Soaring to their best start, the Philadelphia Wings improve to 3-1 in the 2019-2020 campaign. The home opener at the Wells Fargo Center on Dollar Dog Night featured an 18-10 victory over the slumping Vancouver Warriors. This marks the first time that the Wings have defeated the Warriors in the NLL. With the action moving fast and the physicality picking up, Philadelphia gave Vancouver a proper welcome. A win is what matters, but there is more to the story.
At the end of the first quarter, the Vancouver Warriors were tied with the Philadelphia Wings, 2-2. The key to winning this game for the Wings was controlling the time of possession and winning faceoffs. Trevor Baptiste played a vital role in Philadelphia dictating the pace against Vancouver after the first quarter. That is when the Wings began to separate themselves from the Warriors on the scoreboard. At halftime, Philadelphia was up 9-5.
Philadelphia Wings head coach, Paul Day, had this to say about controlling the time of possession to extend the lead:
“Our time of possession in the second and third have been pretty outstanding. A lot of that has to do with Trevor on the faceoffs. I think our fitness this year is much better, we have a lot more organizational depth.”
Paul Day; 1/10/2020
Not only was Trevor Baptiste able to give the Philadelphia Wings extra possessions with faceoff wins, but he accounted for two goals on the night, one in the second quarter and one in the third quarter. Along with those goals were big performances by Blaze Riorden, Kevin Crowley, Brett Hickey, and Josh Currier. Four Wings players had hat-tricks, but Currier tipped the scales with four goals on the night. This was his second straight week with a hat-trick as he is proving to be one of the vital scorers for Philadelphia. Currier had this to say about his performance:
“I think tonight was just a complete offensive win for us. I think every single player had multi-goal games. With that happening, our offense was very dangerous.”
Josh Currier; 1/10/2020
To top everything off, Kevin Crowley scored his 300th goal. Jokingly, he said, “Josh threw me that awful pass behind me and luckily I got a hold of it.” Josh Currier provided a rebuttal, “I just set him up for a highlight reel.” Quite frankly, you love to see it. Congratulations to the “Big Cat” on a milestone performance and to the Philadelphia Wings on winning their home opener.
Up next for the Philadelphia Wings are the New England Blackwolves at the Mohegan Sun Arena. This game will take place on January 18th, 2020 at 7 pm. Continue to follow me at EricReesePSN on Twitter alongside my colleagues Ricky Amandeo (Ricky_amandeo8) and Alex McIntyre (alexemcintyre). As always, more coverage is available on Philly Sports Networks (PhiladelphiaSN) on Twitter.
Photo Credit: Alex Mcintyre
