Weekend is a big zero for Wings

By Tom Hoffman

For the Calgary Roughnecks, just playing tonight's game against the Philadelphia Wings certainly had to help take their minds off the fact that their season is on life support due to the franchise's current economic woes. By defeating the Wings 13-7 at the Wells Fargo Center, they just may have put the Wings season on life support.

If any of the 9,604 in attendance were disappointed by not seeing former Wing standout Geoff Snider in the Calgary lineup due to injury, the Wings effort would prove to be even more disappointing. After playing the league leading Toronto Rock almost even for three quarters on Friday night, the Wings carried over the spiritless fourth quarter from that game into tonight's tilt. The Wings, who have not held a lead since scoring the game winning goal at Buffalo two weeks ago, had to be lucky to be only trailing 3-2 after the first quarter as they were outshot 15-5 and easily outplayed. After Calgary's Dane Dobbie opened the scoring in the second, the Wings Brendan Mundorf would pull the Wings within a goal at 4-3 with just over 10 minutes until halftime. By the time Drew Westervelt would score the Wings fourth goal of the night at 9:32 of the third quarter the Wings had given up six consecutive scores and would see goalie Brandon Miller head to the bench to be replaced by Ray Hodgkinson.

While the Roughnecks season sits at day to day, the financial dark cloud they are under did not seem to affect the players on field performance as they gave a tough, spirited and emotional effort. The Wings hopefully took some notes as they will need to find that kind of effort if they want to earn a playoff berth in this 2011 season. They will have plenty of time to think about this game as they don't take the field again until March 26 against an equally desperate Rochester Knighthawk squad. The Wings will need to treat that game as a playoff since a loss there will not only cost them a tiebreaker with the K-Hawks but more than likely will sink any chances the team has of playing in the postseason.