After their first defeat of the 2015 season against the New England Black Wolves, the Buffalo Bandits (2-1) are starting to gain some ground in the Eastern Division standings. Riding a two game win streak and a half game out of first place heading into their week four matchup against the Toronto Rock (2-0) Friday night at the Air Canada Centre, Buffalo will try to play spoiler on the Rock’s home opener, which, has also been designated “Guaranteed Win Night”.
During the 2014 NLL regular season, the Bandits and Rock faced off against each other three times. The Bandits secured two of those wins at the First Niagara Center by a score of 12-10 each time. The lone Rock regular season victory of 2014 against the Bandits also occurred on their home turf at the ACC with a score of 13-9. When the Bandits and Rock squared off in the opening round of the 2014 NLL playoffs, Buffalo advanced to the Eastern Division finals with a 15-13 win at the First Niagara Center
Looking to exact a little payback to the Bandits Friday night, Rock head coach John Lovell said “We’re excited about playing at home for the first time this year, it’s going to be a very emotional evening for the team and for our players. That aside, we’re really looking forward to the game. We know playing Buffalo is always a great game, two teams that for the most part don’t like each other, so that makes for excellent lacrosse and exciting games for the fans.”
The Rock opened their 2015 NLL season with heavy hearts due to the devastating news of Terry Sanderson’s passing on November 27th at the age of 62 due to complications after a heart attack. Sanderson served as general manager and head coach for the franchise from 2004-2006 before coming back to the franchise for good in 2009 as general manager and assistant coach.
“It was a difficult game in our first game against Rochester, for our team and Josh (Rock forward and Terry’s son) and I think we rallied around that pretty well,” said Lovell. “We haven’t put that behind us by any stretch, we’re going to go through that again Friday night with a tribute to Terry at the game. We all miss him”.
While the Rock has been grieving the loss of their departed leader, the team has truly banded together and has been playing some incredibly inspired lacrosse en route to their 2-0 record. With two of the franchise’s best forwards in Garrett Billings and Colin Doyle out with long-term injuries, Rock forwards Josh Sanderson and Rob Hellyer have stepped up to give the team some needed leadership and also have been catching fire in the stat sheets. Sanderson is currently ranked second in the league with 20 points (4G, league best 16A) while Hellyer is ranked fourth with 17 points (9G, 8A).
While the Bandits defensive leaders will definitely be playing shadow to Sanderson and Hellyer, they also cannot forget about the latest upgrades to the Rock’s transition game in their offseason acquisitions of Brodie Merrill, Brock Sorenson and Jeff Gilbert.
“They definitely have a lot of guys that are big, athletic and very strong,” said Bandits forward Joe Resetarits. “The key thing will be cutting off the transition because they have a lot of guys who like to take off, that’s if we stick to that game plan.”
Bandits assistant coach Dan Teat also believes the key to victory will be in the lack of their team’s abilities to draw penalties through disciplined play. “Toronto’s one of those teams that once they get the lead, they can really grind you out and step on your throat so to speak.”
