By Tom Hoffman
Success in the second half of recent seasons has eluded the Philadelphia Wings and so far that trend seems to be continuing this season as well. After today’s 13-8 loss at home to the Toronto Rock the Wings have lost both games since starting the latter half of the 2013 season. And the score was not anywhere as close as it would suggest.
After Toronto opened the scoring just 55 seconds in, Ned Crotty tied the game for the Wings which would be as close as they would get all afternoon. Toronto scored the game’s next three goals to lead 4-1 after the first quarter. Following a Paul Rabil goal the Rock would then increase their lead to 7-2 before goals from Kevin Ross and Drew Westervelt cut the deficit to 7-4. The Wings issue on this day was stopping Josh Sanderson which they had little success in doing. Sanderson had four goals on the day, all in the first half and the Rock led at the half 9-5.
The second half was very low scoring as each team tallied just once in the third. Kyle Belton scored twice in the fourth (three for the game) and Scott Johnston added the final score for the Rock to go up 13-6 before Kevin Crowley scored a pair of meaningless goals after Rock coach Troy Cordingley replaced starter Nick Rose for the game’s final two minutes.
For the Wings they now have a week off before starting back to back weekends of back to back games.
