By Clark DeLeon
At halftime as the Philadelphia Wings ran toward the tunnel leading to the locker room trailing by three goals to the two-time defending champion Buffalo Bandits during Saturday’s Major Indoor Lacrosse League championship game, a Buffalo fan held up a handmade sign that read, “Now you know how the Bills feel!”
Like hell they do.
When the Wings returned to the Buffalo Hilton carrying the league championship cup after the most incredible offensive display during a single half in league history – 19 second-half goals – to beat Buffalo, 26-15, the victors were greeted by more than 100 Wings fans who had driven nine hours by car and bus. One of the fans held a sign that answered the Bandits: ”Congratulations! It just goes to show that Buffalo can’t beat Dallas.”
That’s Dallas as in Wings goaltender Dallas Eliuk, the Canadian phenom who stopped 28 Bandit shots to help his team win the championship – the first championship team he’d been a part of in any level of lacrosse.
That is not to say the result was never in doubt. John Lamb, the Bell telephone repairman who organized the Wings fans’ road trip to Buffalo, said that after the Bandits opened their three-goal lead at the end of the first half, he walked away from the Philadelphia fans sitting in the upper reaches of Section 32 in Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium. “I couldn’t watch,” he said. ”I took a walk behind the seats. I didn’t even see the first couple of goals in the third period. They (Wings fans) started coming back for me. By the time I got back to my seat, we were up.”
What he missed was the Wings’ Paul Gait scoring four goals in one minute, 56 seconds, a barrage that launched the offensive rally that brought the MILL championship cup back to Philadelphia for the first time since 1991.
Wings captain Scott Gabrielsen said he never relaxed during the game, not even with the Wings up by 12 goals with five minutes to play. “I didn’t start having fun until the three-minute (remaining) mark in the fourth quarter,” Gabrielsen said. “If we could score seven goals in two minutes, these guys could come right back.”
One person missing from the Wings’ huge victory was Gabrielsen’s father, Bill, better known as “Big Gabe,” the team’s official W-I-N-G-S cheerleader at the Spectrum.
“He had car trouble in Vermont and couldn’t make it,” Scott said. “It’s funny, ’cause we usually do pretty well when he doesn’t make the game, or when I have multiple goals. But I always know he’s out there, wherever he is.”
(Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19, 1994)