Weekend Wrapup: Saints and Adanacs Forge 3-0 BCJALL Semifinal Leads

By Stephen Stamp

Inside Lacrosse

After a busy weekend of action in the BC Junior A Lacrosse League, we could learn who two of the competitors in this year's Minto Cup will be as early as Tuesday night.

The Port Coquitlam Saints and Coquitlam Adanacs swept games Saturday and Sunday from the Nanaimo Timbermen and Burnaby Lakers, respectively to forge 3-0 leads in their best-of-seven semifinals. 

Both series resume Tuesday night, and Game 4 wins for PoCo and Coquitlam would advance them to the provincial finals, but with Coquitlam hosting the Minto, both teams would already clinch berths in the national championship tournament.

Let's take a look at all the Jr A and Sr A action across Canada from the weekend.

BCJALL semifinals

• Coquitlam Adanacs 12, Burnaby Lakers 6
• Coquitlam 9, Burnaby 8

Adanacs lead best of 7 series 3-0

When you look at the whole weekend and see both series now at 3-0, there is an air of inevitability about things. But Sunday's game was far from a fait accompli; Coquitlam had to do some heavy lifting late to pull out the comeback win.

The game was tied 1-1, tied 2-2, tied 3-3, then Burnaby took the lead and held it until Cody Malawsky's second goal of the game—the first of the third period—evened it up again at 6-6 with 13 and a half minutes to play. Burnaby didn't sit and lick their wounds, though: Oskar Lukas replied 13 seconds later to push the Lakers back in front and added a power play marker four and a half minutes after that to make it 8-6. This time, it was Coquitlam's turn for a quick response, with Jaxon Dillon scoring 25 seconds later.

Malawsky scored again to tie it, then again with 3:45 left for what would prove to be the final, winning, goal of the game. That made it 3 straight goals for the Adanacs to pull out a back-and-forth battle and take a stranglehold on the series.

Port Coquitlam Saints 7, Nanaimo Timbermen 5

Port Coquitlam 13, Nanaimo 10

Saints lead best of 7 series 3-0

All the games have been close, but the Saints have almost always had a bit of an edge in the series; Port Coquitlam has trailed for only 3:52 of the 180 minutes in the three games.

On Sunday, Liam Aston exploded for 5 goals and added an assist for Nanaimo, but it wasn't to overcome a 9-point night from Anahalihs Doxtator (2g/7a) and 6 points from Silas Richmond (4g/2a).

OJLL semifinals

Orangeville Northmen 16, St. Catharines Athletics 4

Northmen lead best of 5 series 1-0

Trey Deere scored 54 seconds into the game. 1-0 Orangeville. Joey Spallina scored 34 seconds later. 2-0 Orangeville. Thunder Hill got one back for St. Catharines 42 seconds after that to make it 2-1.

Then the Northmen scored 11 straight goals and at some point during that stretch everyone but hard-core Orangeville faithful started paying attention to other games.

It's not every day that someone scores 10 points in a game, but Joey Spallina hit that mark with a brilliant 5-goal, 5-assist performance. Amazingly, he wasn't the only player to hit double digits: Liam Matthews had 2 goals and 8 assists.

RMLL Jr A semifinals

Edmonton Miners 8, Saskatchewan SWAT 6

Edmonton 10, Saskatchewan 3

Miners win best of seven series 4-0

The Miners will face the Okotoks Raiders for a berth in the Minto Cup after both teams swept their semifinal series.