Playoff hopes still flickering for Thunder

Clark Walter and the Langley Thunder are still alive but in need of some help in their quest to qualify for the BCJALL playoffs. Gary Ahuja Langley Events Centre photo

All the Langley Thunder can do is sit and wait.

The Thunder find themselves big fans of the Port Coquitlam Saints, Burnaby Lakers and Delta Islanders these next few days as the team is in the unenviable position of needing those three rivals to do the unexpected and pull off the upset victories as the BC Junior A Lacrosse League regular season winds down this week. All three of those squads are already eliminated from the playoff race and are instead relegated to the role of spoilers.

Should the stars align and that happens – either Port Coquitlam beating Victoria in each end of a home-and-home series or both Burnaby and Delta defeating Nanaimo -- Langley would still need to defeat New Westminster in their own regular season finale to qualify for the post-season.

The possibility also exists where all four teams (Langley, New Westminster, Victoria and Nanaimo) finish with identical 26 points, which could happen should Langley win, New Westminster and Victoria lose both games and Nanaimo goes just 1-1) which would require some sort of four-team tiebreaker for the three spots alongside first-place Coquitlam.

But that involves several moving parts all coming together.

In the meantime, Langley made sure they still have a shot at the post-season, defeating the visiting Islanders 14-8 on Thursday night at Langley Events Centre to improve to 12-8 and 24 points with one game to play.

The teams were tied at three after one period and it was still relatively tight at 7-6 Thunder in the latter stages of the second period. But two goals to close the period gave Langley a 9-6 cushion and they pulled away in the third with five of the final seven goals.

The final shots on goal were 64-41 for Langley.

Dylan McIntosh continued his absolute domination of BCJALL goaltenders with another five-goal performance, giving him four or more goals in five straight games and 26 goals in that span.

Carson Rees led all Thunder scorers with a hat trick and seven points while Trevayne Hunter had a goal and four helpers. Clark Walter (one goal, three assists), Bobby Kidd III (two goals, one assist), Kyle Nichols (three assists), Caleb Pearson (three assists) and Nathan McKeigan (one goal, one assist) also had multi-point games.

Braeden Washington made 33 saves for the victory.

Delta was led by three goals and five points from Mitchell Sandberg and two goals courtesy of Mark Yingling.

The Thunder play their final regular season game on Sunday at Langley Events Centre with a 7:30 p.m. start time and the remaining BCJALL games will already have occurred, meaning they will already know if the game has any relevance or not.

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For more information:

Gary Ahuja, Langley Events Centre, 604.613.5242 (cell), 604.455.8830 (office) or email.