The Nanaimo Timbermen couldn’t build on last week’s win and ended up on the wrong end of a one-goal game.
The senior A T-men were defeated 9-8 by the Burnaby Lakers on Friday on the Lower Mainland.
“I didn’t think we played that bad. We had a lot of opportunities,” said Kaleb Toth, Timbermen coach.
He said Lakers goalie Zak Boychuk, former T-men starter, had a good game. Nanaimo closed the margin to one goal with seven minutes left in the third period, but couldn’t find a tying goal.
“We didn’t get the kind of bounces that we’d like to get sometimes, hit a lot of posts, had a couple breakaways where Zak came up big on us,” Toth said. “But we’ve got to work on that and we’ve got to figure out a way to get those bounces and we’ve got to continue to work hard and move forward.”
Jon Phillips led Nanaimo’s offence on Friday with two goals and two assists and Colton Clark had a goal and three helpers. Brody Eastwood had a goal and two assists and other scorers were Tyson Roe, Dan Michel, Chase Fraser and Jordan Cunningham. Pete Dubenski made 38 saves as shots were 47-45 in favour of the home team.
Toth said his team took too many penalties again and will need to improve its special teams, both the power play and the penalty kill.
“[We’ll] just work on the little things that we need to win games and I’m confident that we still have a great team and we just need to be more consistent throughout the 60 minutes,” the coach said.
GAME ON … The T-men play a midweek game Wednesday (June 7), visiting the Langley Thunder, then play at home Saturday against the New Westminster Salmonbellies in a 6 p.m. faceoff at Frank Crane Arena.
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