In 2009, Dane Dobbie’s first full season in the NLL, he tallied 41 times and flirted with the Calgary Roughnecks franchise record of 50 goals in a single season, set by former sharp-shooter Lewis Ratcliff in 2007.
Saturday night in Langley, BC, Dobbie collected a hat-trick and rounded out the 2014 campaign with 51 goals to establish a new franchise mark.
“It’s nice to get three goals tonight and set that, but it has a lot to do with our offence and guys moving the ball and finding me when I was open,” Dobbie said after the Riggers 14-8 victory over the Vancouver Stealth. “It was a good all-around offensive game for us and an all-around good game for everybody.”
The record was set as time was winding down in the first half when Dobbie was cutting down the middle, took a pass from Curtis Dickson and beat Stealth goaltender Matt Roik. That would be the sniper’s final goal of the season and he would finish the game with 10 shots.
“It was good to get it in the first half, but I saw chances all game,” he said. “Thank God I got it in the first half, because it wasn’t dropping for me in the second [half].”
Dobbie, who also led the NLL in goals, was hot to start the season with 30 markers in his first 9 games before slowing down slightly with seven goals over the next four contests. The 28-year-old would regain his hot hand with back-to-back four-goal performances heading into the final three games of the season.
“This year has been a good year for me, the bounces have gone my way and I’ve had some big games,” he said. “Early in the season I got really hot, my stick got hot and I had some good outbreak games.”
Calgary made Dobbie their first round draft selection in 2007 (4th overall) after he finished second in the BC Junior ‘A’ Lacrosse League in goals with 48, while suiting up with the Burnaby Junior ‘A’ Lakers. The sniper admitted he was lucky early in his NLL career when he shared the left side of the floor with one of the most prolific passers in the game.
“Starting in junior, I went into Burnaby and I was there to put points up and get goals for the team and try to win,” Dobbie recalled. “When I first came into the NLL I got paired up with Josh Sanderson on the left side and he was the best feeder in the league at that time and that’s when I got my first 40 goal season.”
Since then, Dobbie hasn’t looked back.
“The way I look at it I need to get 40 goals a season, that’s my personal goal [each year] and I think if I do that I can help the team win some games,” he said. “This year I’ve had a few bounces and I’ve stayed healthy.”
Calgary boasted the most potent offence in the league this season, striking 220 times with the likes of Curtis Dickson (44 goals) and Shawn Evans (105 points) leading the attack. Dobbie indicated the offence usually flows around the player who is hot on any given night.
“The team seems to find the guy the ball that’s shooting well that night—Curtis Dickson has seven [goals] last weekend—and that’s the way we go off of things,” he said. “If a guys is heating up we try to get him the ball often to get it in the back of the net.”
The victory over Vancouver marked the sixth time the Riggers have prevailed in their last seven games to conclude the regular season. The Roughnecks will head into playoffs next weekend against the Colorado Mammoth as one of the hottest teams in the league, something that is just as important to Dobbie as the record he just set.
“I’m not going to give up no matter what,” Dobbie said. “I want our offence to be clicking as good as possible before we get to the playoffs.”
