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When National Lacrosse League scores start to get a bit wacky, you gotta figure the emotions do, too. So as I sat there Saturday night in Rochester, watching the Knighthawks feed their lead over the Wings in the fourth quarter, I kinda figured they were feeding the tension, too.

A scrap or two is fine, even cool to see, but you never like to see the game put to shame. And here it is two days after the Knighthawks’ 20-12 win and I’ve still got a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve always been big on winning with class and losing with class and unfortunately, there wasn’t much of it at the end of the game. But the fortunate thing for us is that someone over at WingsZone.com was quick to provide a YouTube video that lets us be the judge of the sequence that started with someone getting all up in the grill of a goalie. Read on, and you’ll see it.

Goalies do get run, that happens. But shove a keeper who is in the crease with a crosscheck, and you gotta know hell’s comin’ your way. No doubt Philly’s Geoff Snider got the reaction he was looking for when he shoved Pat O’Toole head over heels into the cage, and the Knighthawks on the floor were quick to have their say.

Yet once that scene cleared out, Rochester’s Shawn Evans got his vigilante justice on, and used the very next possession to take a run at Philly keeper Brandon Miller. Weak sauce, dude.  You got a problem with the shove on O’Toole? Understandable. Miller had nothing to do with that, though. Line up the fella who made the push, and there’s no excuse because Snider was on the floor and you know damn well he’s willing to defend himself and his innocent goalie. How do we know that? Because it wasn’t long after the dust settled from that mess that we saw Snider was chasing someone … anyone … to fight.

There’s no doubt it’s easy to be caught up in the emotions of such a tight tilt, especially with 8,000 fans eggin’ ya on. And it’s even easier to sit in the stands and point out the way you think things ought to be. But the whole thing was sad to see, really. Emotions got the best of two great players.

And beyond all that, possible suspensions to both these guys could hurt their clubs. The Knighthawks are fighting for their playoff lives and love him or not, Evans is an absolute bulldog on the floor and the ‘Hawks will definitely miss his presence. As for Philly, these guys have to learn to win on the road if they’re gonna be title contenders. They’ve lost their last three on the road by scores of 9, 7 and 8 goals. And with four of their final six games on the road, Philly may have to do some of that learning without Snider in the lineup.

What happened on the floor is a shame, no doubt. A bigger shame will be if both of these clubs enter the crucial stretch of their schedules with two of their better players ridin’ the pine for a game or two.

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