The Nanaimo Acme Timbermen lost their series opener to the Tri-City Bandits, but know they can be a lot better.
The Acme Painting Timbermen fell to the six-time defending champs by a 10-6 score in Game 1 on Wednesday night at Frank Crane Arena.
Mike Maughan, coach of the senior B Timbermen, said the visitors were more effective on special teams.
"Their power play really made us pay when we took some penalties and we had our own chances on the power play that could have got us back in, but we didn't capitalize and [they scored] a couple short-handed goals," Maughan said.
Devon Casey scored twice for the T-men and Ryan Clark, Jon Diplock, Josh Fagan and Ryan Forslund were the other scorers. Nick Patterson tended goal as shots were 47-37 in favour of Nanaimo.
The T-men misfired on a lot of their passes, leading to turnovers. Maughan said the Bandits do a good job of pressuring the ball and said his team wasn't used to that level of pressure.
"First we've got to just secure the ball, then we've really got to use each other to get ourselves open," he said. "Off-ball, guys have got to get open and cut hard and make themselves available so that we can take advantage of that pressure and find some open space."
GAME ON … The T-men visit the Bandits on Saturday (Aug. 9) for Game 2 of the West Coast Senior Lacrosse Association finals. Game 3 will be Sunday at 6 p.m. at Frank Crane Arena.
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Acme T-men were presented with a trophy as the WCSLA's regular-season champs. Young fans admire the hardware… pic.twitter.com/sRjcvwWTpm
— Greg Sakaki (@BulletinSports) August 7, 2014