Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 1/29/10
From Press Releases
The Philadelphia Wings seek to even their record at 2-2 Saturday when they travel to Boston to meet the Blazers in a National Lacrosse League game.
Earlier this week two teams made a huge trade as the Wings acquired NCAA Player of the Year Max Seibald from Boston for a first-round pick. The Wings defeated Boston, 12-8, earlier in the season as goalie Brandon Miller made 41 saves on 49 shots.
The win was a complete team effort on both sides of the ball for the Wings, who held 2009 NLL MVP Dan Dawson to only two assists., Dawson is second on the team with 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) behind Daryl Veltman who has 16 points (six goals, 10 assists) and was the NLL’s overall first pick in the 2008 Entry Draft. Philadelphia missed Anthony Cosmo, the Blazers’ top goalie, as they were playing the last game of a back-to-back weekend when the two teams first met. Cosmo is third in the league with a goals against average of 10.24.
Miller was the star of the first game in Philadelphia right from the beginning faceoff when he stopped 14 of 15 shots in the first quarter. After a sluggish second quarter that saw six goals scored by Boston, Miller show why he was the league’s Defensive Player of the Week, stopping an amazing 18 of 19 shots in the second half to lead the Wings to the victory.
The Wings early scoring leaders on the season are Drew Westervelt with 13 points (seven goals, six assists), Matt Giles with 12 points (five goals, seven assists) and Kyle Wailes with 9 points (three goals, six assists). Miller is fourth in the NLL with a .784 a save percentage.
The Wings will return home on Saturday, February 6 at 7 p.m. when they face their heated rival, the Orlando Titans.
“We are obviously excited to have Max join us. I think he had a great college career and a very good summer for Denver, and was one of the key guys getting them to a championship game in the MLL” said Wings General Manager and Coach David Huntley. “He has some pro experience and now needs to learn the indoor game. I think he will do well with that and we are delighted we made the trade with Boston and as to when he’s going to be in the lineup; I think that’s going to be up to Max and me, so we will just see how he develops. But we don’t have a date.”
Huntley said beating Boston this week will be more difficult.
“I think obviously we were fortunate catching them the week before because it’s always tough to play back-to-back and even tougher to play back-to-back when you’re shorthanded for the bulk of the Toronto game,” he said.
“That was bad luck for them, but I was happy our guys because we did what we needed to do to get a win and hopefully we will take the things we did well in that game. We didn’t do everything well, there are some things we need to improve on week to week and hopefully that translates into a good outcome for us on Saturday.”
