Nice Rock win!

The Rock won only their second home game of the year tonight, 16-10 over the Rochester Knighthawks. Watson played a great game in net, the D was solid, and most importantly, the boys played well for 60 minutes. There have been a number of games this year where they played great in the first half, or even the first three quarters, and then mailed in the rest and lost. Nice to see them play the whole game. Some other notes:

• Rochester's Mac Allen should have been sent to the penalty box just for that moustache.
• Pat O'Toole did not have his best game ever. His brother was sitting a couple of rows in front of us and didn't look too happy. He left at half-time and didn't come back.
• Note to Rock shooters: We're all really impressed with your accuracy, but hitting the goalie square in the middle of the chest does not help your team win games. In actual fact, you don't want to hit the goalie at all.
• The Rock scored two shorthanded goals on the same penalty.
• One fight, Bonterre vs. Campbell. The look on Campbell's face throughout the fight was "Oh crap, why the hell did I do this?" and with good reason – that Bonterre is one big fella. Only two punches were thrown in the fight, both by Bonterre, and it looked like he either broke or knocked out one of Campbell's teeth with one of them.
• Seriously though, that moustache. Damn.
• What's with Steve Dietrich leaving the field before the victory lap? I would have thought that was the first thing they told you when you became a Rock player.
• There was one goal called back after a review, but the review shouldn't have been necessary. The shooter's foot was definitely in the crease before the shot. Perhaps the ref was at a bad angle and couldn't see that, but I could see it quite clearly from my seat. The review only took a minute, so it must have been pretty obvious to the ref as well after watching the replay.

Let's not get too excited though, Toronto is now 4-7 and still in last place in the East. They have five games left to play, including one against league leaders Calgary and one against Boston who are second in the east. But the other three are all against teams with equal or worse records than the Rock (Edmonton, Philadelphia and San Jose), so we should be able to win at least two of those. The Rock beat Boston in OT a couple of weeks ago, so 3-2 or even 4-1 over the last 5 games is not out of the question. Rochester has played much better over the last few weeks than the first few (though that's not hard – over the first few weeks they looked terrible), and Philadelphia has Iannucci back now, so things, as always, will be tight in the east.

If the Rock want to see the playoffs, they will have to keep up their strong play (for four quarters per game) and keep their fate in their own hands, rather than playing badly and just hoping that someone else plays worse.