Panther City Lacrosse wins its 2023 debut, beats visiting Las Vegas

The Panther City Lacrosse Club opened their season with a 13-11 win over the visiting Las Vegas Desert Dogs at Dickies Arena on Friday night.

Will Malcom led the winners with four goals and three points, while Phil Caputo added three goals and four assists.

Panther City scored snapped a 7-7 tie by scoring six of he eight goals in the third period to take a 13-9 edge.

“I love the fact that both of them seemed to be composed. Both are obviously big contributors on our offensive side,” Panther City coach Tracey Kelusky said. “Malcs (Malcom) was dangerous from the get go. His first shot goes in and he is a guy that once he gets going with some confidence he is hard to stop. Caputs (Caputo0 on the other side didn’t have a great camp because he was nursing an injury and then the more the game wore on, the more he got in a rhythm and we need those two guys to contribute every night for us.”

Three different Panther City defenders caused two turnovers (Liam Byrnes, Pat Foley and Liam Patten) and newly acquired Tony Malcom (older brother to Will Malcom) led the club with eight loose balls, while also registering an assist.

In his debut, first overall selection in the 2021 NLL Entry Draft Jonathan Donville recorded three assists. Fellow rookie Cam Wengreniuk also recorded his first ever career goal in the third quarter.

Panther City will travel to face Las Vegas again next Friday in Las Vegas for the Desert Dogs inaugural home game. The game will be televised by ESPN2 and face-off is set for 9:30 p.m. CT

This story was rewritten from a press release issued by Panther City Lacrosse.