Dobbie an offensive catalyst for Roughnecks
There aren’t many players in the NLL with 50-goal seasons on their resume.
Dane Dobbie, however, is one of them.
And it was pretty clear the Calgary Roughnecks missed their lefty sniper dearly, as Dobbie donned street clothes for a month due to a mysterious upper-body injury.
It’s no coincidence that when Dobbie returned last weekend against the Toronto Rock, the Roughnecks offence tied a season high with a 15-goal outburst to snap a four-game skid that started five weeks ago when the 5-foot-8 sparkplug went down.
“It’s not just because I was back, I’ll tell you that right now,” Dobbie said Friday. “There’s guys that had big games and played hard, and they were doing that the four games I was out. It was just one of those things were stuff wasn’t going our way. The bounces went our way in Toronto, which was nice to see.”
Sitting out isn’t something the 29-year-old is used to, as, despite his Tasmanian devil style, Dobbie has missed just two games in the past two seasons.
“The worst part about getting hurt is sitting out and having to watch the team battle every game,” Dobbie said. “They struggled a bit for those four games and three of them were overtime losses, which is really tough to watch. Everybody was playing hard and leaving it all out on the floor, we were just coming up short.
“Those games are behind us now. We’ve learned a lot from them and we just need to take what we can from them, move forward and not get put in those situations anymore.”
Three of those losses, as Dobbie noted, were overtime heartbreakers. The other was a mid-February lacrosse lesson dished out in a 13-8 loss to the West Division-leading Colorado Mammoth, Saturday’s opponent at the Saddledome (7 p.m., TSN Go) once again.
With a slight half-game edge on the Vancouver Stealth (3-7) for the final playoff spot out west, the Roughnecks (4-7) can’t afford anymore prolonged losing streaks.
A winning streak — the last time the Roughnecks were able to string together a pair of wins was back in late January — would be nice.
They’ll have to beat a team considered a Champion’s Cup favourite in the Mammoth (8-2) to kickstart one of those elusive streaks.
“We kind of painted ourselves into a bit of a corner here, but we’ve got a chance to get ourselves out,” Dobbie said. “It’s one game at a time. Colorado is, obviously, the best team in the West right now, so we’ve gotta come in and be ready to go. They laid it to us last game and I think, everybody in the dressing room knows that. We got beat pretty handily by them last game and we think we owe them and we want to come out fired up.
“It’s a huge game. I consider ev- ery game from now on a playoff game for us, and there’s still seven remaining. This is a playoff game for us and I consider it a must-win for us.”
Dobbie was feeling no ill effects from his two-goal, three-assist effort last weekend in front of friends and family at the Air Canada Centre — he’s from nearly Elora, Ont., a one hour and 45 minute drive northwest of Toronto — and is expected to be ready to face the Mammoth.
In the last five games Dobbie has suited up in, the Roughnecks have a 4-1 record.
“I’m 100 per cent at this point, I feel good,” said Dobbie, who has 15 goals and 20 assists in seven games this season. “It was just something with the upper body that I was a little banged up and now I’m good to go.”