Bandits complete wild comeback, stun Seals
MATT VOLZ
Editor in Chief
If you didn’t stay up late to watch the Bandits game Saturday night, you didn’t miss much through the first three quarters.
The rest of the game would’ve probably kept you up all night.
For the first game of a two-week road trip, the Bandits headed to San Diego to take on the Seals.
It was a matchup of two middle-of-the-pack teams, as Buffalo came in at 7-6 while San Diego entered the weekend at 6-7.
If you’re under a certain age, you probably just laughed at the last part of that previous sentence.
If it went over your head, it’s not worth your time, anyway.
In last week’s prediction, I said it would be a relatively high-scoring game, and that Buffalo would win 13-10.
Yeah, I was wrong on both.
The Bandits went on the power play early, and Tehoka Nanticoke made the Seals pay.
Ben McIntosh tied it for San Diego just 43 seconds later, and the rest of the quarter was full of penalties.
Seven total penalties were committed in the first 15 minutes. The Bandits went to the box four times, and the Seals headed there three times.
Late in the quarter, a double minor penalty against Bandits captain Steve Priolo gave the Seals an extended power play, and McIntosh cashed in to give his team the lead.
In my end-of-quarter update, I had one simple message for the team.
They only took one more penalty the entire rest of the game, so maybe my message worked.
San Diego took three penalties, and Kyle Buchanan capitalized on one of them to tie the game at two.
Again, though, it wouldn’t be long before San Diego jumped back in front.
Wesley Berg scored halfway through the quarter to put the Seals up 3-2, and he added another late in the quarter to double his team’s lead.
At the halftime horn, the Seals held a 4-2 lead.
A Buffalo team averaging more than 11 goals per game was on pace for just four.
Fortunately for the Bandits, Matt Vinc looked solid in net.
For as much as Buffalo’s offense had struggled, San Diego’s offense wasn’t shining, either.
That remained the case for much of the third quarter, as both offenses seemed to be stuck in neutral.
Eventually, though, the Seals struck again, with the son of Bandits royalty scoring one against his dad’s former team.
19-year-old rookie Ari Steenhuis, son of Bandits legend Mark Steenhuis, scored only the second goal of his career to put San Diego ahead 5-2.
The home squad wasn’t done, either.
23 seconds later, Zach Currier put the Seals up by four. With the way Buffalo’s offense had been playing, that lead seemed insurmountable.
But as they’ve done all season, Buffalo battled back.
Dhane Smith responded with a power play goal for Buffalo’s third score of the game, all three of which came on the man advantage.
Currier got the last laugh in the quarter, though, scoring his second of the night to give the Seals a 7-3 lead with 15 minutes to play.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Seals goalie Christopher Origlieri was absolutely incredible in the game.
The 23-year-old played perhaps the best game of his career, turning aside shot after shot.
But for a Bandits offense that had won three straight and scored 11 or more goals in each win, it was a dubious showing.
The first three quarters of this game marked the worst Buffalo’s offense had looked in multiple years, at least.
Between Buchanan’s power play goal in the second quarter and Smith’s in the third, a staggering 21 minutes and 48 seconds of game time passed.
Into the fourth quarter, Buffalo didn’t add their fourth goal until more than 10 minutes of game time had passed since Smith’s goal.
That fourth quarter goal belonged to Josh Byrne, who had gone ice cold despite heating up over the last month.
The Bandits made it a three-goal game, but once again, they couldn’t string multiple goals together.
McIntosh completed the hat trick to restore San Diego’s four-goal lead halfway through the final frame.
Buffalo badly needed to get the offense in gear, and for that, they turned to an old friend who just recently came home.
Joe Resetarits, a Hamburg native and former Bandit, returned to his hometown team earlier this month in a trade with the Philadelphia Wings.
Playing in his second game of this stint with the team, the 36-year-old scored his first goal since the trade with less than six minutes to play.
Another local product, Irving native Clay Scanlan, made it a two-goal game with under three minutes to play.
With 1:02 left, Nanticoke scored his second of the night to slash San Diego’s lead to one.
The Bandits pulled Vinc for the extra attacker, and with 44 seconds remaining, Smith buried a shot to tie the game.
It was the first time the game had been tied since midway through the second quarter, and the game headed to overtime.
Who else would the team lean on in overtime but their leading scorer?
Smith not only completed the hat trick with his overtime goal, but he completed a wild Buffalo comeback that seemed impossible before the game’s final minutes.
With the overtime win, Buffalo improves to 8-6 on the season.
They’ve won four straight games, and they’re 5-1 since Valentine’s Day.
It certainly wasn’t pretty, but the thrice-defending champs have put themselves firmly into the playoff conversation.
Stats for this story were provided by nllstats.com, a league-wide database run by NLL writer Graeme Perrow.
Check out his commentary on nllchatter.com as well as his updates on X (@GraemePerrow).
