The Calgary Roughnecks are off to one of their worst starts in franchise history, having dropped their first two games of the year.
Last season they finished up the regular season with the best record in the NLL, at 12-4, and with basically the same roster this year, similar results were expected.
The big difference over the summer was behind the bench, where head coach Dave Pym was fired after three years of not being able to get to the Champion’s Cup, even though he had the most regular season wins of any coach in that time. He has been replaced by his top assistant, Curt Malawsky, who has been charged with the task of taking the squad to the next level.
So far, the results haven’t materialized.
In their season opener, the Roughnecks were soundly beaten by the Toronto Rock, 13-11. They got behind early after giving up several breakaways on transition and, although they made the final score close, were unable to recover from the early deficit.
On Saturday, they lost their second straight, this time a 13-12 overtime loss to the Colorado Mammoth. The lapses on transition that had been their undoing the previous week were gone and, for 55 minutes, Calgary seemed to control every aspect of the game.
But in the final five minutes, Colorado exploded for four goals to tie the game and force the overtime period. In fact, if not for a spectacular effort by Riggers goalie Mike Poulin, Colorado’s John Grant Jr. would have finished the game in the dying seconds of regulation.
That puts Calgary in dead last in the West, a position they are not used to being in.
The good news is that the Roughnecks seem capable of learning from their early season mistakes. Recognizing that transition was an issue in Game 1, they made adjustments and kept Colorado under wraps in that aspect of their game.
What was eventually their undoing in Game 2 was being outworked for loose balls (Colorado collected 12 more) and an inability to finish on offense in the late stages of the game, as the Mammoth outscored the Roughnecks 4-1 in the fourth quarter.
Whether they can execute on both ends of the floor for a full 60 minutes will determine whether or not Calgary can get into the win column.
The Roughnecks go back to work on Friday in a rematch with the Mammoth in Denver, then travel to Philadelphia to face the Wings on Sunday.
