Thunder advance to BCJALL finals

Goaltender Brayden Wandler gets a lift from fellow goalie Troy Cuzzetto following Wandler's 36-save game four performance on Sunday which advanced the Thunder to the BC Junior A Lacrosse League championship series. Ryan Molag LEC photo

For the first time in club history, the Langley Thunder will be playing for the BC Junior A Lacrosse League championship.

The Thunder booked their spot in the championship series after a 10-7 win over the visiting Nanaimo Timbermen on Sunday afternoon at Langley Events Centre. The game four victory clinched the best-of-five series three games to one for Langley.

Langley’s opponent will be either the top seed Victoria Shamrocks or the fourth-place Coquitlam Adanacs as that series is currently tied at two games apiece with a winner take all game set for Tuesday in Victoria.

The winner of the BCJALL best-of-seven championship series will advance to the Minto Cup in Brampton, Ont.

The Minto Cup is the ultimate prize in Canadian junior A lacrosse and pits the winners of the BCJALL, the Alberta Junior Lacrosse League and the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League, as well as a host team.

“Every team’s goal is a Minto Cup and you can’t get there if you don’t take each step and this is the first one, so the guys should be proud that they did it, but understand it is a big staircase,” said Thunder coach Adam Smith.

Sunday’s game four saw Langley jump out to a 4-1 early in the second period before Nanaimo stormed back, sending the teams into intermission tied at five goals apiece.

Kyle Brunsch scored a short-handed goal with 13:54 to play the break the tie before Kaden Doughty’s breakaway transition goal gave Langley a 7-5 lead. Cody Malawsky made it 8-5 with the team’s first power-play goal of the game and Noah Armitage struck for his third of the contest to wrap up a 4-0 run.

The Timbermen did cut the lead down to 9-7 with 68 seconds to play but Isaac Ngyou rounded out the scoring with an empty-net goal in the final minute.

Armitage led the Thunder with a hat trick and five points while Malawsky scored twice and had three points. Doughty (one goal, two assists), Brunsch (one goal, one assist and Stuart Phillips (two assists) all had multi-point games while Drew Andre, Declan Fitzpatrick and Ngyou had a goal apiece.

Brayden Wandler made 36 saves on 43 shots and the Thunder goaltender finished the four-game series with a .792 save percentage and a 9.26 goals against average. Nanaimo’s Justin Geddie finished with 50 saves as his team was outshot 60-43, including 23-13 in the third period.

The Timbermen entered game four averaging nearly 13 goals per game in the series with the duo of Ryan Sheridan (10 goals, four assists) and Jacob Dunbar (10 goals, two assists) leading the offensive attack with a combined 20 of their team’s goals.

But game four saw Sheridan (one goal, two assists) and Dunbar (two goals, one assist) held to three points apiece.

“Defence today, stood up, executed exactly what we asked them to do to a T … couldn’t ask them to do anything better back there,” said Thunder head coach Adam Smith.

The Timbermen – who were the second seed and had home-floor advantage in the series over the third-place Thunder – had staved off elimination the day before with a dramatic 14-13 double-overtime victory in Nanaimo.

Langley led by two goals with less than six minutes to play but the Timbermen scored twice on the power play to force a 10-minute overtime period. Nanaimo when ahead 13-11 in the extra frame before Langley rallied back to tie the score at 13, forcing a sudden-death period with Dunbar striking for the decisive goal.

“It was disappointing, but we fought hard, double overtime and it just didn’t go our way,” said Langley captain Matt Abbott about the team’s mindset following the game three defeat.

“Today we came out and didn’t need to change much; it was just little details and outwork them: that was the name of the game today,” he said. “We knew we just needed to do the exact same thing: lock in on their guys and keep playing our game because what we were doing was working but just didn’t go our way on Saturday.”

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