The bad news: The Peterborough Timbermen fell again to the Whitby Steelhawks.
The good news: They don’t have to play Whitby again during the regular season.
“We had one good quarter,” said assistant captain Brett Coons. “We came out hard and it was like we wanted to play finally. We won that quarter. We needed to play like that all game.”
The Steelhawks won the season series 3-0, putting up 16 goals, 19 goals, and then 16 again defeating the Timbermen 16-7 on Saturday at Millbrook Arena. It was disappointing for the Timbermen, who had a full 20 runners in their lineup for the first time in awhile and a full complement of talented forwards.
“It’s really good we don’t play them again because they’re a really good team and they work hard,” said Skkylar Thomas. “It was tough to overcome. We just battled and did as much as we could.”
Though they came out with a lot of energy, the Timbermen fell behind early and trailed 6-0 after the first quarter. They quickly rallied in the second with Thomas and Vaughn Harris scoring 24 seconds apart; Harris scored the goal of the year with an NLL-calibre behind-the-net dunk. They managed three more in the frame including a transition goal from assistant captain Brett Coons, and even outscored Whitby 5-4.
Trailing 10-5, the Timbermen kept up the energy in the third, keeping pace with Whitby as they scored two goals each.
“Vaughn was shopping and he gave me a nice pass. Right there in the middle, I just cut through and shot,” Thomas described his second goal. Aaron Woods followed that goal up scoring on a 5-on-3 shorthanded opportunity.
Whitby led 12-7 after the third and outscored Peterborough 4-0 in the fourth.
As has become the norm, special teams contributed greatly to the outcome. Whitby scored five power play goals to Peterborough’s three. Each team scored once shorthanded. Five-on-five play was scarce as the teams combined for 71 penalty minutes. Whitby’s Travis Szabolcs was ejected from the game in the second period for retaliating against Coons, who had laid a legal hit on Cam Milligan. Szabolcs ripped Coons’ facemask clean off his helmet, giving Peterborough a 10-minute power play. Unfortunately, most of that power play time ended up wasted on subsequent 4-on-4 time.
Milligan led Whitby with six goals and one assist. Liam Osborne had three goals and five assists. Recently signed Cole McWilliams contributed a pair of goals and a pair of assists. Lukas Coote got the win in goal.
Troi Benedict and Marko Celic split time in the Timbermen goal.
The Timbermen remain in third place but the Six Nations Snipers are tied with 10 points while the St. Catharines ShockWave and Oshawa Outlaws are right on their heels with 8 points. The Timbermen have a big opportunity to get some breathing room in third with three of their four remaining games vs. teams lower in the standings.
“There’s really good parity in this league so we can’t go in looking like ‘yeah we’ve got a win locked up,’” said Coons. “We have to play hard, run our systems, get in lanes on defense, get good shots on O and all-in-all have a better transition game. We have to have one goal and that’s to win lacrosse games no matter how we do it.”
Next week they play back-to-back away games against Oshawa at 3 p.m. on Saturday and then have a 4 p.m. Sunday date with the second place Paris RiverWolves.
“We’re gonna have to get on our horse and start balling out. We’re decent right now but we have to find our rhythm,” said Thomas.
The Timbermen return home to play their last two regular season contests on March 14 and March 21, both 3 p.m. starts at Millbrook Arena.
Scoring for the Timbermen:
Skkylar Thomas (2-0)
Vaughn Harris (1-3)
Joe Hall (1-0)
Aaron Woods (1-0)
Brett Coons (1-0)
Mitchell Geoffroy (1-0)
Ty Thompson (0-2)
Zack Thompson (0-2)
Todd Chapman (0-1)
Joel Matthews (0-1)
