With new coach Jamie Batley preaching work ethic and extra effort and scoring stars Garrett Billings and Logan Schuss sidelined with injuries, the Vancouver Stealth’s game Saturday against the Saskatchewan Rush seemed destined to be a scrappy, defensive affair.
So much for that.
The Rush beat the Stealth 24-16 before a crowd of 3,425 at the Langley Events Centre, riding an seven-goal run in just over seven minutes in the fourth quarter to the victory.
That Saskatchewan surge was just shy of what Vancouver gave up in last week’s entire game, a 9-6 road loss to the Toronto Rock. A better stat? Vancouver sniper Rhys Duch had six goals on his own Saturday night, to go with five assists.
Losers of four straight, Vancouver (3-8) is now four points in back of the Calgary Roughnecks (5-7) for the third and final playoff spot in the National Lacrosse League’s West Division, although the Stealth do have a game in hand. The regular season is 18 games long.
Batley, who took over from the fired Dan Perreault this week, has some work to do, particularly if Billings (lower body injury) or Schuss (upper body injury) are out long term. Batley couldn’t say after the game how long either will be sidelined.
To his credit, he was pumping up the positives with the media after the game Saturday. He’s known as fiery, emotional guy, which is a stark contrast from the more reserved Perreault.
“We want to forget the first seven minutes of the fourth quarter,” said Batley, who is best known in lacrosse circles for his five Mann Cup national club championship victories with his hometown Peterborough Lakers. “Maybe we were going too hard and the guys got tired. We made tired mistakes.
“At that point, it got away from us. Up until that point, I thought we played great. We battled back from four goals down twice. We’re really proud of that.”
It seemed that Vancouver actually had momentum going into the fourth quarter. They had their goalie on the bench, in favour of an extra attacker, in the waning seconds of the third, with the Rush leading 16-15.
They turned the ball over, and Saskatchewan hit a desperation shot from their side of centre seemingly just as the buzzer sounded. It was initially ruled a goal, but then, upon review, it was called back.
The Stealth couldn’t capitalize. Mark Matthews of the Rush made it 17-15 with a nifty drive to the net at 1:14 of the fourth, and Saskatchewan face-off man Jeremy Thompson scored seven seconds later, grabbing the ball off the draw and darting into the deep slot before rifling a shot home. And then Matthews scored again 12 seconds after that, off a feed from Thompson.
Three goals, 19 seconds. That’s the ball game.
“Maybe we’re a little bit out of shape. Maybe we got a little tired,” said Batley. “We’ll have to fix that.
“The style is going to be a little different. It’s going to be high intensity, high pressure. There’s going to be a learning curve. It can’t be a big learning curve. It can only be a little one.
“We have three good periods to look at. There’s a lot of good things we did.”
Besides the 11 points from Duch, Vancouver got five goals and three assists from Joel McCready, two goals and six assists from Corey Small and one goal and five assists from Jordan Durston.
The Stealth were down 7-4 with five minutes to go in the first quarter and 14-10 at halftime.
Schuss is now second in scoring for the Stealth, his 18 goals and 39 assists on the season leaving him six points behind Duch. Billings’ 12 goals and 37 assists are good enough for fourth on the team in points, one in back of Small.
Zack Greer supplied five goals and six assists for Saskatchewan, while Matthews had two goals and eight assists.
Saskatchewan netminder Aaron Bold, who helped the Rush win the NLL title last winter based in Edmonton and then helped the Victoria Shamrocks grab the Mann Cup over the summer, had a rare off night, getting the hook early in the third quarter after giving up 13 goals on 31 shots.
Tyler Carlson gave up three goals on 19 shots in relief.
Vancouver starter Tyler Richards allowed 10 goals on 28 shots. Eric Penney was tagged for 14 goals on 39 shots.
