Week 8 in the NLL was a busy one. A full eight games over the course of four days had every team in action including the Georgia Swarm and Calgary Roughnecks. It’d been close to five years since Georgia’s last trip to Calgary which ended in a narrow defeat. In fact, the last three meetings between these clubs had been decided by a single goal and that trend continued on Saturday night. A tie ballgame was settled in overtime courtesy of a Haiden Dickson rocket that beat Georgia’s Brett Dobson and lifted the Roughnecks to a 12-11 victory on Super Hero night.
“Haiden’s a big player for us… he’s just starting to get his timing back now with his second game so I would expect Haiden only to get better for us,” said head coach Josh Sanderson. “To be honest it felt like a playoff game out there. I thought it might have been just because they were coming off two tough losses – we were coming off a couple, so we knew both teams were probably going to be real hungry tonight and that was the case. Both goalies were really, really good and obviously, we just got one on the last shot because it was a pretty even game.”
Jesse King opened the scoring with a low sub shot that rippled the far side mesh, but that was just a warmup for what he had in store. A minute later, King threaded a behind the back pass through three Georgia defenders right into Brayden Mayea stick who then threw a behind the back shot that found mesh for the goal of the game. The assist was extra meaningful because it was King’s 500th point in his 100th game. Georgia answered right back with a three-goal run to briefly put them back on top. For the next twenty minutes, the teams went back-and-forth until the halftime buzzer went to end the first half at a 6-6 stalemate.
Jesse King got the Roughnecks rolling again with a goal just eleven seconds into the third, but the veteran Swarm team, led by the all-world Lyle Thompson, went on a four-goal run and had all the momentum with just minutes left to play in the quarter.
However, a major difference between this year’s edition of the Roughnecks as opposed to last year’s version is the addition of Curtis Dickson and Dane Dobbie. Calgary added two veterans that know how to win and also know when a game is at a tipping point and that’s just where Calgary found themselves – down 10-7 on home turf with zero momentum. Cue Curtis and Dane. Dobbie proceeded to score the next three goals to draw the game even. Shane Jackson gave Georgia a late lead, but Dickson knotted the score at 11-11 to force overtime where the Roughnecks eventually prevailed.
Calgary’s Justin Inacio, had a terrific night at the dot going 24/27 and also led all players with 17 loose balls. Rookie Brayden Mayea put together a 5-point night, while goaltender Cam McLeod stopped 29 of 40 shots.
Georgia was led by their top two players, Lyle Thompson and Andrew Kew who had 6 and 7 points respectively. T.J. Comizio scooped 7 loose balls and had 3 caused turnovers.
Calgary (3-2) will host Toronto (1-5) in the NLL game of the week this Friday. Georgia (4-3) get a Week 9 bye and then travels to sin city to play the Desert Dogs (2-5).
