A slow start cost the Roughnecks on the road on Saturday.
The Toronto Rock scored the first three goals of the game and led 5-1 at halftime en route to a 16-10 win over the Riggers at the Air Canada Centre in front of 10,370 fans.
“These men care,” said Calgary coach Curt Malawsky, who praised his players for rebounding with nine goals in the second half. “They take it to heart, win or lose. Right now, we have to stay tough mentally. When things don’t go our way and we run into a hot goaltender, then we start squeezing it a little bit where we have to just trust what we know.”
Curtis Dickson, who scored Calgary’s lone goal of the first half, led the way offensively for the Roughnecks (4-7) with a hat trick and two helpers, while Jeff Shattler had two goals and three assists.
“Offensively we’ve got to put the ball in the net and we didn’t do that tonight,” said Shattler. “Our defence played stellar in the first half considering how many penalties we had and the short man played amazing.”
Wesley Berg scored twice, Dane Dobbie had a goal and three assists, while Tyler Digby and Greg Harnett also found the back of the net.
Frank Scigliano started in net for Calgary and stopped 34 of 44 shots he faced, while Christian Del Bianco finished with eight saves in 13:53 of playing time.
“We’ve got two young goaltenders that make big saves and keep us in games,” said Malawsky, who also commended Rock goalie Nick Rose for his 30-save performance. “It starts with him and he’s having a good year.”
Malawsky added that Toronto’s defence has made it tough on Calgary’s offence in a pair of wins for the Rock over the ’Necks this season.
“They pack it in around (Rose) and they don’t give you a lot of room,” he said. “They’ve got some big athletic guys back there and they force you to the outside and when you make mistakes from the outside, they’ve got some athletic guys that can get up the floor and they run numbers on you.
“You’ve got to know where they are on the floor when you’re on offence and maybe that takes a bit of a bite out of our offence because maybe we’re thinking about the stuff going the other way.”
Brett Hickey had five goals and an assist for the Rock (6-4), while Tom Schreiber led all scorers with seven points (4g, 3a).
Stephan Leblanc had a hat trick and two helpers, Kieran McArdle scored twice and set up three others, while Sandy Chapman and Damon Edwards also scored.
The Riggers will play the second of three straight road games next Friday when they take on the Georgia Swarm (7-2), a team they beat 18-11 at home last Saturday.
“We’ve got to put this one behind us,” said Shattler. “You can’t dwell on the past. You can be as mad as you want for as long as you want, but it doesn’t make a difference because we’ve already lost.
“We’ve got to carry on and move onto the next game. That’s the game of lacrosse. You only get one game a week usually and you’ve got to make it count and we didn’t do it tonight. We’ve got to take a look at ourselves individually and see what we can do better to help this team. Until that happens, we’re not going to be in the win column.”
