Lacrosse Spotlight: Saturday, April 8, 2006 By Jennifer Stefani TORONTO, ON - The Philadelphia Wings will have to wait until the final weekend of the regular season to determine their playoff fate after a 15-14 overtime loss to the Toronto Rock in front of 18,400 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, ON. The Wings have two remaining regular season games against the Buffalo Bandits on Friday, April 14 at HSBC Arena and their final regular season home game on Saturday, April 15 at the Wachovia Center. "We really wanted to control our own destiny tonight," said Wings' General Manager and Head Coach Lindsay Sanderson. "We came out strong in the first and the third, but lost momentum in the second and especially in the fourth quarter when they came back to score four straight and tie up the game." The Wings had a strong first quarter, going up 4-0 over Toronto within the first four minutes of play. A penalty to Wings forward Mike Regan gave the Rock their first power play opportunity and first goal of the game. After the Wings went up 7-2 at 10:31, the Rock made a goaltending switch, pulling starter Bob Watson in favor of Phil Wetherup. Toronto scored a power play goal before the end of the first, but the Wings fast start gave them a 7-3 lead. The Rock came on strong in the second, scoring six unanswered goals to tie the game at seven. Wings rookie Sean Greenhalgh got his fourth goal of the night at 7:27 to put the Wings up by one again. The Wings held on at the half to maintain a 10-8 lead. Rock goaltender Bob Watson was back in for the start of the second half and the Wings came out strong again in the third shutting out the Rock 3-0 to up the score to 13-8 at the end of three quarters. But the Rock staged a dramatic comeback in the fourth, culminating with three goals in the last three minutes of regulation play to tie the game 14-14 and send it into overtime. Toronto clinched the game and kept Philadelphia from clinching a playoff spot when Colin Doyle scored at 1:13 into the overtime period. Leading the Wings in scoring were rookie Sean Greenhalgh with nine points (5G, 4A), followed by Jeff Ratcliffe with four points (3G, 1A), Jake Bergey with four points (2G, 2A), Mike Regan with two goals, Brad Self with two points (1G, 1A), and Rob Van Beek with one goal. Goaltender Matt Roik had 46 saves on the night. Leading Toronto in scoring were Colin Doyle with ten points (5G, 5A), Blaine Manning with ten points (4G, 6A), Josh Sanderson with seven points (1G, 6A), Aaron Wilson with six points (3G, 3A), and Matt Shearer with two goals. Goaltender Bob Watson had 21 saves on the night while Phil Wetherup had five. |