The Rock led 6-2 after the first quarter, then scored seven of the game’s eight over an 18-minute stretch in the second half.<\/p>\n
The season is over for the Saskatchewan Rush after a 16-13 loss to the Toronto Rock in the National Lacrosse League quarterfinal.<\/p>\n
It looked like it would be another defensive battle as the game started, with both Rush goalie Frank Scigliano and Rock netminder Nick Rose making great saves, but it wasn\u2019t long before Josh Dawick opened for the Rock.<\/p>\n
Austin Shanks was quick to respond for Saskatchewan and there would be no scoring for a few minutes until Toronto\u2019s C.J. Kirst was able to sneak one past Scigliano from behind the net. Then Toronto started to gain momentum as Chris Boushy scored shortly afterward.<\/p>\n
Rush forward Robert Church ended Toronto\u2019s scoring streak by putting a long-distance shot past Rose, but sustained momentum proved elusive for Saskatchewan just as it did a week earlier in their regular season finale against the Rock.<\/p>\n
Boushy scored his second and third of the night to put the Rock up 5-2. That was followed up with another goal from Dawick and after allowing those three goals in a span of two minutes, Scigliano was replaced in the Saskatchewan net by Thomas Kiazyk.<\/p>\n
Toronto almost scored a seventh before the first quarter was up when Kiazyk ran to the bench in the dying seconds of the quarter for an extra attacker, and a botched pass by Saskatchewan gave Toronto a chance at the empty net, but time expired before the Rock could get a shot off.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan couldn\u2019t capitalize on an early second period power play but Levi Anderson was able to score five-on-five after nearly six scoreless minutes in the second quarter. A Ryan Keenan goal off a pass from Robert Church made it 6-4.<\/p>\n
The back-and-forth tilt continued with Kirst scoring for Toronto then Connor McLelland doing same for Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
But two more Rush goals, first from Ryan Barnable and then again from Church, temporarily slowed Toronto\u2019s momentum and tied the game at seven.<\/p>\n
A Latrell Harris goal before half gave the Rock an 8-7 lead at the break.<\/p>\n
In the second half, Brock Haley scored for Saskatchewan just 17 seconds in. Scigliano, who had returned to the field in the second quarter, allowed the Rush to continue building momentum by absolutely stonewalling Toronto and allowing Church to score his second of the night on the next play, giving the Rush their first lead of the night.<\/p>\n
It was short-lived however as Dawick scored on a power play to tie the game 9-9, and kickstarted\u00a0a stretch of 18 minutes 26 seconds where the Rock scored seven goals to Saskatchewan’s one, essentially putting the game away.<\/p>\n
Boushy and former Rush player Mark Matthews tallied before the end of the third quarter and Toronto got its fourth straight from Hugh Kelleher to up 12-9 early in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan\u2019s Zach Manns and Toronto\u2019s Elijah Gash traded goals to make it 13-10. After four scoreless minutes that followed, Boushy scored his fifth of the game and Kirst netted his hat trick goal to put Toronto ahead 15-10 with under seven minutes to play.<\/p>\n
Nineteen seconds after Scigliano was pulled for an extra attacker, Keenan scored to bring the Rush within four.<\/p>\n
Kiazyk was tapped to play the rest of the game, the Rush hoping to benefit from his speed in getting to the bench for an extra attacker as the occasion called for. One of those attempts backfired though, as the Rush turned the ball over while Kiazyk was on his way to the bench and the Saskatchewan goaler lost the foot race back his own net, allowing Brad Kri to give Toronto a sweet 16 on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n
Two more goals from Shanks in the final seconds saw the Rush fighting to the end but it was of course too little too late.<\/p>\n
The Rock now advance to the best-of-three semifinals where they will face the San Diego Seals, themselves an upset winner Saturday over the Colorado Mammoth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rock led 6-2 after the first quarter, then scored seven of the game’s eight over an 18-minute…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,235694,3302],"class_list":["post-629346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nllsaskatchewan-rushtoronto-rock","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}