Following a catastrophic 0-6 start to the 2015 season, the Calgary Roughnecks have clawed their way back into the playoffs. It took a 14-13 win over the Vancouver Stealth in the last game of the season to complete the comeback, but they did it.
During the 0-6 start—a record for the Riggers—there were a lot of things going wrong. The Roughnecks were on the wrong end of three one-goal games. Starting goaltender—and former NLL Goaltender of the Year—Mike Poulin was so off his game that he lost the starting job to Frankie Scigliano. The team was taking too many penalties, giving up too many good scoring chances, and their once-potent offense wasn’t scoring.
Things finally started to turn around on Feb. 21 when they earned their first win of the season, a 16-13 victory over the Stealth. The offense got on track, including a seven-goal outburst from Curtis Dickson. Scigliano stopped 36 shots in a solid effort between the pipes. And Calgary gave up fewer powerplay opportunities than Vancouver while scooping 10 more loose balls than the Stealth.
The rocky road continued for much of the rest of the year, however, with the Riggers not being able to string two wins in a row together until April, when they beat the Colorado Mammoth 14-9 on April 4 and the Edmonton Rush 9-8 on April 10. They wound up winning four of their last five in their late-season push.
Bluntly, if the Stealth hadn’t completely collapsed, losing nine of their last 10, Calgary’s 6-5 record following the poor start would not have been enough. Just one more win on the Stealth’s part would have given them the playoff berth and left the Roughnecks on the outside looking in for the first time since their inaugural season in 2002.
Nevertheless, they won their last two games of the year when they most needed to and they will be carrying that momentum into the postseason, starting on Saturday, May 9 when they face the Mammoth.
Easily the most important player on the Roughnecks this year was Shawn Evans. The feisty forward shattered the league’s single-season scoring record, racking up 130 points. He never recorded fewer than four points in any game and had 10 points or more in a game four times, including a 12-point night against the Mammoth in the aforementioned April 4 game. He led the NLL in power play assists (31) and shorthanded goals (five) making him a threat regardless of the situation.
If Evans stays hot against Colorado this weekend, the Roughnecks will be a dangerous foe and could once again go deep in the postseason.
