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Rush lose to Rock
Perhaps unfortunately, the Saskatchewan Rush have another home game coming up on Saturday night.
They’re the National Lacrosse League’s best road team — unbeaten at 5-0 — but a second-half collapse Saturday at Sasktel Centre resulted in a 9-8 loss to the injury-riddled Toronto Rock. Saskatchewan has lost three of their four home contests this season, and post-game reaction wasn’t exactly muted.
“To be honest, a pathetic performance by us in the second half,” Rush defender Ryan Dilks said after his team, which will host Vancouver this coming Saturday, blew a 6-2 halftime lead, getting outscored 7-2 over the final 30 minutes.
“We underestimated them. We felt we had a comfortable lead. I don’t know what’s going on with us at home. We think it’s going to be easy, but teams are coming in with their best efforts and just working us. It’s pretty ugly right now. Luckily, it’s still the first half of the season, so we’ve got time to figure it out at home. But not a good effort tonight.”
Rush head coach Derek Keenan was equally unsparing. His team is 6-3 and first in the West Division, but he looked and sounded angry after witnessing Saturday’s implosion before a crowd of 12,764.
“We had a really good first half, and then we got back to forgetting that everybody comes in here and plays hard against us; everybody has good players, skill, talent,” Keenan said. “In the second half, we simply did not put the work part into the game. And especially on offence — two goals? Poor execution on our power play when we had opportunities. We gave up a short-handed goal. Just not good enough.”
Keenan was particularly pointed when it came to his offensive unit.
“The bottom line is,” he added, “we had some guys on offence again who did disappearing acts tonight. They just didn’t show up. We’ve got to have all seven guys going.”
Which takes them to the week coming up, and a chance to regain some home-floor equilibrium. Keenan talked about the difference between a comfortable and an uncomfortable team, and he made it clear which situation he prefers.
“I think we get complacent,” he said. “We get too comfortable. We talked about that a little bit going into this weekend. I like when this team is a little bit uncomfortable. When we were 3-2 and struggling to score, we decided we’ve got (to) start working at it, and we did. And going into this weekend, we felt a little too good about ourselves. Too comfortable. Hopefully, next week we feel awfully uncomfortable about things because we should.”
Saskatchewan entered Saturday’s game with five wins in their last six contests. Their only other losses, both at home, were 12-8 against New England and 12-6 against Colorado.
Their big Saturday spread reversed when Toronto scored the first four goals of the third quarter, and five in total. The Rock got their first lead early in the final frame, when Reid Reinholdt scored a diving behind-the-net wraparound with his team short-handed.
Keenan said Saskatchewan’s offensive issues were summarized at game’s end, when they pulled goaltender Evan Kirk for the extra attacker. Two six-on-five plays, he noted, and they didn’t execute what’s usually a team strength.
“When you stand around flat-footed against a good defensive team, you’re going to be in trouble,” he said
“I don’t want to point fingers at our offence,” Dilks said. “They know, more than anyone, that they need to perform better, for a full 60. We keep beating the same drum here. It’s just hard work, but it looked like a different offence in the second half, and credit to (Toronto), they played well, they made the saves when they had to.”
Reinholdt finished with three goals for the Rock, who improve to 7-3, while Saskatchewan got three goals and two assists from Robert Church.
“Luckily, we get to play at home again this weekend,” Dilks said. “I’m confident in this group that we’ll come back ready to play for a full 60. It just should have happened (tonight) to this group of lacrosse players. We’re better than that, and it’s disappointing.
“It’s a leadership thing when they go on a run,” he added. “We should have the guys step up, myself included, to settle down the crew and come back. It wasn’t a blowout; it was a close game all the way to the end, and we just needed a couple good shifts to change that outcome. But we couldn’t figure it out, and that’s what you get.”