by CANADA 12, IROQUOIS NATIONALS 9 – GAME SHEET
COQUITLAM, BC – The Iroquois Nationals built a 6-5 half-time lead but Canada scored two quick goals to open the third quarter and never trailed again. With just over five minutes left in the third quarter, an electrical issue force an electrical stand to smoke, causing the lights to cut out at the stadium field. The game had to move to two other fields before finishing – one did not have enough working lights to safely light the field and the other had a timer go off and caused a delay of almost an hour before play could safely resume.
“There’s only so much you can do,” said Canadian head coach Taylor Wray after the game. “You try to keep them loose, focused, moving a little bit. That’s pretty much all you can do. You have to worry about the things you can control.”
Canada scored the final four goals of the game and defended their lead well in the final 10 minutes. Jeff Teat (4G, 2A) led the red-and-white offence, with single goals coming from Riley Curtis, Ryan Lanchbury, Tanner Cook, Marshal King, Dylan Follows, Tre Leclaire and Thomas Semple. Tehoka Nanticoke paced the Iroquois with five goals, several worthy of the highlight reel, while Austin Staats was again impressive with three goals and four helpers. Matthew Bennett added the other Iroquois goal.
Canadian netminder Kyle Hebert made six saves for the win, while Tyler Armstrong made 11 saves in the loss for the Iroquois.”It was a really hard fought game. There are some unbelievable players on both teams,” Wray said. “Their guys made some pretty incredible plays tonight, almost indefensible plays. You’ve got guys draped all over them, and they make great catches, turn and spin and shoot. I mean, I don’t know what to tell our guys to stop that. They have some great players.”
“And our guys battled hard, too,” Wray added. “We needed guys to step up and make plays. Kyle Hebert was awesome, Dalton Fallows made two huge plays for us in fourth quarter. And that’s what you need on a team, you need different guys to step up at different times. We were fortunate to have those big plays made to give us some separation.”
Canada (2-1) will take on Australia (1-1) on Monday at 4 p.m. The Iroquois (1-1) will face the United States (2-0) at 7:30 p.m.
“We have to take care of business tomorrow. And Australia will be a tough matchup,” Wray said.”They have shown great patience throughout the tournament and the key I think for us is to build a bit of a lead early and stop them from trying to slow the tempo of the game down.”
Canada is vying for one of the first two positions in the Blue Division after the round-robin, as the top two teams get a bye through to the semifinal round.
“An extra day of rest is huge,” Wray said. “It gives us time to talk things over and watch some more film, game-plan a bit more for the semifinal match-up. In a tournament like this where you play so many games in a short amount of time, that is huge for a team.”
