Rock Drop 10-5 Decision To Mammoth

Toronto Offence Stalls In Loss To Colorado

Denver, CO – The Toronto Rock (5-12) continued to struggle on the road, losing 10-5 to the Colorado Mammoth (11-6) at Denver’s Pepsi Center on Saturday night. The loss was the seventh in eight away games this season for the Rock.

After a very tight first half that ended with Colorado leading 3-2, the Mammoth blew things open in the second half and pulled away outscoring the Rock 7-3 over the final 30 minutes. Toronto outshot Colorado 54-46 on the night.

“You can’t question the heart and the character of our guys,” said Rock head coach John Lovell. “We’ve continued to battle through all these injuries and tough luck games. I’m pretty proud of this group. I’m pretty proud of the way we’ve played over last ten to twelve games. I think we deserve more, I think we deserve better and I think we deserve something to show for it, but unfortunately it’s not there.”

The Mammoth scored the first two goals of the game before Toronto’s Turner Evans converted a cross-floor pass from Rob Hellyer with a quick-stick finish that Colorado goaltender Dillon Ward had no chance on. The first quarter ended with the Mammoth leading 3-1 with Ilija Gajic scoring the third Colorado goal.

The only second quarter goal came from the Rock’s Hellyer to close the gap to 3-2. The goal gave Hellyer 100 points on the season, making him just the fifth player in team history to score 100 or more points in a season. The six-year veteran joins Colin Doyle, Josh Sanderson, Blaine Manning and Garrett Billings in the Rock’s century club.

Much like last week’s game in Buffalo, Toronto’s offence went cold during the middle portion of the game. After Hellyer’s second quarter tally less than three minutes into the frame, the Rock were held off the board until Sandy Chapman picked off a pass and scored into an empty net with seven seconds left in the third. The Rock scoreless stretch was just shy of 27 minutes at 26:57. Unfortunately for Toronto, Colorado scored four times before that to lead 7-3 after three quarters.

Colorado edged Toronto 3-2 over the final 15 minutes to double up the Rock at night’s end.

The Rock will be on the road again next weekend to finish their season at Calgary. The game against the Roughnecks will be broadcast live on Rogers TV and Cogeco TV at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday night.

2017 Toronto Rock season tickets are now on sale. For more information about Toronto Rock tickets, please contact our account executives at 416-596-3075 or visit www.torontorock.com.