1992 MILL Championship Game: Buffalo Bandits at Philadelphia Wings

Long time no see Bench Warmers! To make up for lost time, boy do I have an epic for you today!

This is the most requested video in the history of this channel and here it is, the 1992 epic at the Spectrum between the then 2 time MILL Champions, the Philadelphia Wings and in their first season, the Buffalo Bandits.

Longtime Bandits' star Jim Veltman would later claim this was the greatest game he ever played in or witnessed. I don't think anything can touch this game's intensity or the crowd heat. You certainly never see pro lax playoff games with crowds like this today.

Your hosts are John Horton, using his wrestling alias, Craig Johnson and longtime voice of the MILL, Leif Elsmo.

The Bandits started their inaugural season 0-3 before going undefeated the rest of the way. In fact they would not lose another game until mid season in 1994. They were among the first MILL teams to really go all in with Canadian lax veterans with older, experienced stars like Derek Keenan and Alexander the Great, Darris Kilgour and goaltender Bill Gerrie. They also had 2 rookies that would define the franchise for the next decade; Jim Veltman and 20 year old John Tavares, who would wear the black and orange of Buffalo through the 2015 season, retiring this summer arguably the greatest player in MILL/NLL history. Their coach, through 1997, the late Les Bartley.

The Wings had an interesting lineup in 1992 with many familiar names from their 1980s teams such as Rob Shek, Chris Flynn, Paul French, Tony Resch, Dallas Eliuk Scott Gabrielson, coach Dave Evans, and in his last game as a Wing, #2 John Tucker.

This game is historic because it is the first MILL/NLL final to be decided by overtime. There really isn't much more I can say about this game, you need to see this one for yourself. Be warned, the audio is pretty harsh so you may want to turn your volume down low for this one.