Rush spoil Rock home opener with 17-9 drubbing

Ben McIntosh scored five to help the Saskatchewan Rush dominate in their season-opening game against the Toronto Rock at the ACC.

After the Toronto Rock lost 17-9 to the Saskatchewan Rush in their home opener, head coach Matt Sawyer was very clear as to why his team had started the 2017-18 season 0-2:

"“We weren’t good enough to play a team like that and come out with a win. We need to get better as individuals and we need to be performing at our best and we’re not,” Sawyer said.“It’s not a happy room, but ultimately this is the group. We’ve gotta pull ourselves out of it. You’ve got two choices. We can be honest with ourselves or we can think everything is okay, which it isn’t right now.”"

The Rock had a good showing in their home opener last year against Saskatchewan, winning 13-11. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the same success on Saturday night against the reigning Western Division Champions.

Ben McIntosh had himself a game, with five goals in the contest, including the opening marker which came on the power-play just 1:49 in.

After a second Rush goal just seconds later, Adam Jones — who was making his home debut with the Toronto Rock — got the crowd on their feet with a tremendous individual effort:

It didn’t get any easier from there, however. After running into a hot goalie in Alexis Buque against Buffalo last week, there was a lot of talk of getting inside to get better looks on net. Rush goaltender Evan Kirk — last year’s NLL Goalie of the Year — was in top form and made 39 saves en route to helping his team open the season 1-0.

Could the tough start to the season for the Rock be chalked up to bad luck in terms of running into good goaltending?

"“You can’t always blame these games on bad luck, we just need to shoot better and maybe we’re not open enough or moving our feet when we’re shooting, so we’re gonna watch the film and see what’s not working for us and improve from there,” Jones said post-game."

Nick Rose was lifted from the game after allowing nine goals on 24 shots. Brandon Miller came in to relieve Rose and helped to stop the bleeding, finishing out the remainder of the first half without allowing a goal. Miller played the rest of the game, making 25 saves while giving up eight goals.

The Toronto Rock faithful got their first look at Rob Hellyer since 2016. The Lions Head, Ont. native finished the contest with a goal and three assists, bringing his season total to six points in two games.

Brett Hickey also finished with four points for the Rock. He was back to his old ways, scoring a hat-trick in the first half. He finished the game with 11 shots on goal.

After the game, Hickey was blunt about what went wrong on the Rock’s end:

"“We’ve got to work better, we’ve got to sacrifice more. They beat us to a lot of loose balls and got a lot of second chances,” he said. “They capitalized on their chances and we didn’t. This game is a game of inches and if one team is capitalizing and another one isn’t, they’re gonna blow them out of the water and that’s what happened tonight.”"

Next: Toronto Rock season preview

Luckily for the Rock, they have a couple of weeks to work out the kinks in their game, before returning to the Air Canada Centre for another matchup with the Buffalo Bandits.