On Saturday night, the Philadelphia Wings visit the New York Riptide for their 11th game of the season. The Wings are 5-5 on the year after sweeping a two-game weekend set last weekend with wins over the Riptide and the Toronto Rock, both at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The Wings played only two games in the month of February but will pay for that in the month of March, with six games over the course of 22 days. This is a single-game week for the club, but they’ll have a back-to-back next week against Georgia and Rochester.
LAST TIME OUT
Monday, March 6 – Wings 11, Toronto 10: The Wings completed a sweep of their weekend series in thrilling fashion, holding off the Toronto Rock 11-10 to move to 5-5 on the season. Zach Higgins made a career- high 55 saves to anchor the victory, which was Philadelphia’s first over the Rock in seven tries since re-joining the NLL in 2018. Matt Rambo and Blaze Riorden provided first-quarter goals to give the Wings an early 2-0 lead and they never trailed from there, although Toronto pulled even on multiple occasions. It was 4-4 just over seven minutes into the second quarter after Dan Craig tied it up for the Rock, but the Wings scored the game’s next four goals and ended up in the locker room with a 7-4 lead at the break. A stingy third quarter saw only one goal per side, and it was 8-5 when Kiel Matisz scored a highlight-reel behind-the-back goal 1:11 into the fourth quarter to give the Wings a 9-5 lead. They needed every bit of that cushion, as the Rock charged back with the next four to tie things at 9-9 with less than five minutes to play. Philadelphia was able to re-establish the lead for good when Riorden snuck one through with 3:05 to play, and Ben McIntosh finished off a hat trick with an all-important insurance goal less than a minute later. That stood up as the game-winner when Tom Schreiber scored with 51 seconds left. Joe Resetarits (1G, 6A) and Mitch Jones (2G, 5A) led the Wings with seven points apiece, while McIntosh added two assists to his hat trick for a five-point game. Trevor Baptiste also scored while going 16 for 25 on faceoffs and grabbing nine loose balls. Chad Tutton had 10 loose ball pickups and forced three turnovers on the evening.
VS NEW YORK
The Wings are 5-1 against the Riptide in five all-time meetings and are 2-0 here at Nassau Coliseum. The clubs split a pair of games at Wells Fargo Center last season, with the Wings winning 14-12 on Dec. 10,2021 and New York taking a 13-12 win on January 23, 2022. The Wings then topped the Riptide 11-5 here at Nassau Coliseum on April 2, 2022.
LAST MEETING
Saturday, March 4 – Wings 19, New York 12: Mitch Jones jumped
into the Wings record books on Saturday, setting new single-season franchise marks for assists and points in a game while tying the team’s goal-scoring record in a 19-12 win over the New York Riptide. Jones led the Wings with six goals and eight assists for 14 points, the second- highest individual performance by an NLL player this season. The Wings pulled ahead 2-0 on goals by Joe Resetarits and Ben McIntosh in the game’s first five minutes, building a lead that they would never relinquish. The game was a relatively back-and-forth affair except for a timeframe that spanned the latter part of the second quarter and most of the third, where the Wings outscored New York 9-3 to build the cushion that led to their five-goal win. Jones had two goals in the first half but then scored three times in the first 5:34 of the third quarter, before completing the sock trick 1:57 into the fourth quarter. Resetarits and McIntosh both had notable afternoons, with each recording a hat trick – Resetarits had four goals and five assists for nine points, while McIntosh had four and four for eight points. It was Resetarits’s second nine-point game of the season. Zach Higgins had a solid day between the pipes, stopping 41 shots. Most notable among them were 13 saves made on Jeff Teat, the league’s leading goal scorer who had 14 shots on goal but only scored once.
