by John Smallwood, Daily News Sports Writer
The fan’s sign was creative, if not entirely on the mark.
“Hey Philly! Now you know how the Bills feel!”
Not anymore.
Unwilling to share in the legacy of the Buffalo Bills and their four consecutive Super Bowl losses, the Philadelphia Wings put on an offensive display unprecedented in Major Indoor Lacrosse League championship game history.
The Wings, who had lost the previous two title games to the Bandits by one- goal margins, broke the franchise and title-game scoring record with their 26-15 victory over the Buffalo Bandits on Saturday at Memorial Auditorium. It was the third league title for the Wings, who also won in 1990 and ’91.
Game MVP Paul Gait had eight goals and three assists for the Wings, who scored a remarkable 12 goals in the decisive third period.
“I can’t speak for the other guys, but it was definitely motivation for me,” Wings forward Kevin Finneran said. “We’re all football fans. We know what the Buffalo Bills went through, and as an athlete you don’t want to go through the same thing. I certainly didn’t want to go down in any kind of MILL history book as part of the team that lost three in a row.”
In a third-quarter collapse worthy of their Buffalo brethren, the Bandits saw their 10-7 halftime lead turn into a 15-10 deficit.
The Wings (8-2) quickly established that the final 30 minutes would be theirs when Gary Gait (three goals) scored 31 seconds into the second half.
Then, after Paul Deniken cut the deficit to one, Paul Gait again displayed why he is possibly the best lacrosse player in the world and why Wings general manager Mike French gave up all of their draft picks last year to bring the Gait brothers together in Philadelphia.
In a dazzling two-minute display of lacrosse wizardry, Paul Gait scored four straight goals to put the Wings up, 15-10, and silence the sellout crowd of 16,284.
“The game of lacrosse is one where you are going to score in bunches,” Paul Gait said. “We wanted to win last year. We had to win this year.”
Gary Gait put in the Wings’ seventh consecutive goal to leave the shellshocked Bandits reeling.
“It’s usually us doing that to somebody else, so it was very difficult to go through something like that,” Buffalo forward Troy Cordingly said. “They were absolutely unstoppable. Nobody had any answers.”
The Wings took 67 shots at Buffalo goalies Bill Gerrie and Ross Cowie.
Deniken scored four of the Wings’ goals, and Chris Flynn, Tom Marechek and Steven Govett each added two goals. Finneran had a game-high eight assists.
Considering Philadelphia had been 1-5 all-time against Buffalo and had never won at the Aud, just beating the Bandits should have been good enough.
But the Wings took an almost perverse pleasure in administering a no-holds- barred flogging to the Bandits in front of their stunned fans.
Leading 19-14, Philadelphia put in seven fourth-quarter goals as the displeased crowd peppered the field with everything from crumpled paper cups to a pair of tennis shoes.
“We wanted to shut them up,” Wings goalie Dallas Eliuk, who finished with 28 saves, said of the fans. “They’re a very supportive crowd, but you could hear a pin drop in the final minutes. Then they started throwing garbage on the field. It was good to see the frustration in their fans.
“Buffalo’s championships were last year and the year before, but they’re not the champions this year and that’s what counts.”
It didn’t matter that instead of Dom Perignon, the Wings drank Le Champes American Pink Champagne from the North America Cup.
In this league where teachers, salesmen and businessmen suit up in helmets and shoulder pads and continue boyhood dreams for between $200 and $700 a game, the thrill of victory still is the primary motivation.
“The bonuses ($400 per player for winning the championship) have gotten a little better and we’ll get a fat, gold ring for winning this,” said Wings captain Scott Gabrielsen, who has been on all three Philadelphia championship teams and carried the North America Cup off the plane when the Wings arrived at Philadelphia International Airport yesterday to the greeting of several dozen fans. “But it’s the thrill of winning, just like you see when guys win Super Bowls, Stanley Cups or NBA titles.
“This is as far as we can go in our sport. Seeing that cup over there and knowing the Wings’ name is going to be engraved on it, there is no feeling like that. We’ve gone to the highest level that we can.”
(Philadelphia Daily News, April 18, 1994)