Huntsville won the first game of their best of three playoff series with the Cornwall Celtics Sunday, with a score of 14-13, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart.
The game started off well with Huntsville building up a 3-0 lead in the first three minutes and moving ahead 5-1 after the first period. But the Celtics weren’t done for the day. They stormed back and narrowed the margin to two goals after forty minutes.
Then in the third period Cornwall scored five straight goals to take the lead and things looked ominous for the Hawks. Ted Logan was assessed a five minute major penalty for high sticking and the Celtics capitalized scoring two power play goals.
Logan had lost the ball in front of the net and took exception to the rough play of Cornwall’s Scott Hope. Hope stayed on the floor and scored one of the power play goals.
Chris McLaughlin and Tyler Conn led the night in scoring
But the Huntsville combination of Tyler Conn and Chris McLaughlin went to work and scored five goals to take the lead and the Hawks held on for the one goal victory.
Conn had six goals and assisted on four more for a ten-point night. McLaughlin scored four goals, three of them in the third period. Brett Handsor, who just a couple of weeks ago was named to the Ontario Midget team, scored three times and was a big factor in the Hawks’ victory. Josh Zantingh had a single to get the game started 18 seconds into the first period.
“I just love running the two man game with Chris,” said Conn. It’s something we’ve done since he started playing junior. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but we just so happened to get it rolling when it mattered.”
“They’re pretty potent,” said coach Joe O’Halloran. “When they’re going they’re going and when they’re not they’re not but luckily tonight, they were going.”
Brett Handsor also helped us. For a kid who steps into our lineup as a midget player, he doesn’t seem to shy away. We haven’t seen so far many players who can beat his speed and that’s his number one threat. He picked up three goals because no one could catch him. Two of them had no assists. It was just him grabbing and going with the ball and speed kills.Coach Joe O’Halloran
The next game in the series is Friday in Cornwall, and if a deciding contest is needed it will be back in Huntsville Saturday night.
“Again we need to play 60 minutes of lacrosse and not have our lapses,” said O’Halloran. “We need to stay focused. These kids are still learning. We have to stick to our game plan. If we can build on how we played in that first period scoring five goals then we will be okay.”
Zack Hubbard was in goal for the Hawks, and his play particularly in the last half of the third period was also a main factor in Huntsville taking the 1-0 lead in the series.
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