It was an opportunity Wallaceburg, Ont. native Tye Belanger couldn’t pass up and the Burnaby Lakers couldn’t be happier.
Belanger garnered his league-high fourth win of the season, backstopping the senior A Lakers to an 8-4 victory over the Coquitlam Adanacs at the Bill Copeland Sports Centre on Tuesday.
The 24-year-old former junior goaltender of the year with Peterborough in 2011 made 33 stops with a 0.892 save percentage, including all 15 shots in the final period to put Burnaby all alone in third place with a record of 5-4-0.
Prior to hearing of Burnaby’s interest in finding a starting goalie from his NLL coach in New England, Belanger had turned down other offers from teams back east.
But the chance to be a starter again was too good to pass up.
“I had a bad year in Colorado (in the NLL) last year and needed this to regroup again and be relied upon,” Belanger said after Tuesday’s win.
Since coming to Burnaby earlier this month, Belanger is 4-2 and has registered a third-best 6.85 goals against average in league play, while posting a top-five save percentage of 0.830.
“We’re keeping teams to low numbers and if we keep teams under six goals we have a real good opportunity to win games,” said Belanger.
On Tuesday, that opportunity came in the second period following a four-goal mini run by Burnaby, including the eventual game winner from recent pickup Steven Neufeld, who finished off a nifty three-way passing play in close from Scott Jones and Peyton Lupul with his third tally in just his second game with the Lakers.
Burnaby then finished off the A’s in the final frame on Robert Church’s second of the game and first star Dane Stevens’ hat trick goal from Belanger at 16:43.
The win was the third in a row for the senior Lakers.
“We’re playing well,” said Belanger,” it’s exactly what you want - to get better as the season goes on. I don’t feel like we’re peaking too early. We’re still going up. There’s half a season left, but we’re feeling pretty good.”
Burnaby is off for a week until it hosts Langley at the Copeland centre on Tuesday, June 30 at 7:45 p.m.
