Toronto – The Toronto Rock (9-2) defeated the Philadelphia Wings (4-6) by a score of 15-10 at Air Canada Centre on Friday night.
In the opening quarter, the Rock jumped out to a 3-0 lead on goals by Pat Maddalena, Blaine Manning and Garrett Billings. Philadelphia’s Alex Turner had the lone first quarter tally for the visiting Wings as they trailed the Rock 3-1 at the end of one quarter.
Wings rookie Dave Brock narrowed the gap to just one goal by scoring 37 seconds into the second quarter. From there, the Rock went on a bit of a run.
Toronto rattled off three goals to build a 6-2 lead before Wings defender Matt Alrich scored with just under 5 minutes left in the quarter to break up the Rock run and start one of their own. Athan Ianucci scored to make it a 6-4 game.
The two teams exchanged markers before the end of the second quarter, Billings scoring for Toronto and Paul Dawson for Philadelphia making the score 7-5 at the half.
Billings, the February Player of the Month, led all first half scorers with 2 goals and 2 assists for 4 points through 30 minutes.
The third quarter was a real struggle for the Rock as they just couldn’t find their groove on the back end of things.
One guy who did find his groove was 18 year old rookie Rob Hellyer who scored a spectacular behind the back, over the shoulder goal. His first career goal broke open a 9-9 deadlock to put Toronto up 10-9 after three quarters.
The final quarter was all Rock as the locals outscored Philadelphia 5-1 en route to the victory. Stephan Leblanc keyed the 4th quarter surge scoring a pair to finish the night with 3 goals and 4 assists.
The Rock will be off for the next two weekends and will return to action on Friday, March 25 in Calgary against the Roughnecks with a 9:30pm ET start.
