Thanks to three goals and two assists by Ned Crotty, the New York Lizards beat the Boston Cannons to earn their third win of the year and bring their record to 3-2 on the season. In a rainy homecoming for the Lizards, Boston jumped out to an early 3-1 lead thanks to goals from Paul Rabil, Kevin Buchanan and Stephen Berger. The lone Lizards goal was scored by Crotty.
While things looked bleak for the Lizards both on the field and in the sky, they shook off whatever rust they had from the one week MLL break and scored two straight goals in the first three minutes of the quarter. Crotty handed out two assists to Matt Striebel and Rob Pannell to even things up.
The offense continued to click for both teams in the remainder of the quarter as Owen Blye and Paul Rabil both beat Drew Adams for Cannon goals while Max Seibald notched two goals and David Earl gave the Lizards a 6-5 lead heading into halftime.
The third quarter continued the trend of this back and forth affair as the Cannons and Lizards traded two-goal runs in the third quarter. The Cannons started off the third quarter with with goals from Will Manny and Mike Stone to go up 7-6. Crotty evened things up once again as he scored off a feed from Pannell and then Kevin Unterstein got on the score sheet to put the Lizards back up by a goal at 8-7.
Ryan Boyle scored with 14 seconds left to tie the game at eight heading into the final quarter after Paul Rabil found him open for a shot.
The final quarter of action saw some great defense played as there were five goals scored. Boston finished their two goal run from the end of the third quarter thanks to a Will Manny goal which put the Cannons up 9-8.
The Lizards would be too much for the Cannons defense though as they ended the game on a 3-1 run thanks to goals by Tommy Palasek, Pannell and Crotty’s game winner with a little over four minutes to go in the game. Fortunately for the Lizards, their defense, mainly Drew Adams was able to keep the Cannons from scoring for the rest of the game and the Lizards won 11-10.
Crotty finished with three goals and two assists while Pannell finished with two goals and an assist. Seibald had two goals while Unterstein and Striebel both had one. Greg Gurenlian went 15-of-25 at the faceoff X and Drew Adams made six saves on the night.
For the Cannons, Manny, Berger and Rabil all had two goals for the Cannons while Eck went 10-of-25 from the faceoff X. Justin Burke made nine saves on the night but gets the loss.
The Cannons enter next week’s game against the Ohio Machine at 2-3 while the Lizards will looks to improve to 4-2 against the Florida Launch.
