Extra! Extra!

The Saints took game two of the series five days ago in a thriller match that ended with the Saints taking their first win over the Lakers in thirteen years. With the series tied, game three would be the turning point, with no room for error. 

Lots of action in the first fifteen seconds of the game, starting with Poco goalie Tyson Cornfield being called for roughing on Brock Armour; barely ten seconds later Shaun Dhaliwal made use of that power play with a nice set up from Alex Gajic. 

Dane Stevens would put one in and put the Lakers ahead by two, but then the Poco offense went to work on Tom Wray and the Laker defense. Within two minutes Trevor Evans, Scott Jones, and Jordan Flaman had all scored to give the Saints the slim 3-2 lead to head into the second.

The Lakers would turn it around in the middle frame with goals from Gajic and Stevens, and two short handed goals from Riley Loewen and Mike Gilmore would give it an extra punch. Andrew Murphy would put in two goals for Poco in the second, but this time it was Burnaby who would take the slim lead into the final period.

Both teams came out with urgency in the third and it was the Saints who drew first blood with Trevor Evans scoring just under a minute in; and from then on the goals would all involve special teams. Gajic would score on the cross checking penalty against Jordan Currie, Darcy Cummings would score a beauty unassisted goal on the unsportsmanlike call against Brock Armour; Dhaliwal made a superb short-handed effort to get the Lakers eighth goal of the game, but Scott Jones would even it up with a short handed goal of his own thanks to a bad bounce off the boards and miscommunication between Scott Lowe and his defenders. 

Game two had its fair share of excitement between the tight game and the penalty shot awarded to Ryan Kwasnica in the last two minutes of the game; game three would prove no different, with the game having to be settled with an overtime period.

Adding to his two goals and two helpers on the night, Shaun Dhaliwal would score the eventual game winner for the Lakers with a sniper of a shot set up from Matt Miyashita and Alex Gajic. Warren Will would add insurance with the Poco net empty and the final score after seventy minutes was 10-8 for the Lakers.

Both teams played an engaging game of lacrosse with equally impressive performances. Poco came out and gave Burnaby a formidable opponent, but the Lakers pressed that much harder. Brock Armour had a great night for Burnaby, he only had one assist on the evening but he provided a lot of the hustle on the floor, as well as owning faceoffs- winning fourteen, and losing only six. He struggled to put the ball where it needed to go, fought hard for loose balls, and advanced the ball very well.

Game four in this series goes Tuesday night in Port Coquitlam where the Saints will try for another home win and Burnaby will try for the advance.