Rochester visits the Rock in a preseason contest Saturday in Toronto.
By Susie Cool / Rochester Knighthawks
Another week has passed, meaning another preseason matchup is on the docket for the Rochester Knighthawks, who head north of the border on Saturday, Nov. 16 for a 7 pm get-together against the Northern Division rival Toronto Rock at the Toronto Rock Athletic Center.
Last weekend, the Knighthawks took on the New York Riptide in their first preseason tilt of the 2019-20 campaign. The Riptide, who like the Knighthawks are new to the National Lacrosse League scene this season, may have come out victorious by a 15-13 margin thanks to two goals within the final two minutes of regulation, but Knighthawks general manager Dan Carey still feels there were many positive takeaways after watching his club in game action for the first time ever.
“It’s different when you’re competing with players that are on the same roster. When you go out and play against a different team, that is definitely an opportunity for our guys to show a side of them that they wouldn’t necessarily show competing against their teammates,” said Carey when asked what he thought about the overall performance of his new club.
With veteran players like Shawn Evans, Matthew Bennett and a couple others watching from the stands, last Saturday was a chance to give some of the National Lacrosse League newcomers a shot at making it to the show. Now although there are definitely some players on the current team that Carey and his staff know exactly what they bring to the game, they still need to see how the experienced mesh with the rookies when hitting the floor with one another. This in turn gives the chance to test rookies like Ryland Rees, Corey Highfield, and Thomas Whitty as to why they could be an integral part of Rochester’s lineup heading into opening night on Nov. 30.
Then there’s also the athletes like Holden Cattoni (4+2), Phil Caputo (3+0), Curtis Knight (2+3), and Dan Linter (1+3), who all have some NLL experience and combined for 10 of the Knighthawks 13 markers last weekend. These are just a sample size of the players that Carey has raved about and has expected nothing less from since beginning this brand-new franchise earlier this year.
As the weeks continue to pass, the Knighthawks final roster deadline gets closer to that final number and Carey even touched on just how tough it will be to get to that point over the next couple of weeks.
“Some of our younger draft picks that are still around, we’ve been impressed with them. Quite frankly, there’s a lot of guys that are making this difficult to make these final decisions.”
Although a tough problem, it’s seems to be a good problem to have a great selection of athletes when building a new franchise from the ground up, and this tough decision only gets more difficult when looking at the goaltending trio that Rochester has at hand. Last weekend, Steve Fryer, Rylan Hartley, and Craig Wende all split time in the crease, going 20 minutes apiece against the Riptide. In no set order, the Knighthawks netminders shared an equal amount of time in the net, allowing 15 goals throughout the course of the contest.
“For our three goalies, I think they need to be better and they know that. Going into the next two weekends, nothing has been decided yet and we’re going to give them all an equal opportunity again this weekend in Toronto to see if we can have one of them separate themselves,” said the Knighthawks general manager when asked about making any headway on the final goaltending situation following their upcoming face-off against the Rock.
Toronto comes into this weekend having opened up preseason play with a 16-1 win last Saturday over the Colorado Mammoth. As the Knighthawks prepare for their first Northern Division battle, it looks as if Saturday will be a test to see how Rochester can matchup against a team with a very heavy veteran presence and a continuation of history and chemistry from past seasons.
No matter the opponent over the final two weeks of the preseason, Carey is hoping to find patience in the process to be able to go into the Knighthawks home opener confident and proud.
“We really want to get to November 30th and be confident with what we’ve accomplished so far, but we know that it’s going to be a process. We want to continue to build each week and know that the highs and the lows of a season are maybe going to be a little different because of the situation that we’re in.”
Following this weekend, the Knighthawks are set to have one more preseason scrimmage against the Philadelphia Wings at the Blue Cross Arena at 7 pm on Saturday, Nov. 23. Two more chances for each and every player on the current Knighthawks roster to try and make an impression as to why they should be on the starting lineup come Nov. 30.