Steve Milton: Rock eliminated in back-to-back games by dominating Buffalo Bandits
Apparently misery still loves company. Even on the lacrosse floor, where one terrible outing followed another for the Rock over the weekend.
Within 27 extremely frustrating hours the Hamilton-based National Lacrosse League team and their besieged goalie Nick Rose were clobbered 14-5 by the Buffalo Bandits Friday night in Buffalo and 17-8 Saturday night at FirstOntario Centre.
For the second straight year, the Bandits advance to the NLL championship final by sweeping the best-of-three East conference final from under the Rock. Last year, however, both games were decided agonizingly late while this year they were decided astonishingly early.
You have to take something from it; not only losing a couple of games, but the way we lost them,," said disappointed Rock head coach Matt Sawyer. That needs to sting and you need to look at it and find out why that was and, individually, we have to be better."
Pro lacrosse, like basketball, is almost always an oscillating collection of surges and setbacks yet in the 120 minutes of play in this series the Rock held a lead for exactly zero seconds.
Like last year, the Rock had no answer for Bandit superstars Dhane Smith and Josh Byrne: They combined for 15 points in the second game of the 2022 East final; Friday night, Byrne had five goals and two assists and Smith set up eight goals, and Saturday Byrne had 10 points and Smith a hat-trick and five assists.
Friday night, the Rock allowed Byrne to give the Bandits a 1-0 lead 30 seconds into the game. They lasted a minute longer in Game 2 before Byrne scored the opener.
Buffalo goalie Matt Vinc, who turns 41 in a couple of weeks, kept the hometown crowd continually into the game Friday night with 52 saves and took the Hamilton crowd periodically out of it with some great stops early, then for good as the visitors scored seven times in just under four minutes in the second period - the first three while Rock captain Challen Rogers, who had a hattrick Friday night, served. a five-minute major - to snap a 4-4 tie.
He exited with five minutes to go, to a standing ovation from the several hundred Bandits supporters among the otherwise deflated 8,304 witnesses.
That penalty ultimately killed us," said Rogers, manning up. It put us in a deep hole and we just weren't able to stop the runs and build our own momentum."
Meanwhile, the Rock power play invalidated the word power' until it was far too late. Saturday the extra-man unit was missing 48-goal scorer Tom Schreiber and they didn't score 6-on-5 until their ninth power play of the series. In Game 2, they'd have been better off declining all Buffalo penalties. The Bandits had scored short-handed twice by the time Dan Craig notched the home team's first power play goal of the series, part of his Saturday night hattrick.
Saturday might have been the last career game for Dan Dawson of Burlington, the NLL's career games and assists leader. The classy two-decade veteran's gentlemanly presence will be sorely missed by the Rock, who are searching for a temporary home for next season, as renovations to FirstOntario Centre begin. Unconfirmed rumours around the NLL have Mississauga's Paramount Centre as the leading contender. Another unsubstantiated buzz is that with the arena construction start delayed again, the Rock might be able to schedule a couple of December games into FirstOntario Centre.
Stay tuned on that, but turning back to this season: Buffalo was generally considered the better team, but nobody would have thought this much better with so much on the line. They outdistanced the Rock in every facet.
Give them credit, they came out and showed why they're first in the East," Rogers said. We have things to improve on and next year starts now, I guess. There are some positives we can take away, but ultimately we want to win a championship and we fell short of our goal."
The 2023 Rock were built to win with plenty of veterans already on the roster before they landed the likes of veterans Chris Corbeil, Corey Small and Stephen Keogh during the off-season. And they did win, going 13-5 during the regular season.
But the Bandits were built to win, too, especially against the Rock. They are one of the most complete NLL teams in recent years, going 14-5, with two wins in three games against the Hamilton side being the eventual difference between first and second in the East.
The difference in this conference final wasn't one game, though. It was night and day.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com