The Toronto Rock remain atop the NLL standings after back-to-back Week 14 wins in Las Vegas and San Diego. It was a mixed bag for the 10-2 league-leaders who won 16-11 on Friday night in Vegas and 15-13 one night later over the Seals.
Head coach Matt Sawyer admitted, “Each and every night you’re going to face something different.”
In their first-ever trip to Sin City, the Desert Dogs went up 2-0 thanks to Jack Hannah, who would end the game with a career-high six goals. Toronto responded with four straight to end the first quarter, three on the power play, part of an eventual 7-1 run. Jake Dawick’s third-quarter hat trick ran the score to 13-9, a deficit the home side would not recover from.
The night offensively belonged to Chris Boushy who scored seven goals (matching a career high) and 11 points (one off his all-time best). Mark Matthews finished with nine points (1 goal, 8 assists) with Corey Small one behind (1 goal, 7 assists).
To Sawyer’s point, less than 24 hours later, it was a much different story.
Tom Schreiber echoed his coach saying, “You don’t know what to expect in any game in the NLL.”
The Rock and the San Diego Seals entered the game with the lowest team goals against average in the league. Caring not for the stats on paper, the teams combined for 19 first half goals – a 10-9 San Diego lead. Austin Staats led the way with a first half hat trick (he’d add one more to finish with seven points) while three Rock forwards scored twice.
Schreiber was one of those. He’d wait nearly 29 minutes before completing just his first hat trick of the season. After Sawyer challenged a crease call that was overturned into Dan Linter’s game-tying goal with 1:45 to play, ‘Captain America’ wheeled over the top, faked a pass and fired a sidearm shot past Chris Origlieri. The Rock would add an empty-netter to win a wild 15-13 shootout.
Sawyer praised Schreiber following the game saying, “He’s a special player … just watch him.”
The man himself, though, was quick to deflect the adulation to his teammates calling the weekend ‘gritty’.
“You want guys who can contribute in a number of different ways,” he said. “I think we’re a group who doesn’t really care whose night it is, as long as we’re getting wins.”
And, over the weekend, on the West coast, the Toronto Rock scored two of them to remain in first place in the East. If Schreiber cares not for your stats, he also cares not for that fact. “We’re not in this to have a great regular season,” he said. “We want to be really good when playoff time comes.”
For the record, that’s still seven weeks away as the NLL makes the March to May.
