Riggers come up short in 11-9 loss to Wings
A 60-minute effort and 60 shots should be enough to get a win any day in the National Lacrosse League.
Guess Saturday just wasn't the Calgary Roughnecks' day.
In an effort to climb above .500 for the first time during the 202324 NLL season, the Roughnecks were shot down by the host Philadelphia Wings in an 11-9 decision.
“We definitely worked and competed all 60,” said Roughnecks head coach Josh Sanderson. “It wasn't a lack of work ethic or compete or anything like that.
“We started not valuing the ball a little bit. We're big on discipline, and then we take a penalty late. And our ball team gives up one at the start of the fourth. It's just kind of a bunch of little mistakes that kind of came back to bite us, because we had a pretty good game going there for a good chunk of it.”
Indeed, the visiting Roughnecks proved strong for the first 45 of the contest, building leads of 5-2 through the opening quarter and 9-6 through three frames at Philly's Wells Fargo Center.
But the bid to win a fourth straight contest fell short in the fourth, when they allowed five goals without finding one of their own.
NLL star goaltender Zach Higgins stopped 50 in helping the Riggers drop their first game in a full month.
“I think it's probably a little bit of both,” said Roughnecks captain Jesse King, when asked if it was poor shot choices or the Wings goalie that kept them off the board in crunch time. “I don't think we shot the ball spectacularly well. But did Higgy make some good saves? Absolutely.
“But you know, I think the positive on that is that we're getting 55 shots, and that's something that we kind of want to strive towards moving forward.”
On this afternoon, King & Co. actually put up 59, but Higgins was there to help the Wings exact revenge a week after the Roughnecks clipped them 14-11 at the Rough House in Calgary.
The Wings needed the win, as well, lifting them to 4-6 and just one W behind the Roughnecks, who are now 5-6 and teetering on the edge of falling from the top eight (the playoff spots) in the NLL standings.
It looked like the Riggers were going to leave the Wings well behind in those standings early on first quarter tallies by Tanner Cook and Tyler Pace, both of them twice, and Liam Leclair.
“There's been a lot of games actually Philly has played where they've given up a big lead and come back late, so getting up 5-2 on them ... believe me, we weren't comfortable,” Sanderson said. “We know they can score in bunches.”
The hosts got four, within a span of 107 seconds, to roar back and take a late 6-5 lead early in the second stanza before King and Pace sniped goals for the Roughnecks to put them back on top 7-6 at halftime.
And then in the third, the visitors netted the only two goals, off the sticks of Thomas Hoggarth and Dan Taylor to own a three-goal lead.
But the Wings rose again with five unanswered in the final 15 minutes, including two from Joe Resetarits, who enjoyed a gamehigh five points.
It seemed like a case of the Roughnecks offence running low on production and the defence running low on gas in front of goalie Christian Del Bianco, who made 36 stops on the day.
“I think we just need to have a little bit of discipline as far as like on the offensive side of the ball, I think we've taken a lot of offensive penalties,” King said. “And then, you know, we're wondering why the defence isn't making stops, and it's because they're short-handed because of us. So our discipline needs to be much better.”