It’s halfway through the Arena Lacrosse League season and the Peterborough Timbermen are sitting pretty in second place after a 16-12 win over the Paris RiverWolves on Saturday afternoon at Children’s Arena.
Being Family Day weekend, both teams were missing players with prior commitments. The RiverWolves made do with 12 runners, one of whom was goaltender Nolan Clayton, while the Timbermen rounded out their full roster with Scott Arseneault and Tyler Grandelle from the U22 Timbermen.
The Timbermen had most of their big guns in the lineup as the offense took it to the RiverWolves early and often in the first quarter, building up a 6-1 lead. Colton Armstrong, who played more of an offensive than transitional role on Saturday, had a hat trick in the frame. Mark Vradenburg, Aaron Woods and Doug Utting also scored.
Paris started off hot in the second, scoring three straight to close the gap to 6-4. Woods then traded goals with Josh Medeiros before the Timbermen closed out the half at 9-5 with another pair of goals from Parker Sands and a fourth from Armstrong.
Head coach Joe Sullivan was impressed with Paris’ resiliency with so few runners, but obviously instructed his team to take advantage of their opponent’s fatigue when the chance arose.
“We tried to push the floor in transition to expose their numbers and tire them out a little bit. Hats go off to them because quite honestly they responded better than I thought they would have and they played well. We got on a couple of runs and they couldn’t respond because they were tired and undermanned but for the most part I thought they played a great game.”
The RiverWolves put together a solid third quarter but had too big of a hole to dig out of after Cameron Simpson and Joe Hall scored early on. Medeiros sandwiched a Dan Keane marker but a shorthanded goal from Simpson stopped the RiverWolves’ momentum.
“Coach picked me up for my stick handling skills and one-on-one situations,” Simpson said. “Usually we wait until there’s 10 seconds left in the shot clock to shoot but they pushed me pretty hard right away so I just went for it. When someone gets on my back and they start pushing too hard I just roll out of there, I see the next person I roll past them, and just keep rolling. It’s the bowling ball effect and I just get to the net and when I’m close enough I just shoot it.”
Simpson has 26 points in seven games (15G/11A) and is third in the league with five power play goals. He possesses a unique ability to get through any defense in front of him, as he called it, the bowling ball effect.
“Simpson has a dynamic that we’ve never had before to the state where he can go one-on-three and still hang onto the ball, draw penalties and he can finish,” said Sullivan. “When you get that kind of intangible talent on the floor it really adds to the arsenal that we have and that other teams don’t have and can’t defend.”
Up 12-9 heading into the final frame, Woods’ third, Armstrong’s fifth and Simpson’s third goal made it 15-9. Simpson added a fourth before the game was over.
“I could see their fatigue on the offensive side, the way they were playing defence,” Simpson said. “Their pick and rolls were a little bit easier to go through and they kind just started to go for big hits instead of being smart positionally. That made it easier for us.”
It’s a quick turnaround for the Timbermen who are back in action Sunday afternoon at the Iroquois Lacrosse Arena in Six Nations, visiting the first place St. Catharines ShockWave at 4 p.m.
“I know were drastically going to be shorthanded with commitments that players have due to Family Day so it’s a tough weekend but we’ll go at them as hard as we can,” Sullivan previewed. “We’re the top two teams in the league and it’ll be a great game. Hopefully we’ll have the same heart that we saw Paris put on today when they were short numbers.”
