The Calgary Roughnecks travel to Toronto to face the Rock in the Air Canada Centre on Friday, Jan. 3 to kick off the 2014 season for both teams.
Both Toronto and Calgary had Week 1 of the NLL schedule off, so they have had an extra week to prepare for this game.
“Like every team we’re very excited,” said Roughnecks head coach Curt Malawsky.
“It’s a big challenge for us to head into Toronto, but we’re hoping to put our best foot forward and compete in there.”
Calgary competed very well in the preseason, winning all three of their scrimmages, including a game against the defending Champion’s Cup winners, the Rochester Knighthawks. But regular season games are a different matter than scrimmages.
“The first game of the year is going to be a good test for us in Toronto,” noted Roughnecks team captain Andrew McBride. “It’s one of the hardest buildings to play their home opener so we’re really going to have to do a good job of maintaining runs and controlling our emotion early.”
The Roughnecks should once again be led offensively by their dangerous front five of defending MVP Shawn Evans, Curtis Dickson, Dane Dobbie, Jeff Shattler and Daryl Veltman. All five are capable of picking up five or more points every night, so the Rock defense will have to be careful to not let any of them get loose.
Draft picks Karson Leung, Tor Reinholdt and Garrett McIntosh have looked good in training camp and should provide energy and depth to the Roughnecks out the back door.
“We know that they’re going to be—and are—one of the best teams in the league so it’s going to be a real challenge for us,” said new Toronto head coach John Lovell. “They drafted well, obviously, and they have a solid nucleus returning. As do we. We have some experience for sure and I like our speed and the new players we have, so it’s going to be a battle, like most games are in this league.”
“I think we’re coming at it from a lot different perspective, especially comparing ourselves to Calgary,” added Rock forward Garrett Billings. “I watched their preseason game of theirs and they basically had a very similar lineup to what they had last year and not many changes, where looking at our team, maybe the roster changes aren’t huge, but having a new coaching staff and having Blaine (Manning) and Cam Woods retire; it’s a big change.”
Manning leads a group of forwards who can challenge the Roughnecks goal-for-goal. Manning has had back-to-back 100-point seasons and is joined by veteran scorers Stephan Leblanc, Colin Doyle, Josh Sanderson and Kasey Beirnes, all of whom can fill the net when they have the opportunity.
Adding first-round pick Ethan O’Connor to the Toronto transition game should give them a good dose of extra speed and scoring touch coming out of their own end.
The goaltending matchup will also be one to watch. Calgary’s Mike Poulin won the NLL Goaltender of the Year award in 2012 and is capable of making huge saves to keep his team in the game. Former Roughneck Nick Rose has blossomed into one of the better goalies in the league during his one-and-a-half years in Toronto and posted the third-best goals-against average and save percentage in the NLL in 2013.
Historically, these two teams don’t seem to like each other so this should be a hotly contested matchup. But the Rock tend to play very well at home and beat the Roughnecks in both of their meetings last season, so personally, I wouldn’t bet against them in this game.
