The Rochester Knighthawks dropped to 3-5 on the season Saturday night as they lost to the 3-4 Philadelphia Wings. The Philadelphia win was their first against Rochester since 2009. The Knighthawks now have a brutal 1-4 home record.
Rochester started out on a roll, leading 4-0 after the first quarter with goals from Cody Jamieson, Paul Dawson, Casey Powell and Cory Vitarelli. But the Wings quickly erased that deficit in the second with goals from Jordan Hall, Kevin Crowley, Drew Westervelt and Brodie Merrill. The Hawks then fought back with goals from Powell and Johnny Powless to take a 6-4 lead into halftime. In the third, however, Philadelphia scored four goals (Kyle Hartzell, Crowley, two from Kevin Buchanan) to go into the fourth up 8-6. When Powell and Powless tied the score at 8 and Philly took the lead back two minutes later (Westervelt), it looked like it was going to go down to the wire, and it did. The Knighthawks failed to score a goal and Merrill iced the win with an empty-netter with 0.1 seconds left.
The MVP of this one was definitely Wings goaltender Brandon Miller. 39 goals on 47 shots, Miller made it really tough for the K-Hawks to get one past him in crunch time. This was key after Rochester scored 20 on the combination of him and Kevin Croswell last contest.
The game was not without some chippy moments. Johnny Powless got into his first NLL fight in the third quarter and completely destroyed Mike Manley. And after the game, in postgame handshakes, a scuffle broke out involving Brodie Merrill and Matt Vinc, then with Paul Dawson and Joel White. Vinc was upset with Merrill scoring the empty-netter instead of killing the clock with those few seconds remaining, seeing it as disrespectful. Merrill, in turn, left the handshake line and kept yelling at Vinc. It’s no secret that Dawson and his former Philly teammates did not end on the right foot, and Joel White got traded from Rochester to the Wings for the Dawson brothers. This triangle made the chippiness more than just about the players being competitive. It was personal, and the NLL will certainly review the incident to try to prevent another scuffle like this when the teams meet next on April 6. As for Rochester, they need to just focus on getting the offense clicking again and sustaining leads. 1-4 at home is hardly something to write home about.
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