Rock Ride 7-1 Fourth Quarter To Comeback Win
Oakville, ON – The Toronto Rock outscored the New England Black Wolves 7-1 in the fourth quarter en route to a comeback 13-10 win on Saturday night at the Toronto Rock Athletic Centre in Oakville, ON. The win means the Rock finish the pre-season with a 2-0-1 record.
“It wasn’t the prettiest one for sure, but I think our defence and goaltending settled down in the beginning of the third quarter and gave us an opportunity to claw back into it and then our offence was good in the fourth,” said Rock Head Coach Matt Sawyer. “This was a good reminder of what we are. We are going to be stronger up front but the backbone of this team will be the goaltending and defence and in the second half they gave us a chance to pull out a win.”
With the score tied at one, the Rock went on a three-goal run to take a 4-1 lead. Everything was firing with Phil Caputo scoring in transition and Adam Jones scoring and setting up a beautiful quick-stick to Dan Lintner. The Black Wolves scored twice in 29 seconds to draw within a goal, trailing the Rock 4-3 at the end of the first quarter.
The second quarter was all New England as they outscored the Rock 4-1 and earned a 7-5 lead at the half. The Black Wolves’ Reilly O’Connor figured in on all four New England tallies, scoring three times and drawing an assist on the other. Three of the Black Wolves goals came on the power play.
New England stretched their lead to three goals through three quarters, leading 9-6. The Black Wolves’ transition game continued to give the Rock some difficulty and were now chasing the game, down by three.
Sometimes the beauty of lacrosse is when get hot and you’re feeling it, a deficit can be erased in a hurry. That was the case at the start of the fourth quarter as the Rock scored four goals in 1:37 to take a 10-9 lead. New England tied the game 10-10 with 7:57 to go, but the Rock offence continued to find a way to score. The highlight of the fourth quarter was a slick feed from Adam Jones that found Reid Reinholdt with his back to the goal and Reinholdt scored on a backhand shovel shot that would have made Rock legend Colin Doyle proud. Brett Hickey added an empty net goal to seal the 13-10 Rock win.
Nick Rose went the distance in the Rock goal to earn his first win of the pre-season and played the full 60 minutes for the first time as well. Jones scored twice and added six assists for an eight-point game. Both Rob Hellyer and Hickey had hat-tricks to go along with three assists for six-point games of their own.
This brings the pre-season to an end as the Rock will now have a little less than two weeks to prepare for opening night on Friday, December 8 against the Buffalo Bandits at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, NY. The next weekend, Toronto will return home to Air Canada Centre to host the Saskatchewan Rush on Saturday, December 16 at 7 p.m. in the Rock’s Home Opener.
2017-18 Season Tickets are on sale now. Please visit torontorock.com/tickets or call 416-596-3075 to purchase or for more information.
