Philadelphia, PA - Things didn’t start off as one would like for the home team. The Philadelphia Wings gave the visiting Buffalo Bandits 7 penalties for 17 minutes in the opening quarter alone. The Bandits were able to capitalize on 4 of the 5 extra-man opportunities, jumping out to a 6-0 lead after the first. The scoring was started less than one minute in when Buffalo’s Aime Caines found Jason Crosbie who put it away. Then the penalties began. John Tavares took a feed from Jonas Derks and directed a left-handed laser past Wings’ keeper Dallas Eliuk.
On another man-up opportunity, Tavares this time fed Crosbie who added his second goal. Less than 40 seconds later, AJ Shannon used a nice face dodge to create a point blank opportunity, which ended up in the back of the net. Less than 5 minutes into the game, the Bandits were up 4-0. The Wings tried to get some momentum going, by winning the face-off and seemingly scoring on a fastbreak. However, the Wing forward stepped in the crease and the goal wasn’t counted. The Bandits would go on to add two more man-up goals in the first quarter, one by Mike Accursi and the other by Jason Clark. Clark’s goal showed the ball movement clinic that the Bandits would put on all night, as Crosbie hit Tavares who hit Clark alone on the backdoor for the goal. Sandwiched between those two goals was a great save by Bandits’ keeper Steve Dietrich on a 4-3 Wings’ man-up opportunity, where Dietrich slid across and stopped a wide-open point-blank shot. Dietrich’s play would be a theme throughout the evening.
It didn’t take long for the 13,461 fans to let their frustration be known. The first boos appeared towards the end of the first quarter. At the buzzer, the rest of the crowd joined in. However, as Philly fans have long proved, they may be hard on their teams, but they always come around, at least when they’re winning or playing hard, as the Wings did throughout the game.
The second period seemed to just be a continuation of the first. The refs did however slow the whistle down somewhat. The Bandits added a goal by Neal Powles 1:38 in. The then decided to put on a show. Buffalo’s Mark Steenhuis hit Jonas Derks on the crease with a nice behind-the-back feed, only to be stuffed by Dallas Eliuk. Buffalo’s Dietrich responded by making four point blank saves.
The Wings again teased the home crowd by having another goal waved off due to a crease violation. Only to score their real first one about a minute later when Dallas Eliuk made a save while being a man-down, hit a breaking Paul Cantabene, who then hit a streaking Dan Marhol. Marhol adjusted to the pass, faked high, went low and put the Wings on the board. Keith Cromwell added another goal for the Wings less than a minute later, which brought the crowd roaring back to life. While the boos may have seemed loud, it couldn’t compare with the feeling after the Wings cut further into the lead. Tony Henderson added the first of his four goals in less than a minute. It looked as if the Wings had developed momentum by scoring three goals in three minutes. The Bandits had other plans, as they went on a run of their own, and that was the closest the Wings would get all night. Adding two man-up and one man-down goals in just under three minutes.
The Wings pulled veteran goalie Dallas Eliuk with 2:06 remaining the half, and put Nick Schroeder in to see if he could put a stop to the barrage. Tony Henderson added his second right before the half, to bring the halftime score up to a 11-4 Buffalo advantage.
Buffalo extended it’s lead early in the third quarter with another Tavares goal. Philadelphia answered six minutes later with a Mark Frye man-up goal, and three minutes after Keith Cromwell added his own man-up goal. Buffalo’s Mark Steenhuis, with hair flowing out of his helmet’s earholes, added a short-handed goal at the 12:27 mark for his first of four goals on the day. Henderson completed his hat trick thirty seconds later. Steehuis added Buffalo’s next two goals.
The fourth quarter wasn’t much different from the rest of the game. As the superb goal-tending by Dietrich continued. He wound up with a whopping 50 saves on the day, 19 of which came in the fourth quarter. The Wings outshot the Bandits 60 to 43. The big difference in the game seemed to be how well Buffalo was able to move the ball. Their offense wasn’t geared on driving one-on-one. They played a controlled offense and just moved the ball around expecting to eventually find Philadelphia out of position. They utilized skip passes and their great stick skills all night. Many of their goals came on the backdoor as their passes were consistently on target and quick. Philadelphia, on the other hand, seemed to want to work the shot clock through individual match-ups. A Wing would take the ball out, back up, make a dodge, ultimately it seemed looking to shoot, whereas the Bandits were hitting the open man when the defense was forced to slide.
Many of Dietrich’s saves came because the Wings were taking shots that could have been passed to players in position for better shots. This may be explained by Philadelphia’s injury list for the game. Alternate Captain and leading all-time scorer, Tom Marachek did not play. Neither did forwards Ryan Traynor or Brian Tower, which all contributed to Philadelphia’s offensive problems. The healthier Bandits took advantage of the Philadelphia mistakes early and set the tone for the game.
As a coach, when you look at the game on average there are stats you can look at and they generally lead to success. Statistically, Philadelphia was better than the Bandits. The Wings held a 77-66 ground ball advantage, Paul Cantabene won 18 and Sean Nadelen won 4 of the games 33 face-offs for the Wings, and as mentioned before out-shot the Bandits. The stats that determined the game, unfortunately for the Wings, were the 37 penalty minutes as opposed to Buffalo’s 27, Dietrich’s 50 saves compared to Eliuk and Schroeder’s combined 25, the Wings 5 shot-clock violations next to the Bandit’s 2, and, obviously, goals scored, where the Bandits had 18 to the Wings’ 10.
John Tavares led all scorers with 8 points (4,4). Mark Steenhuis also added 4 goals, as did Tony Henderson for the Wings. The Wings Dan Marhol added a 5 point day (2,3), as Jake Bergey also added 3 assists, but was unable to find the back of the net on any of his 11 shots.
An interesting sidenote: you know you’re in Philadelphia when cheesesteaks, not t-shirts are shot into the stands by cheerleaders.
