One player’s misfortune created a teammate’s National Lacrosse League debut last week.
When Colorado Mammoth faceoff specialist Jamie Hanford was stranded by ice storms in New York, University of Denver graduate Scott Davidson stepped in Saturday and won 19-of-29 faceoffs in Colorado’s 13-12 overtime win at Toronto.
“Scott is a great athlete and an excellent faceoff guy,” Hanford said. “He’s going to be a great player in this league for a long time.”
In the absence of a telecast or a webcast, Mammoth general manager Steve Govett provided play-by-play text messages to Hanford throughout the game, a game Hanford tried desperately not to miss.
Beginning Friday morning when Hanford’s first flight was canceled, he and the Mammoth travel department began work to find a flight to Toronto. At one point, Hanford was prepared to fly out of Philadelphia, but that flight was among the more than 1,400 East Coast- based flights canceled by the storms.
“It was miserable,” Hanford said. “I felt helpless. I was debating hopping in my car for the 10-hour drive, which might have been 20 hours with the ice storm, but Steve didn’t want me to do that. But the boys came through and had a big win.”
After allowing five consecutive goals and replacing all-star goalkeeper Gee Nash with super sub Chris Levis, the Mammoth rallied. Rookie Jamie Shewchuk’s power-play goal started a 5-0 run, including captain Gavin Prout’s second natural hat trick of the season (three consecutive goals), the latter two on passes from Shewchuk to tie it at 10.
Toronto regained the lead twice, but all-star Mammoth forward Dan Carey tied it on a pass from Prout with 1:49 remaining to force overtime. Carey struck again, 4:44 into OT, for his NLL-leading fourth game-winner this season.
After Hanford waited for each text message through the tense overtime, he reflected on his poor luck, including a 22-hour journey to Portland last month, when he waited on the tarmac for six hours in New York and was delayed another five hours in Denver.
“That’s the thing people don’t take into account in this league,” Hanford said. “We play not for the money, not for the ‘great’ travel. We play because we love the game.”
Streaky NLL
Rochester leads the way with seven consecutive victories, followed by Colorado with six, Buffalo with five, and San Jose with three. Last season’s Western Division regular-season champion Portland has lost nine consecutive games. Chicago has a six-game losing streak and Toronto and Philadelphia have lost four each.
Trade deadline
Tuesday’s deadline passed without activity by the 10-1 Mammoth. “Not a whole lot of teams are trying to make us better,” Govett said. “My phone hasn’t rung once.”
