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.

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.

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.

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.