The St. Albert Miners fell short in extending their modest winning streak to three games in Wednesday’s 7-5 loss to the Edmonton Eclipse in junior A lacrosse action at Bill Hunter Arena.
While an old adage states that extra effort wins close games, Miners’ goalie Scott Kavalinas believes it’s more about buying into the coaching system that was the difference in the game.
“It was not really a matter of how hard we were working or anything like that, it was us more so deviating from the system that AJ [Jomha] and Todd [Lorenz] put in place for us,” said Kavalinas. “We just need to buy into the system more and put in hard work at practice and conditioning.”
Period scores were 2-2 after the first and 4-3 for the Eclipse (7-8) entering the third. Richard Thompson struck twice in the opening frame for the Miners. Josh Sullivan, Kyle Crowley and Eric Turner rounded out the scoring.
The Miners had eight infractions for 16 minutes and the Eclipse were penalized four times for eight minutes.
The loss marked the seventh time in 15 games this season the Miners (6-9) had a game decided by three goals or less. They currently find themselves in the basement of the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League with 12 points, 16 less than the first place Calgary Raiders (14-2) in the four-team junior A division.
“Our team typically peaks towards the end of the season so we don’t hold the standings too highly at this point,” said Miners’ manager Rob Petz. “It’s unfortunate but we get started a lot later than a lot of the other junior A teams with the boys being away at school.”
With a large population of the team playing post secondary field lacrosse in the United States, it has taken the Miners a while to gel and become an entity that is positioned to succeed.
“As the season goes along, we just have to execute a little better. Our finish is lacking somewhat. We have a good athletic team and the boys have been practicing well but again for some reason we have a situation where we can’t put the ball in the net in a game situation,” said Petz.
The Miners, ranked second in goals scored with 129, are in Calgary this weekend to take on the Junior Mountaineers (6-8) and Raiders. Last Saturday the Miners doubled the Mountaineers 14-7 in Calgary. Five goals by Thompson and Darren Kinnear’s hat trick did most of the damage. Kinnear is the team’s top scorer with 27 goals in 15 games. Spencer Gelinas, Jordan Wolfe, Ryan Davis, David Lehman, Spencer Lorenz and Sullivan also tallied in the win.
“We’re focusing on placing in a good spot but most importantly we’re focusing improving as a team,” said Kavalinas, who sports a 9.83 goals-against average and .769 save percentage in 10 games played. “It’s a huge weekend in Calgary and hopefully we come out with the two wins. We just have to bury our chances and lock down on defence.”
