Heading into this weekend the Philadelphia Wings knew a sweep of the rival New York Titans would be important in their quest for a return to the National Lacrosse League postseason. Winning both games would've given Philadelphia the tiebreaker, a key in the super tight Eastern Conference. After Saturday's 11-7 win in Newark and with an 8-4 lead at halftime on Sunday, the Wings looked to be in great position to do just that. Unfortunately, the Wings who came out on the floor in the second half of Sunday's rematch looked nothing like the team from the previous 90 minutes of play and that enabled New York to come back and earn a split with 16-13 win to the disappointment of most of the 10,806 on hand at the Wachovia Center.
Saturday night started out like it was going to be a shootout with the teams combining for three goals in the game's first minute. Play would settle down and the game was tied at three after one quarter, a feather in the Wings caps as they had to kill off four New York powerplays during the opening stanza. The Wings would shutout the Titans in the second and led 6-3 at half, all three goals coming as a result of two five minute majors issued to the Titans Jeff Bigas and Jarett Park. The Titans would outscore the Wings 3-2 in the third but would get no closer the remainder of the evening. Brandon Miller was superb in the net for Philly, making 45 saves to lead the Wings to the all important "W", while Drew Westervelt's four goals and a five point night from Merrick Thomson (3G, 2A) paced the offense.
Sunday's quick turnaround was, as many expected, on the chippy side. Philly jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead and seemed to hit any and everything moving or not. New York closed to within a goal but the Wings seemed determined to bring both teams to a tie in the standings and eventually pulled out to an 8-3 lead before NY rookie Steve Ammann scored his first NLL goal to make the game 8-4 at halftime. From this point, the game stopped resembling the one of less than 24 hours ago and looked more like the teams' first meeting of 2009. The Titans scored the first three goals of the second half before Athan Iannucci stopped the bleeding with a score to give the Wings a 9-7 lead. The teams would trade tallies until, trailing 11-9, New York would score the last three goals of the third quarter, to go ahead for the first time all weekend at 12-11 with just 15 minutes to play. Brandon Miller was chased after the Titans ninth goal and was replaced by Rob Blasdell.
Philly would quickly regain the lead on scores from Iannucci and Kyle Wailes but that would be their final lead of the day. Brendan Mundorf put NY ahead for good with 6:17 to play, Casey Powell added insurance with 2:54 left and Bill Greer iced the Titans win with an empty netter with 17 seconds to play. Powell ended up with five goals Sunday, after being held to just one on Saturday night while Mundorf, who was held scoreless on Saturday, finished the second game with six points on three goals and three assists. Matt Vinc stopped 47 shots in this game, after making 36 saves on Saturday. Kyle Wailes scored 10 points (3G, 7A) in the losing effort.
The win for New York on Sunday clinched playoff spots for not only themselves, but for the expansion Boston Blazers as well. For the Wings, their record falls to 6-8 and means that they pretty much need to win their remaining two games (Home vs. Toronto, at Rochester) and get some help to lock up the fourth and final spot in the East.
