Following a destructive loss in the season opener to the Philadelphia Wings, the Buffalo Bandits have tons of work ahead. Luckily, time is on their side and they have close to a week and a half to prepare for the Toronto Rock at home on January 10th.
The repeated word after the game in Buffalo was ‘outworked’ in some form.
“They taught us a lesson. We were outworked, outplayed, outwilled… We were terrible.”
–Troy Cordingley, Weekend Recap, NLL Mobile
Thankfully, the above statement as motivation to his team. They equally shared in the defeat, and understand the road ahead.
“This is a team game. We came out flat and we lost that game as a team. There’s no other way to put it.”
–Ryan Benesch, Bandits Forward
Buffalo is currently a third of the way through their only bye week of the season. Having 13 days between games gives them time to work on their shots/passing opportunities, assist making abilities (they need to double their current statistic of 58 ideally), and defense.
In the game with Philadelphia, Bandits goaltenders Anthony Cosmo and Kurt Wagar split game time. Cosmo made 38 saves of 51 shots in approximately 43 minutes. Wagar made all shots into 13 saves, and performed drastically better. In my opinion, Wagar should start the first home game in Toronto.
The Bandits did start the season off with a pretty good face-off-percentage around .453. They need to capitalize on those win opportunities better by hustling more to create more passing options and consequently result in more shots-on-goal and goals.
