The Links: Buffalo blasts Rochester in rare 20-goal playoff pounding; Pace propels Calgary past PCLC
Calgary Roughnecks (Photo: Angel Burger)
We spent Sunday morning collecting all the media mentions from last night’s two remaining NLL Quarterfinals between the Buffalo Bandits & Rochester Knighthawks (20-8 Bandits) and the Calgary Roughnecks & Panther City Lacrosse Club (12-9 Roughnecks).
Click here for The Lax Mag’s NLL Playoffs schedule, scores and more updates, plus keep reading for last night’s links from Buffalo & Calgary.
The Bandits’ win to open the 2023 postseason flirted with some high-scoring playoff records, but just missed breaking any.
Josh Byrne’s fourth of the game midway through the final quarter got the Bandits to 20, which was just the seventh time in NLL history (since 1987) that a team in the playoffs scored that many times. The other games with 20 or more include:
1987: Washington 20 at Philadelphia 15
1992: Boston 16 at Buffalo 22
1994: Philadelphia 26 at Buffalo 15
2009: San Jose 20 at Portland 16
2013: Minnesota 20 at Toronto 11
2016: New England 15 at Buffalo 20
Josh Byrne, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Michael Hetzel)
Outside of a couple, all of the above games were relatively close, which wasn’t the case last night in Banditland. Buffalo’s one-side winning score on Saturday night was also one of the largest final score gaps between two teams, the twelve goal difference between Buffalo & Rochester just one shy of tying the record set in 1993. Below are the only other playoff games in NLL history that saw scores with a goal differential of twelve or more:
1993: Detroit 5 at Boston 18 (13)
2009: San Jose 5 at Calgary 17 (12)
2012: Edmonton 15 at Minnesota 3 (12)
That 1993 Boston Blazers team would eventually lose to the Buffalo Bandits in the Cup semifinals that year. On that Bandits team was current Buffalo Head Coach, John Tavares, as well as Panther City GM, Bob Hamley. Buffalo won the Cup that year in a thrilling final against the Philadelphia Wings (13-12).
The victory means Buffalo & Toronto will meet in the East Conference Finals for a third straight year, the Rock of course getting by the Halifax Thunderbirds on Friday night in the East’s other quarterfinal match. As mentioned in our tweet above, many of their postseason meetings have been extremely close, including last year’s series, which the Bandits won 2-0 courtesy of two one-goal wins. Below are the scores from all eight of their previous playoff dates:
April 15, 2004: Buffalo 19 at Toronto 10 (NLL SF)
May 1, 2010: Buffalo 11 at Toronto 13 (East SF)
May 7, 2011: Toronto 12 at Buffalo 11 (East F)
May 5, 2012: Buffalo 6 at Toronto 7 (East SF)
May 3, 2014: Buffalo 15 at Toronto 13 (East SF)
May 11, 2019: Toronto 8 at Buffalo 12 (East F)
May 15, 2022: Toronto 17 at Buffalo 18 (East F: Game 1)
May 21, 2022: Buffalo 10 at Toronto 9 (East F: Game 2)
Including Byrne’s previously mentioned four finishes, Buffalo received hat-tricks form three different players in Saturday’s historically significant win over Rochester: Dhane Smith, Chris Cloutier and Kyle Buchanan. As impressive as all those performances were, it was transition player Ian MacKay who was named the team’s top player. MacKay, who should get a decent amount of votes for this year’s TPOTY, opened Saturday’s scoring just 23 seconds into the game. Out of Buffalo’s 17 runners on the floor, nine had goals last night.
Bandits backstop Matt Vinc allowed just seven goals over almost 54 minutes of action (backup Devlin Shanahan closed out the contest in relief). The game also marked the legend’s 40th pro-playoff appearance, although not a single one of them happened in the Premier Lacrosse League.
Interestingly enough, in a game that featured one team scoring 20 and a final with twelve goals separating the two teams, the shots on goal totals between the Bandits & Knighthawks was identical (58 each). In fact, Rochester had even more total looks, taking an additional 23 rips that missed the mark (vs. Buffalo’s 18).
After googling the two team’s names this morning, we came up with zero news hits going that route. When we visited the Buffalo News directly and clicked the link from last night’s home-team win (“Bandits rout Rochester to advance to East finals”, which oddly included a photo from Week 20’s game between Buffalo & New York), we got the below paywall pop-up preventing us from reading (and them getting advertisers more peepers, clicks, buys, etc.).
The last lacrosse article in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle was a subscribers-only piece on the Section V girls championship published this past Wednesday. A similar $1 for the first three months promo was offered though, which is $1 more a month than we’re paying right now for never reading about our sport in either paper.
The Buffalo News sports section’s lead story was “Buffalo Bills safety Micah Hyde talks prior to his charity softball game”. Some notable Bills were in Banditland last night.
The Knighthawks, who showed so much promise after starting the season on an incredible 6-0 run, have struggled mightily since March, going 2-6 to end their regular season, beating only the Georgia Swarm twice during that stretch. The twelve-goal gap in last night’s game is the second-largest losing margin in franchise (Knighthawks 2.0) history (March 7, 2020: 19-6L at San Diego).
