THE CANADIAN PRESS
CALGARY — Led by three goals and four assists by Dane Dobbie, the Calgary Roughnecks won 15-8 over the Colorado Mammoth Sunday afternoon in a National Lacrosse League Western Conference semifinal.
Leading 4-3 late in the first half, Calgary blew the game open starting with Nolan Heavenor’s breakaway goal at 13:55 of the first quarter. Capped by Heavenor’s unassisted goal at 5:52 of the second, Calgary struck for six unanswered goals to take a commanding 10-3 lead.
Also scoring for Calgary was Tracey Kelusky with three goals. Kaleb Toth, Curt Malawsky, Scott Carnegie, Scott Ranger, and Jeff Shattler had singles.
Calgary’s ninth goal at 4:27 of the second quarter, the second of Josh Sanderson’s two goals, spelled the end of the night for former Roughnecks goaltender Andrew Leyshon, who departed having stopped 10 of 19 shots.
Curtis Palidwor, another former Calgary goalie, took over and despite surrendering a goal almost immediately, he blanked the Roughnecks the final nine minutes of the second quarter to keep the score 10-3 at half-time.
However, the Mammoth would get no closer than five goals the rest of the way against the stingy Calgary defence, backstopped by goaltender Matt King.
A perfect 7-0 during the regular season, King was superb making 40 saves to win his first career playoff game.
It was the fourth playoff meeting between the two long-time rivals but first in Calgary. The Roughnecks have won three of the four encounters.
Calgary finished the regular season with the NLL’s top record (12-4) while Colorado (7-9) barely squeaked into the post-season claiming the fourth seed in the West with a one-goal victory on the final day of the regular season.
Calgary will host San Jose in the Western final next Saturday night. The No. 3 seed Stealth went into the Rose Garden in Portland Friday night and won 20-16 over the No. 2-seed LumberJax.
Colorado’s offence was paced by Gavin Prout, who had two goals and three assists. Jamie Shewchuk also had two goals while Brian Langtry, Gary Rosyski, Chris Gill, and Matt Leveque.
Already without veteran defender Bruce Murray, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in March, Colorado lost two more valuable members of its back end in their regular season finale when Rich Catton (sprained knee) and Ray Guze (broken thumb) both went down.
They were hopeful of getting at least one of them back for Sunday but neither were able to go — Catton missing his first game due to injury in 10 NLL seasons.
Veteran forward Dan Carey was in the lineup for the Mammoth but was clearly not 100 per cent. Carey had missed two-and-a-half months due to a concussion before returning for the final regular season game.
Colorado put a brief scare into the Pengrowth Saddledome crowd of 9,760, getting goals 31 seconds apart from Gill and Leveque early in the third quarter to narrow the deficit to 10-5.
However, goals by Carnegie at 8:20 and Toth at 11:31 restored the seven-goal lead.
Leading 12-6 after three quarters, Dobbie and Kelusky scored in the opening two minutes of the fourth quarter to put the game away for Calgary.
Dobbie capped his night scoring on a penalty shot with 21 seconds left in the game.
Notes: Also missing from the Colorado lineup with During the regular season, Calgary. . . Also missing for the Mammoth was four-time NLL all-star goaltender Gee Nash (back), who has been sidelined since January. . . In its history, Calgary has played Colorado 18 times in the regular season, the most of any opponent, Colorado holding a 10-8 edge. . . Calgary was 7-1 when scoring first during the regular season and 6-0 when leading after the first quarter.