Photo: Greg Mason/NLL
OTTAWA, ON — It was a risky gambit that Dan MacRae pulled down four goals in the third quarter that sparked a Black Bears comeback and earned the 37-year-old his first ever win as an NLL head coach.
With his team 0-1 and in desperation mode after a Week One comeback attempt fell just short, MacRae let his netminder Zach Higgins know at a TV timeout that he was going to pull him and create an artificial power play to spark some offence in a couple of plays time.
MacRae — in his dual role as general manager — acquired veteran sniper Rob Hellyer in October for moments like these.
And it was the offseason trade splash Hellyer who took the floor for Higgins and buried a deep side-arm shot on Rush goaltender Frank Scigliano to start the claw back.
“Yeah, I mean, it was a sneak, every team probably runs it once or twice,” said MacRae after the game.
“So yeah, we were just looking for some sort of momentum shift. Would have liked if we changed a little bit faster, wasn’t meant for a complete 6-on-5, but the ball goes in the net, you don’t ask questions,” laughed the 12-year NLL vet, named head coach and general manager in August of the team he previously captained.
“I kind of lost count, I was just kind of hearing people yell, I just ran as fast as I could,” admitted Higgins about the sequence. “I wish I was counting a little better but there was just kind of a lot of chaos going on.”
Higgins said he was thankful Hellyer buried the goal, making all his worries for naught.
From that point on — with the Black Bears down 7-4 — Higgins backstopped the team to an improbable four-goal comeback and was perfect for the last 17 minutes of the game.
All helped, of course, by the otherworldly Jeff Teat scoring a natural hat trick — in just 3:15 of game time — to begin the fourth quarter, part of a four-goal, nine-point performance, capped off by a game-sealing goal with two minutes to play.
The nine points thrust Teat to 500 for his career, making him the fastest player to reach the milestone in league history. “He’s hard to put into words,” said Dan MacRae, who captained Teat during the superstar’s first season in the NLL.
“He’s stoic, but he comes alive at the biggest moments. I had the pleasure of playing with him and seeing his first few points firsthand, and then seeing these ones, in the biggest moment when we needed them. He’s got no angle and just stuffing one five-hole to really seal the game there for us. He’s a special player, obviously on the floor everybody sees it, but he’s a special player in that locker room, when he speaks out there everybody’s listening to him, so super proud.”
Higgins ended up with a .826 save percentage in the win and didn’t allow a goal in either the first or fourth quarter.
“He’s the best goalie in the league, and I just thought all shootaround this morning, all practice this week, he’s just the backbone to our team. Every time you need him to step up, he does,” said Teat.
“I think everyone had a little bit more confidence this week, it felt like,” said Higgins. “We kind of had our game plan and everyone stuck to it, to a ‘T’. So I think that kind of showed how everyone’s settling in a bit more and showed our form.”
In addition to Teat’s nine points and Hellyer’s eight, the Black Bears used contributions from Reilly O’Connor (five assists), Larson Sundown (two goals), Connor Kearnan (one goal), and local talent Sam Firth, who scored his first with his hometown team to open the scoring in the first quarter.
Defencemen Kevin Brownell, Luc Magnan, and Callum Jones all picked up assists, while Jones also led the team with 10 loose balls and three caused turnovers.
This year, the Black Bears will play four Friday home games and five Saturday home games from November to April.
Next up is a Saturday road game in Las Vegas on Dec. 20 and a Saturday home game on Dec. 27 against Philadelphia.
You can view the team’s entire schedule here, purchase Season Seats here, and Single Game tickets here.
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