New head coach Jason Dallavalle noted prior to Sunday’s season opener that offence is typically one of the last parts of a team’s game that comes together.
Based on the third period power show by his Burnaby junior A Lakers, Dallavalle was dead-on.
The Lakers launched the 2017 B.C. Junior A Lacrosse League season with a solid 10-6 victory over the visiting Victoria Shamrocks.
Paced by Mason Pomeroy’s four goals, Burnaby displayed a well-rounded performance in a game where both teams had their share of runs.
But while the Shamrocks looked sharp to start the game – which was their second of the season,
after a 16-4 win over Nanaimo on Friday – they were swamped by the Lakers’ strong second half.
Burnaby erased a four-goal
deficit en route to the come-from-behind victory, giving its new head coach an indication of what they can do.
“There were stretches early
in the second where (our) defence
felt a little flat, but halfway through the period you could see us come together,” said Dalla-
valle. “We started playing more determined, and you could see Victoria sink.”
After Burnaby’s Jordan Gabriele opened the scoring midway through the first, the Shamrocks rattled off five straight to lead 5-1 three minutes into the middle stanza.
A three-goal run by the Lakers
cut it to 5-4, but Victoria’s Ben Preston picked up his third of the game with 1:20 remaining in the period to make it 6-4.
But Burnaby wasn’t done.
Pomeroy’s second goal of the day, coming with four seconds left in the middle frame and the goalie on the bench, provided just the right lift.
“We discussed it earlier, Jamie (Floris, Lakers’ assistant coach) and I, and thought if we got the ball late we’d take the chance. Sometimes it can burn you, but this time it worked,” said Dallavalle.
Pomeroy, a sophomore, counted his third goal just nine seconds into the third to tie the game. Less than a minute later, Gabriele put the Lakers in front for good.
The offence kept rolling, with Jesse Gastaldo and Kurtis Shum converting shorthanded opportunities with Brian Madill serving a four-minute minor to make it 9-6.
Pomeroy would wrap up his four-goal performance with a marker midway through the third.
“You could feel the momentum shifting in the second period,” noted Dallavalle. “In the (second) intermission we had a talk with the players about all the hard work they had put in and how it would come down to who wanted it more.
“In the end, we did.”
Netminder Graham Husick turned back 37 shots, and was credited by his coach for holding down the fort when Victoria was pushing it in the first period.
“(Husick) had one of his better games that I’ve seen,” said Dallavalle. “Early on he really shut the door and kept us in it.
“The whole team really stuck to it, played aggressive, clogged up the middle and were strong on transition. They really checked all three boxes we wanted to focus on.”
With the team still missing about a dozen players, off still at university, Burnaby still has some work to do to put last year’s 3-18 record behind them. The last time it posted a winning record during the regular season was in 2009.
It’s a very encouraging start.
“That (third period) penalty kill was a big point for us; in previous years that would have been our kryptonite and brought us down, but the guys did the little things and got rewarded.”
Burnaby’s next test comes Monday, 8 p.m. at the Bill Copeland Sports Complex against the Langley Thunder.
