It’s hard to leave First Niagara Center and not stop to wonder just what exactly happened between the Colorado Mammoth and the Buffalo Bandits. After Buffalo looked on top of things after one, they slowly fell apart en route to a 12-6 loss to the Mammoth. At the end of the game things boiled over when five fights broke out simultaneously and Bandits coach Darris Kilgour began a verbal assault on the Mammoth bench. Fans that didn’t leave early sure got to see quite the show.
The Bandits started off the game quite well, despite getting heavily outshot. The defense looked strong, keeping the Mammoth to the outside. Buffalo scored on three of their five shots to take a 3-0 lead after the first quarter. They would only score three goals the entire rest of the game.
It seemed like all wind left the Bandits sails after the first. They had trouble hitting the net and recorded 18 less loose balls than the Mammoth did over the course of the game.
“I think what happened was we got down on ourselves,” said Bandits forward Dhane Smith, who led the team with two goals. “We don’t usually do that. The past few games even when they score we’d get up and say ‘we’re going to get the next one.’ Tonight’s game we just didn’t do that.”
“We quit working,” said Bandits coach Darris Kilgour. “We weren’t working offensively, we weren’t working defensively. We got out loose balled in the first half by about twenty loose balls. At home that’s unacceptable. I don’t know what’s been going on the past few games at home. We go play real strong up in Toronto and then come home and we’ve got no energy, no desire, no will to compete. That’s our problem.”
The Mammoth were able to drag themselves out of the bad position they got into in the first as goalie Tye Belanger seemed to gain more and more confidence. He made 36 saves on the night and was named game MVP.
“We knew when we started him, he doesn’t get rattled,” said Mammoth coach Bob Hamley.
The Mammoth, who have been incredibly inconsistent at points, didn’t let the early goal differential knock them off their game.
““We talked today in our offensive meeting that we can’t change no matter the score,” Hamley said. “We have to keep peppering them with shots and we did that. We didn’t get fazed and we didn’t get discouraged and battled through it. We just kept saying keep getting quality shots, they’ve got to drop.”
After Buffalo went up 6 to 4 in the third quarter Colorado scored eight goals in a row to close out the game. That obviously led to some frustration, which led to the ten player brawl that took place in the last minute of the game. Steve Priolo and Rory Smith got things going, and then all the runners on the floor decided to get in on the action. Even Kilgour could be seen screaming at the Colorado bench.
“It was pretty spontaneous,” said Bandits defenseman Scott Self. “It just happened. Once Priolo started going everyone got a little excited.”
There will likely be some punishment from the league even beyond the actual brawl. Chet Koneczny could be seen giving the crowd the middle finger while Kilgour ran to the Mammoth bench at Hamley after Colorado refused to shake hands with Buffalo after the final buzzer blew.
That’s Darris, he’s a competitor,” said Hamley. “He was a competitor when I played with him and he’s still a competitor… He’s trying to show his fans he’s not giving up, and that’s who he is.”
The brawl could have partly been caused by Colorado taking a timeout right before despite already being up by six goals. Hamley said in the postgame there was a simple explanation for the move.
“Our guy was in trouble,” said Hamley. “There was three guys converging on him and he had the ball. I called timeout to try and save him from getting shellacked. It wasn’t about anything else, and they took it the other way.”
The two teams meet up next week in Colorado, which should be interesting if any of these hard feelings carry over.
“I don’t care who we’re playing next, we have to come out with a better effort,” said Kilgour.
“I want to get on the floor as soon as we can to wipe this out of my mouth. This is terrible. I see the fans leaving half way through the fourth and if I could have walked off the bench I probably would have too.”
Here are the full interviews from last night’s postgame.
Scott Self- Bandits Defenseman