Holden Cattoni, Rochester Knighthawks (Photo: Michael Hetzel)
Holden Cattoni was the lone Rochester scorer seemingly not snakebitten in the loss, scoring four times on the Bandits, which included a natural hat-trick in the second quarter, sparking a short-lived Knighthawks comeback (4-4 at the nine minute mark in the second). The team’s offensive leader & MVP maybe Connor Fields, who played for Buffalo in 2022’s postseason, struggled to find the back of the net for Rochester, going just one for 20 in total shooting attempts.
Buffalo’s KeyBank Center had almost 15K in attendance last night. Click here to see the 26 playoff games that did garner that many guests over the years, with eleven of those memorable matches happening in Banditland.
The game was the highest attended of the four quarterfinal matchups this weekend. The second highest was last night in Calgary, where 10,104 fans cheered on their Roughnecks to victory, although it didn’t come easy against an extremely eager & energized Panther City squad that came close to pulling off the first-round upset.
Scotiabank Saddledome, Calgary, Alberta (Photo: Jenn Pierce)
The second-year Panther City franchise, who were playing in their first playoff game, had a 3-1 and 6-3 lead over the higher seeded Roughnecks during the first quarter before Calgary mounted a comeback in the next frame.
Although specific details were not provided, on Saturday Panther City confirmed that Head Coach Tracey Kelusky would not be with the team due to an undisclosed medical issue. Kelusky was voted the NLL’s Coach of the Year during PCLC’s first season in 2022, and is likely to contend for the award again this year. Completed 2023 NLL award ballots were submitted to the league by voters late last week.
Toll, an NLL Hall-of-Fame inductee and multi-Cup winner, has excelled coaching in the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League over the past handful of summer seasons. Always animated on the bench, as a player & now NLL coach, Toll had an unexpected and almost unnoticeable wardrobe change at halftime. A few fashion-forward viewers spotted the subtle switch.
Of all of this past weekend’s one-and-done teams, although their goal was obviously to progress in this year’s playoffs, Panther City likely comes away feeling the most positive about their QF showing while making significant strides all season.
Allowing an uncharacteristically high (for him) six goals in the first quarter, Calgary goalkeeper Christian Del Bianco would allow just three more over the next three periods, an incredible bounce-back performance by one of this year’s leading backstops.
“Nobody in the world is harder on themselves than Christian,” Calgary forward Tyler Pace told the Calgary Sun last night. “He puts in so much work that when he lets those ones in early and a bunch like that, he’s going to rebound and bounce back because he’s so tough between the ears. And that’s what happened. Three goals in the last 50 minutes? You can’t say much about that.”
Pace himself had a high-impact outing while registering game highs in goals (4), assists (4) and obviously points too. Like Cattoni in last night’s other game, Pace had a natural hat-trick, but his was just a bit more meaningful. Pace scored an early game-tying goal in the fourth (9-9), then some four minutes later netted a Necks go-ahead goal (10-9) that would also eventually register as the game winner. He scored a nail-in-the-coffin closer later in the period too (11-9).
Calgary Head Coach Curt Malawsky mentioned that Pace has had recent border-crossing issues, implying he may not be available to the team when they travel to Denver next week for Game 1 of the West Conference Finals. “Outstanding. He’s huge for us,” said Malawsky of Pace during last night’s post-game interviews. “He puts a lot of pressure on himself, he’s a perfectionist.
“He’s a big-game player and he proved it today…He’s a big, big part of this team. He’s had some tough time getting across the border here and there, and we all feel for him…He makes sure he does what he can when he’s here.”
Playing 14 games during this past regular season, Pace still managed to finished second behind Jesse King in team point production. Last night’s four-goal hero missed away games in Las Vegas (Feb. 24), Denver (Mar. 10), San Diego (Mar. 31) and Fort Worth (Apr. 21) this year, Calgary going 2-2 in matches Pace was MIA. In the league since the 2018 season, Pace has yet to play a full 18-game schedule.
Pace is one of just ten players still with the squad who won an NLL Cup with Calgary just a few seasons ago. Finishing sixth in team scoring behind the likes of Dane Dobbie, Curtis Dickson, Rhys Duch, Dan Taylor and Riley Loewen that season (only Taylor remains with the Roughenecks from that list), Pace has blossomed into one of Calgary’s most important players alongside leaders like Zach Currier, Curtis Manning, Del Bianco and King.
Zach Currier & Tyler Pace, 2019 Calgary Roughnecks (Photo: Candice Ward)
The Roughnecks will now meet arguably their greatest rival in the West Conference Finals: last year’s NLL Cup champion Colorado Mammoth. The two teams have met a total of twelve times in the postseason, with Calgary holding a commanding 10-2 lead in the always spectacular series. The Roughnecks did lose to the Mammoth in the opening round of last year’s playoffs, 16-12. Colorado of course went on to win the 2022 NLL Cup.