’t want to kill the guy’s confidence by pulling him two games in a row, but you have to do what’s best for the team, and bringing in Pat Campbell would have been the right move. Campbell played very well last weekend after replacing Roik and really should have been in this game in the fourth.

That said, the Philly offense was able to have their way with the Rock defense, for the same reason that I mentioned in my last Philly @ Toronto game report: many of the Rock defenders are small while the Wings forwards are all huge. Watching Bruce Codd and Jesse Gamble pound on Drew Westervelt was almost funny, though they did a pretty decent job. At one point, Winds defender John McFadyen (listed as 6’7″ on the Wings site) was standing next to 5’7″ Josh Sanderson. At times this game looked like a high school team taking on the fourth graders from the elementary school next door.

In the third quarter, with Patrick Merrill in the box already, the Rock were given a bench minor for unsportsmanlike conduct. Considering what I’ve heard (and seen) Troy Cordingley yell at refs in the past without penalty, this had to be pretty bad. Anyway, the weird thing is that the ref had his hand up signalling a penalty. The Wings then had the rest of that 30-second possession and took a shot, grabbed the rebound, had another 30 second possession, another shot and another rebound, and then part of a third possession before the Rock grabbed the ball and play stopped. Wouldn’t it have made sense, at least after the first 30 seconds ended, to give the Rock the ball and get themselves a two-man power play? Or at least pull the goalie for an extra attacker? They would have had almost a full minute of 5-on-3 lacrosse. As it was, they did neither and played 5-on-4 for about 45 seconds. The Wings basically killed off the first penalty themselves and had a two-man advantage for all of 9 seconds. Then the Rock managed to kill off the second penalty.

Strangely, the Rock did the same thing less than two minutes later when Philly got hit with two penalties in quick succession. They could have given Philly the ball as soon as the second penalty was called to stop the clock and get a two-man advantage, but they didn’t. This one made a little more sense because the Rock pulled Roik, so they had a two-man advantage anyway. They ended up with a shorter 5-on-3, but did end up scoring after the first penalty was over.

Other game notes:

• It was great for the Rock to honour the Canadian Forces. Nobody is more deserving of our respect. But why was Wings captain Brodie Merrill left out of the ceremonial face-off? Seemed like a strange and unnecessary snub, especially since Merrill is Canadian. And obviously nobody told him, since he took a couple of steps towards centre before realizing that they never called his name.
• For the second home game in a row, Matt Roik was not announced during the opening lineups, and did not come out with the team. He did eventually make his way onto the floor.
• Rock music guy: when the Rock have possession near the end of such a close game, perhaps “Give it away give it away give it away now” isn’t the right song to play.
• Jesse Gamble had another great game. I really like watching this kid – he hustles everywhere and even my wife, who comes to maybe one lacrosse game per year, noticed how fast he was. He’d be a strong Rookie of the Year candidate in a normal year, but so many rookies have been so dominant this year that his chances are likely lessened. Still, I think he should at least be in the conversation.
• Ryan Sharp, on the other hand, is likely the Rock’s nominee for Dumb Penalty Champion of 2012. He only took two penalties but both were blatant and unnecessary, and one led to a power-play goal. Glen Bryan’s roughing penalty near the end of the third was also completely unnecessary, and he’s lucky he didn’t get five minutes for a cross-check to the head. That one led to a PP goal as well.

Sorry for the delay on the game report, dear reader, I know you have been on the edge of your seat since Saturday night thinking “For the love of Jim Veltman, when will he post it?!” You can blame my sister for having a baby yesterday. I tried to get her to reschedule so I could get this article done, but nooooooo. Some people think of nobody but themselves. Though I have to say that my brand new niece is pretty darned adorable.

Anyway, as you probably already know, the Philly Wings got redemption on Saturday for the beat-down the Rock gave them two weeks ago by beating the Toronto Rock 14-8. The game was pretty close for the first half, tied at 1, 2, 3, and 4 before Kevin Crowley scored twice within a minute to put the Wings up by 2 at the half. Johnny Mouradian’s halftime pep talk must have been more effective than Troy Cordingley’s, since Brendan Mundorf and Dan Dawson scored two more in the first two minutes of the second half to put the Wings up 8-4. The Rock scored a couple to get as close as 8-6, but then it was all Wings, as they scored two more in the third, and both times the Rock scored in the fourth, the Wings answered back a minute later. Another goal by Dawson chased Matt Roik for the first time in his Rock career, and then Drew Westervelt beat Pat Campbell to end the scoring.

