The first battle of Alberta 2015 edition with the Edmonton Rush and Calgary Roughnecks ended in a 16-8 trouncing of the home town squad in front of 12, 266 Calgary faithful who went left disappointed. What started out as an emotional night for the Rush having head coach Derek Keenan back behind the reigns after his temporary leave of absence following the death of this wife, started early and the runs just didn’t seem to stop.
After killing off an early penalty for cross checking to Scott Carnegie, Shawn Evans and Jeremy Thompson started off pushing and shoving which Evans was able to draw a cross checking penalty off Thompson from, Evans subsequently scored from a nice pass from Jeff Shattler on the following power play but the Rush came right back as Mark Matthews got on the board a little over two minutes later after Jarrett Davis gave him a cross floor feed and Matthews made no mistake.
Curtis Dickson scored one of his nicer goals of the season :46 seconds later beating his defender clean on the power play but that was the last of the Roughnecks scoring for the quarter with first overall pick Ben McIntosh getting in on the scoring on assists from Riley Lowen and Zach Greer as well as Davis getting his first goal of the night off assists from Matthews and Brett Mydske.
Dickson opened the scoring in the second quarter from a pass out of Greg Harnett’s stick then that seemed to wake the Rush as they rattled off five straight getting goals from Davis and Robert Church Twice as well as Matthews getting one before the Roughnecks went on a three goal run themselves with Jeff Shattler getting his name in the goal column on a nice outside shot as well as Dane Dobbie getting back to back markers to end the half down 8-6.
Whatever coach Keenan said to his troops (or didn’t say) the Rush came out flying in the third quarter getting three straight goals, two from the stick of Riley Loewen and one from Matthews before Shawn Evans scored on a broken play on a feed from Dobbie to which Loewen would answer back for 1:43 later getting a hat trick in the quarter. The fourth started the way the third ended with Zach Greer and McIntosh scoring before the 6:00 mark before the Roughnecks would get their last tally of the night getting Dickson’s hat trick goal. Greer and Cory Conway would finish the scoring for the Rush.
One big factor to the loss was what coach Malawsky refered simply to “Miscommunication and frustration” in getting four too many men on the floor penalties which “Put a great offensive unit on the floor for great looks that they will always capitalize on, they took the chances we gave them and finished”
“The fact this has caused an 0-3 hole to start the year, is especially frustrating coming off going to the finals we knew it was going to be tough but I don’t think anyone expected this” remarked Curtis Dickson when asked about the start of the year “Everyone just needs to find their identity, were playing some individual lacrosse out there and not everyone is playing the way they need to and that is showing on the product on the floor, we lost big and they was indicative of the way we play”
“We gotta play a full 60, we all know thats what we gotta do but we seem to play a great three quarters then they take it to us and that can’t happen” Dane Dobbie commented after the loss “You get this group of guys together and were all brothers and tight and we hate losing”
When asked how the team will move on after this Geoff Snider said “It starts Monday, back to work. It’s an 18 game schedule and there’s still 15 more games and we just have to make sure we get back to our systems and back to the level we want to play at and it’s a process and go through the season like any other team and you know prepare for Toronto next week whose a good team.” Asked about the positive’s coming out of this tough start “We got a locker room full of champions here , guys who know how to win and it’s guys who have never been in this spot before so you know when it rains it pours and were going to get into the right end of this eventually and when that happens we can build some wins and hopefully put some momentum into this.”
The Roughnecks next hit the floor with an away date against eastern foe the Toronto Rock Saturday at 7pm which will be on TSN2.
