Photos by Dominic Ceraldi
The Panther City Lacrosse Club (1-8) fell to the Calgary Roughnecks (3-5), 13 – 12, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Sunday evening.
Forward Cam Milligan led the Panther City attack with three goals in his first game with the club, while both rookie forward Patrick Dodds and sophomore forward Will Malcom scored a goal and added five assists to lead the club with six points. Defenseman Liam Byrnes claimed 11 loose balls to lead the defense.
Calgary defenseman Zach Currier led all players with 21 loose balls while forward Tyler Pace led everyone in points, tallying three goals and five assists.
Panther City next battles the Vancouver Warriors (5-3) on Saturday, February 26. Faceoff is set for 7:30 p.m. CT at Dickies Arena.
Quotes
Head Coach Tracey Kelusky
On the recent roster transactions
“Obviously, more so on the offensive side we are trying to figure out what we have up there and how we can manufacture more. There is no disguising the fact that we were not happy with the four [goals] we got last week. So we went out and added a couple players this week that we thought could help us manufacture more goals, in particular on the power play – Cam Milligan helped us out. I thought our power play was probably the best it has been all year. Again, costly turnovers and timely goals, which end up biting us a bit.”
On the offense running through Phil Caputo and Patrick Dodds
“It worked out [that way], but Dodds and Caputo are two of our best – consistently two of our best. Malcs [forward Will Malcom] is on the other side and he has played consistently well for us as well. He might not be scoring as much, but he’s manufacturing a lot of points. More time than not he is getting the number one defender for the other teams, and he is attracting a lot of attention. Those guys have done an exceptional job. We inserted a couple guys tonight that I thought did fairly well as well. In particular one of the things, I always talk about are the little things. The little things add up to big things. Case-in-point here tonight cost us. It is a one goal game, which in a league that is super hard to win, especially as an expansion club. We found ourselves on the wrong side of it.”
On if the defense was being more aggressive this game
“Game to game we adapt and figure out who we are playing and what their strengths are. Truth be told, I thought we did an okay job with it, but we could have done a way better job of extending out on some of their shots. If you look at their five-on-five goals, our guys didn’t extend and we didn’t close on those guys quick enough. In front of that we allowed them to have the gap to start, which was a big part of our scout and we just didn’t execute on it. That is seven [goals]. We hinted on the other two [goals] – the ones that are glaring. The throwaway at half and the one we threw across the floor and it gets picked off and [Calgary] goes down and scores. The seven [five-on-five] goals they manufactured offensively is a direct result of us not doing the little things that we talked about what we wanted to try to do against them.”
Forward Will Malcom
On the increased offensive output…
“I think the main thing is that we are playing fast. We have a lot of athletes and when we play fast and rip the ball around both sides good things happen so I hopefully we keep doing that.”
On adjusting to changing roster…
“Our mentality is next guy up, but we all believe in each other. It is a little different with new guys but that is what practice is for and we all can get on the same page. Today, we did pretty good, but we need to clean up the little things and we will begin to win.”
On Phil Caputo and Patrick Dodds leading the offense…
“I think that’s just who they are. They want the balls in their sticks, they are really good players. We all can create, and it just so happens that those are the guys that are stepping up so we just keep putting the balls in their sticks.”
Courtesy Panther City Lacrosse
