Their playoff hopes effectively over with six games left, the Albany FireWolves are thinking about the future beyond this season.
Part of their past will visit MVP Arena on Saturday.
Veteran defenseman Greg Downing, traded to the Toronto Rock two weeks ago, will return with his new team to MVP Arena for a 7 p.m. National Lacrosse League game.
Downing, dealing with a bad knee, said he’ll travel to Albany but was uncertain whether he’ll play.
When: 7 p.m.Â
Where: MVP Arena
TV: My4 Albany
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“I’ve never played in this arena on the visiting team,” Downing said. “Certainly, I don’t even know the entry to go and not walk by the home locker room. I’ll have to figure all that out.”
The FireWolves have lost eight straight games to fall to 2-10. They moved Downing to Toronto in exchange for a second-round pick in this year’s draft.
The transaction allowed Downing, 37, to pursue an NLL championship with Toronto (10-4) while giving the FireWolves another future asset as they rebuild. Downing is still looking for his first NLL title and acknowledged this could be his final season.
“I think this is kind of the nature of it when you’ve got some veteran guys on one-year contracts and, obviously, the seasons’s not going as planned in Albany,” Downing said. “Had some bad injuries and wasn’t working out for us. I think they started looking ahead to the future and you’ve got a team in Toronto that has some injuries on their defense and they’re just looking to shore up their defense a little bit and kind of hold it down until their big defenseman come back.”
Downing made his Toronto debut in a 14-12 loss last Saturday at Halifax.
FireWolves general manager and coach Glenn Clark said Downing did the team a favor by agreeing to the deal. Clark said he…
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