The senior B Miners got off to a slow start as they shook off the rust Wednesday night against the Edmonton Outlaws in Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League action.
The No. 2 ranked Miners pulled out a 7-2 win against Edmonton in a penalty-filled game. The victory puts St. Albert at 8-4 this season.
“With two weeks off, I kind of had a feeling we’d be a little rusty,” says head coach Vay Diep. “But I did not expect to be that rusty. To be honest with you it was ugly, really ugly, even though we won. But we found a way to win. I’m happy with that, but we’ve got some work to do.”
Both teams began a parade to the box in the first period, but the Outlaws weren’t able to capitalize on one and two-man advantages to get the ball past goaltender David Marrese.
St. Albert’s Sean Reid scored the first goal almost five minutes into the game with the teams at even strength.
Diep said hard work and Marrese’s goaltending kept Edmonton from scoring on the power play in the first.
“We really worked on our man short because we knew that we tend to get those kind of calls towards us,” Diep says.
Miners captain Nate Schmidt says killing the penalties was hard work, but they have their all-star netminder to thank.
“It was tough, but we got our best penalty killer back and that’s our goalie. Dave Marrese’s back,” the captain says. “He was playing out west so he’s back and it’s nice to have that safety net. We don’t always want to have to rely on him, but it’s definitely a nice positive feeling when he’s back there for us.”
Marrese, a third-string Edmonton Rush goalie was on the active roster for the Langley Thunder of the Western Lacrosse Association.
Both goalies were kept busy, but the Miners’ home game Wednesday saw more players in the box than pucks in the net. The Outlaws racked-up 50 penalty minutes with the Miners close behind clocking 41.
And the feuding didn’t end with the game. After the buzzer the Miners’ George Turner earned five minutes for checking from behind and a game misconduct for a confrontation with Edmonton’s Jordan Lypchuk who walked away with five minutes for roughing and a broken stick.
The floor cooled down for a time after the Outlaws got on the board early in the second period when a left side shot from Paden Holt got past Marrese.
Diep called the team to bench to calm them down. He told the players to “make a decision if they want to play lacrosse, or play the gong show that we’ve been playing.”
“It seemed like we were holding our sticks a little tight and being more aggressive than we should have to be,” he says.
“The coach gave us a good talking to in the middle of the second period and told us to get our game together, the rust is no longer an excuse after two periods,” Nate Schmidt says. “So we came out in the third a little better, ready to win the game. We didn’t want to cough up that two-goal lead we had going into the third.”
In the second period, David Ahl scored the second Miners goal followed by a netter from Nate Schmidt leaving the score at 3-1 for the Miners at the buzzer.
Twenty seconds into the third Edmonton’s Lypchuk headed to the box for a five-minute high sticking call and Nate Schmidt’s brother Chris capitalized on the man advantage scoring goal for the Miners 14 seconds later.
The Outlaws came back with a goal by Travis Bland at the halfway mark, but St. Albert was picking up steam.
Late in the period Steve Tessarola and Josh Sullivan put balls past the Outlaws goaltender and Tyler Douglas put the final nail in the Edmonton coffin with an empty netter with just over two minutes left in the game.
“We’ve got a deep team offensively and everybody can put the ball in the net,” Schmidt says. “Their goalie, I tip my hat to him, he played good. We had a slot of quality shots that he stopped, but we finally snuck a couple past him and that was enough to get it done.”
Noticeably absent from the Miners’ roster Wednesday night were both Cornfield brothers. Jordan was working down in High River and both he and brother Graedon will be returning to the line-up.
