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Northmen dominant in game two win
Friday August 1 2008 By Mike Rawn, Staff Writer The Orangeville Junior A Northmen played a flawless playoff game Monday night, defeating the Akwesasne Indians 17-3 at the Tony Rose Memorial Sports Centre.
With the win the Rayburn Construction Northmen took a two-games-to-none lead in the best-of-seven Ontario Lacrosse Association semifinal series. Game three was played last night (Thursday) in Akwesasne. Results were unavailable at press time.
The dominating performance was a polar opposite to game one, played less than 24 hours earlier, when the Northmen were outplayed but escaped with a 10-9 overtime win.
“You can see now why there was a little bit of disappointment [in game one Sunday night],” Northmen coach Matt Sawyer said. “If we play our game, obviously we’re not capable of [winning 17-3] every night, but we feel that we’re a bit stronger than them. We had a good effort. The boys bounced back, they do it all the time on us. Part of the reason that we are who we are is that we’re not satisfied. We won that [game one] 10-9 but we weren’t satisfied; we weren’t satisfied as a coaching staff or as a team. A lot of teams would have no problem with that, but I think the way we handled things had a hand in what happened [in game two].”
The Northmen blazed out to a 5-0 lead in the first period, and led 7-2 after 20 minutes. The home side put the game out of reach by outscoring Akwesasne 7-1 in the middle frame.
“We had some guys that were struggling for a little bit who had some really strong games,” Sawyer said. “Sean Gillies set the tone for us. The first half of the season Sean Gillies was one of our best players, if not our best. And then he had a little lull, which happens with kids. But [Tuesday] he set the tone, picked off passes left, right and centre.”
“We came out flat in game one and it just seems like we’ve been doing that, going back to the Brampton [playoff] series,” Gillies said. “Everyone got on the same page [for game two], and we were more focussed. We weren’t as cocky as we have been, and came out strong.”
Stephen Keogh led the way offensively with five goals. Sean Gillies, Adam Jones and Glen Bryan scored two goals each, and Greg Harnett, B.J. Gerrie, Mat MacLeod, Matt McNutt, Mike Teeter, and Jason Noble added singles. Jeff Ivey and Jones had four assists each, while Gillies, MacLeod, Jeremy Noble and Keogh had three each.
“We just came out from the opening whistle, and we knew we had to stick it to them early,” Keogh said. “We just focussed on that. We wanted to play a full 60 minutes, and we did that.”
Orangeville goalie Nick Rose was only needed for the first two periods, as he picked up his sixth win of the playoffs. Back-up goalie Dillon Ward shut the door in a solid third period.
Despite the lopsided score, Sawyer says his team wasn’t trying to embarrass Akwesasne.
“We weren’t trying to run it up; we were playing the game,” Sawyer said. “We felt they were trying to take some liberties so you can’t let your intensity down, that’s the time you could get hurt. We had our foot off the gas, believe it or not.”
Game four
And the Northmen coach knows that it won’t be this easy in Akwesasne, where game four will be played tonight (Friday).
“We know they are very strong at home,” Sawyer said. “It’s a hostile environment; they get very good fan support. We went down there [in the regular season] and they handed it to us. A six, seven hour bus ride is tough, and we’ll have to deal with that.”

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