Matt Roik was just as solid in the first half as in his previous games this year, but started to lose it in the third as the game got more and more out of hand. A couple of the later goals were a little softer than the ones we’ve seen him give up so far this year, but I certainly wouldn’t pin the loss squarely on him. The Rock offense looked similar to the offense in the first couple of games, i.e. mostly not there. Garrett Billings and the new guys (Rooney, Thenhaus, and Carey) definitely showed up to play, but Sanderson and Leblanc looked frustrated, and Colin Doyle was pretty much a non-factor in his return from injury.

As an aside and to take a page from Dave Barry’s book, Billings and the New Guys would be a good name for a rock band.

The Rock with Colin Doyle in the lineup are 1-3 with an average of 10 goals per game (and in the one win, Doyle got 0 points in less than two quarters before getting injured). The Rock without Doyle are 2-0 with an average of 14.5 goals per game. If you count the game where he got injured (and wasn’t a factor) as a game without him, it changes to 0-3 and 9 goals with Doyle, 3-0 and 14 goals without. Of course, that’s not to say “Doyle makes the team worse” – it’s not that simple – but it does make you wonder if Troy and the boys will be looking at other differences in how the offense was run before the next game.

The Rock took a  lot of shots that hit Wings goalie Brandon Miller square in the chest or missed the net completely; in fact the Rock had three different breakaways (two from Mike Hobbins and one from Brendan Thenhaus) where the shooter missed the net. But in saying that the Rock took lousy shots, I don’t want to take anything away from the play of Brandon Miller, who was very solid in the Wings net. The Wings defense was absolutely stellar, especially in the second half. There was one play where Garrett Billings had the ball right in front of the Wings net for at least 15 seconds, and in that time he was covered so well that he had no opportunity to either shoot or pass and ended up having to just drop the ball when the shot clock ran out.

The Wings offense was pretty impressive. Brendan Mundorf scored five, including two on the power play, and Dan Dawson scored three and added seven assists. Kevin Crowley added another hattrick, and now has four in his six career games. But take a look at this comparison between the Wings offense and the Rock defense:

Rock defenders:

• Codd, 5’8″
• Bryan, Chapman, Sanderson, 5’9″
• Merrill, 6’0″

Wings forwards:

• Dawson, Westervelt, 6’5″
• Crowley, Merrill (yes, mostly transition but he played up front a lot) 6’4″
• Crotty, 6’2″

At one point, Dan Dawson ran by a Rock defender and I think he pulled the ol’ swim move, but it could be that his arm went over the head of the defender while he was running. It was hard to tell. Given that size difference, the fact that the Rock managed to hold the Wings to only 6 goals two weeks ago is doubly amazing.

The Rock host Rochester this Friday while the Wings play in Edmonton before the All-Star game on Saturday.

Other notes:

• The Rock brought Jesse Gamble back from the practice roster when Marshall got hurt, and then didn’t play him.
• I’ve said before that I am impressed at how Colin Doyle stands still during the anthems and even sings along to O Canada. As the camera panned down the Rock players during the anthem, I saw at least two others (one was Patrick Merrill, don’t remember who the other was) who were also singing along. Kudos to them.
• For a while, I thought “Man, Dan Dawson is everywhere tonight!”, then realized that sometimes he wore a different number. Duh. Both he and his brother Paul Dawson just have “Dawson” on their jerseys, with no first initial.
• I got a few looks from my fellow Rock fans when I actually applauded a goal by the Wings. Drew Westervelt scored a kind of “backwards Air Gait” in the second, where he dove out from behind the net and backhanded it in on the far side of Matt Roik. Outstanding goal. Of course, that kind of goal is a little easier when your arms are eight feet long.
• On one play in the first, Billings grabbed the ball to try and avoid an over-and-back violation but stepped over the line. The ref blew the whistle and Billings put the ball down, but I guess he rolled it and as Brodie Merrill ran by and tried to pick it up on the fast break, he missed it because it was rolling. He stopped running and literally jumped up and down twice. The ref did give Billings a delay of game minor, and I agree that it was deserved given the new rule, but I was less than impressed with Merrill’s display. I’ve seen that kind of behaviour in my nine-year-old son sometimes, but he’s nine. There were a few other occasions where Merrill complained loudly to the refs, sometimes quite animatedly. I have heard other (non-Edmonton) fans in the past talk about Brodie Merrill’s antics and call him a whiner, but I’d never really noticed it myself. On Saturday I got to see it first-hand.
• The Wings had at least three or four broken sticks. To the Philly Wings equipment manager: I’m pretty sure balsa wood sticks are not allowed in the NLL.