A's Extract Revenge

Submitted by League Reporter, Jen Mutas

Saturday June 6th was a big day for the Delta Islanders; not only were they the first (and only) team to beat the league leading Adanacs so far in the 2009 season, they kept the A's to only three goals. Wednesday night these two teams faced off again in a much anticipated match up that had the crowd buzzing even before warm up.

Two steps into Poirer Arena and I was immediately brought up to speed on the rumor mill about the possibility of Corbyn Tao not playing, and also about the pre game shenanigans during warm up between the players involving nothing more than pushing, shoving, and some choice words.

Breaking onto the scoresheet first was Corbyn Tao for the A's, who besides having his left leg taped above and below the knee, looked to be absolutely fine. Following closely for the A's was Robert Church, Trevor Moore, Ben McIntosh, and two power play goals from Travis Cornwall to round out the period for Coquitlam. Delta's goalie Blake Duncan had a rough start in net letting five goals slip past him in just under ten minutes, but had the good judgment to pull himself when he got too frustrated. Graham Chandler would come in and round out the period doing well to stop what he could, but wasn't tested too much. Starting out with a goal from Mike Mallory, the Islanders would make a late push in the first and would get goals from Mike Berekoff, Jason Jones, and an unassisted goal from Sean Messenger.

With a two goal lead the A's would continue to keep ahead of the Islanders on offense, and do a great job of playing a physical but disciplined game. Although the A's were only penalized once in the second period on a cross checking call against Tao, Carlton Schuss would make it count to keep the Islanders within reach of keeping it an interesting game. Alex Tuura would score at even strength, and Messenger would sneak one past Chris Seidel short handed, but Coquitlam's six goals in the middle frame would keep them ahead by a five goal margin heading into the final twenty.

The third would start with some long overdue tension between Schuss and Matt Beers who had been checking hard and mouthing off to each other all game. Schuss got his stick up on Beers who went down hard in the Coquitlam zone. A's fans called for a penalty and Delta fans called for an academy award, but either way it was back to the power play for the A's resulting in another goal for Moore and the only one in the period for Coquitlam. A couple of minutes later Steven Shantz would get called for a high stick sending the Islanders to the PP, but they couldn't get a cycle going and were only shooting from the perimeter which gave Seidel all day to see the shots coming. There was a bit of controversy when Brian Jette cross checked Tao so hard that his helmet flew off (or so it seemed), but after some hinting and complaining from Delta players Tao would also find himself in the box with an illegal equipment penalty due to a faulty chinstrap. Tuura would score a carbon copy goal of the one he had in the second, but it was a case of too little too late as time expired and Delta found themselves down 13-9.