The Rochester Knighthawks (3-5) return to action at Segar and Sciortino Field at The Blue Cross Arena Saturday night to host the Las Vegas Desert Dogs (3-6).
“We need to be responsible on both sides of the floor,” said Knighthawks head coach Mike Hasen. “We’ve got to react to what they’re doing before they go because if we don’t, we’ll end up chasing. Our reaction time and awareness need to be much crisper this week.”
KNIGHTHAWKS GET THEIR KNIGHT BACK
For the first time all season, Curtis Knight will find himself in Rochester’s lineup. This comes after the 10th-year pro was sidelined with injury through nearly the entire first half of the season.
“It’s very exciting,” said Knight. “I’m a little nervous, but excited, too. Hopefully I can just help the team get a win.”
“We all know what ‘Knighter’ is going to do,” said Hasen. “He adds a different level of responsibility that we’ve been lacking, and teams have taken advantage of us. He’s going to help with that and on the offensive side as well.”
Over his previous three seasons as a Knighthawk, Knight has scored 53 goals and 111 assists for 164 points in 46 games.
“When you’re watching a game, you never want to play more,” said Knight. “It was tough being out. I try to lead by example, so I’m just going to go out there and work as hard as I can and focus on the little things and see if that helps.”
BYE, BYE, BYE
Rochester is one of three teams with fewer than nine games played heading into Week 13 of the season. That’s because the team has seen bye weeks stacked throughout the early part of the schedule, but moving forward, there are no more breaks. The Knighthawks will play their final 11 games of the season over a 10-week span.
“Consistency in the schedule will be good for this group. I think we had a really good practice this week, but we have to worry about here today. We need to turn on the switch before getting down by four.”
“It’s exciting,” said leading scorer, Connor Fields. “It’s an opportunity for us to gain some momentum as a team. It’s going to be good to get in a routine and hopefully stack some wins to get back in the playoff picture. Bye weeks early in the season are tough. Towards the end of the season they’re kind of nice, but it is exciting to look at the rest of the schedule and see if we can get some momentum going.”
START TO END
A consistent reason for Rochester’s inconsistencies over its last five games comes from the need to play a full 60 minutes.
“You’ve got to treat each game like a playoff game just to get into the playoffs,” said Fields. “We’ve been in a lot of close games where there’s been a bounce here or there. On the offense, we need to focus on the transition. We’re putting our defense in some pretty tough situations. We’re focusing on the little things that can add up to success for us.”
“It was nice starting 3-0,” said defender Ryland Rees. “I think this slide we’ve been on just comes down to not playing a full 60 minutes. We look really good at times and then there’s times where we don’t look so good. We need to find a way to play our game and play hard and hope the bounces start to fall our way. We’ve been giving up a lot of goals. We need to help ‘Hutchy’ (Riley Hutchcraft) more.”
