Winning a Minto Cup is hard, winning two in a row is even harder.
The defending Canadian junior A lacrosse champion Coquitlam Adanacs found out the truth of that statement following a 12-7 loss to the Whitby Warriors in Okotoks, Alta. on Sunday.
Undefeated through the four-team roundrobin, including a 14-8 win over the Ontario champs, Coquitlam earned a bye into the best-of-three national final.
Whitby advanced into the final series with an 8-4 doubling of the host Raiders.
The Adanacs took Game 1 of the final 12-9 on the strength of a seven-goal second period, but missed a golden opportunity to win back-to-back titles, dropping Game 2 to the Warriors by a 5-4 score.
Whitby's Mark Matthews, who shared in Coquitlam's first-ever Minto Cup title as an Adanac in last year's final, scored the game-winning tally for the Warriors in Game 2.
In the deciding game, Whitby scored four straight goals in a 10-minute span of the opening period, forcing the A's to play catch-up for the remainder of the game.
Wesley Berg knotted the game at 5-5 midway through the second period after a brief three-goal rally in a three-minute span.
But Whitby replied a minute later with an unassisted marker from Emerson Clark.
Later in the period, Tor Reinholdt pulled Coquitlam even again.
But the Warriors had an answer for that one, too, scoring a pair of counters half a minute apart.
Whitby goalie Zack Higgins had his strongest outing in the series, stopping 42 Coquitlam shots, including three huge reaction saves in the final frame that kept the A's off the scoresheet in the third period.
Whitby found the back of the net four more times in the final 20 minutes to win the cup in its third consecutive appearance in the final since knocking off the Burnaby Lakers at home in 1997 and '99.
The cup win was the sixth all-time for a Whitby team and fifth for the Warriors franchise, which first won back-to-back Mintos in 1984 and '85 behind MVP performances from Joe Nieuwendyk and Paul Gait, respectively.
