Photos courtesy of: CHRISTINE LIU
The Peterborough Century 21 Lakers record fell to 2-3 on Thursday after a 12-10 loss to the Brooklin Lacrosse Club at the Peterborough Memorial Centre. It’s the Lakers’ second consecutive loss after a 9-6 defeat at Oakville on Monday.
Brooklin has taken strides to improve their lineup after four consecutive seasons of falling to the Lakers in the MSL semifinals. They had a balanced attack and strong goaltending from Steve Orleman.
“They were a problem for us tonight,” said goaltender Nick Rose, who made his first start of the season. “But we feel like we didn’t play at our best. We get them again next week, so we’ll see. We have to come ready to play against anyway.”
Indeed, the Lakers face Brooklin next Wednesday at Iroquois Park Sports Centre, and then will face them once again at the PMC on June 25 for the rubber match.
Rose made 36 saves in his first start since winning the NLL Cup with the Toronto Rock last month. It was a rough outing on Thursday with the teams going back and forth, neither finding much momentum.
“I wasn’t great when it mattered,” Rose said. “I think I had some good moments in the game but especially in the third period I wasn’t on top of my game and that may have been a big difference. Getting back into summer ball is a bit different than the winter game but that’s no excuse; I just have to be better.”
Rose recognized that “there’s a standard here in Peterborough and that’s why [he] wanted to come here last year.
“A lot of respect for what has been built here. Where we’re at right now isn’t good enough for that standard but as long as we keep building and get to that standard come playoff time then I like where we’re at.”
Rob Hellyer, who had four goals in the game, agreed.
“We gave away a couple. But it’s game five and there are 18 games in a year so we can turn this around in a hurry.”
Hellyer, who leads the team in scoring with 23 points in four games, said in addition to cleaning up small mistakes, one key to a better performance is to stop their opponents in transition. Each possession change saw Brooklin push the ball up the floor extremely fast.
“They run,” Hellyer acknowledged. “Every team that we’ve lost to has been running. Nations is good, but the other two teams just constantly run. We have to figure out how to do better, conditioning wise, and just stop those fast breaks because I think they wore us down.”
Brooklin led 3-2 after the opening frame. Dylan Hutchison’s second of the season in transition kicked off the Lakers’ scoring, with Brad McCulley hitting the back of the net early in his season debut after serving a four-game suspension from last season’s playoffs.
Hellyer scored a pair to start the second, with Taggart Clark and Jakson Raposo responding for Brooklin. McCulley traded goals with Landen Sinfield towards the end of the period which kept BLC up by a goal.
Eleven goals were scored throughout the first 40 minutes – and 11 more were scored in a wild third period. The game was tied at sixes and eights before Connor Kearnan and Will MacLeod scored back-to-back for a 10-8 lead. Cam Milligan’s second of the season got one back but Brooklin scored two of the last three to maintain the lead.
(Article submitted by: Anna Taylor, Social Media Coordinator)
