Fury dominate as Comets lose second straight

The Kansas City Comets dropped their second straight home match by a score of 11-8 at the hands of the Ontario Fury, virtually ending any postseason hopes left this season for KC.

The Comets entered with a fully healthy squad aside from Robert Kelly’s season-ending broken fibula despite the speculation of Ignacio Flores missing after missing the second half of Friday’s loss to the Wave.

Adam James of the Comets and Juan Carlos Gonzalez of the Fury exchanged goals inside the first three minutes of play. Odaine Sinclair then opened his Comets scoring account since his return after Stefan Stokic and Kevin Ellis did the defensive work to put the Comets up 2-1, but Nestor Hernandez and Jiho Lee responded to give the visitors their first lead of the game. Juan Topete and Jiho Lee scored for the Fury to give them a 5-2 lead after the first quarter.

Goalkeeper Chris Toth assisted Franck Tayou’s first goal of the day after Kiel Williams found himself on the wrong side of the league’s greatest goalscorer to make it 6-2. Leo Gibson finally gave the home fans something to cheer about late in the second quarter after beating Toth on the shootout to put the halftime score at 7-3.

Franck Tayou capped off his hat trick with two goals in the third quarter with additional goals from Maicon De Abreu and a buzzer beater from Kiel Williams to end the third period with a 10-4 scoreline. The Fury added to their lead with a Nestor Hernandez goal before the Comets ended the game with four consecutive goals from Ignacio Flores, Kiel WIlliams, and two from Leo Gibson to complete his hat trick to put the final score at 11-8.

The Comets second consecutive home loss puts their record at 8-9 while the Ontario Fury grab their sixth straight win and improve their overall record to 10-8. The scoreline sounds much more kind than it really should have been as the Comets fought back to a more respectable scoreline.

MASL’s two greatest scorers did not disappoint as both Franck Tayou and Leo Gibson added three goals and one assist to their names, which put Gibson at 250 career regular season goals for the Comets. Chris Toth also came up with some critical saves before the game got out of hand.

In his first ever visit to SEC Arena, three-time MASL MVP ‘The King’ Franck Tayou did not disappoint as he finished the week with four hat tricks, adding up to 12 goals and eight assists in four games. Here is what he had to say following his team’s impressive display, “the toughest part is staying focused. Whether it is the travel or just the fatigue, just stay focused on the goal, which is winning. That hunger for victory after throwing ourselves in the hole got us going.”

Head coach Leo Gibson was very disappointed with his team’s defensive effort, “We did start good this game, but after a while we went back to being lackadaisical and not playing aggressive defense. We weren’t staying with our runners, just, we were not smart.”

The Comets will hit the reset button and look to beat the Ambush next Sunday as they make their third and final visit of the season to the Family Arena.