When Brampton eliminated St. Catharines in seven games, it meant the Warriors would face the Six Nations Arrows in Round 2, a team that has yet to lose a game this season after going 17-0-1 in the regular season and sweeping Burlington aside in four games to open the playoffs.
Sunday night the series kicked off and the result played out just how the standings indicated it might. To their credit, the Warriors hung tight for two periods before watching it all unravel in the third as the Arrows registered a convincing 13-5 Game 1 victory.
Warriors head coach Jeff McComb was very straight-forward Monday when asked to describe the contest.
"I would say that they were very good (last night) and we weren't very good," stated McComb. "That's a very good synopsis of the game."
Game 2 of the series went last night (after our deadline) in Whitby, while Game 3 is slated for Thursday at Six Nations.
The outlook in the opener appeared bright for the Warriors in the early stages after single goals from Marc Jackson and Derek Hopcroft's first of three on the night just 1:56 apart.
However, a couple bad penalties and power play goals against quickly shifted the momentum into Six Nations' favour.
McComb understands taking penalties is something that is bound to happen throughout the course of the game, however, it's the undisciplined ones, like the two that cost them goals in the first period, that weigh on his mind.
"We know that they have a deadly power play," he says. "We are going to take penalties, but we just have to avoid taking the bad, frustration, off the ball away from scoring opportunity penalties. We took a couple, they scored on both of them and we went from being up 2-1 to being down 3-2 and that kind of took our momentum out."
NOTES: Game 3 goes Thursday night at Six Nations, with Game 4 at Whitby's Iroquois Park Sunday at 8 p.m... Phil McIlhone scored the other Warriors goal in Game 1... The Jr. A all-star teams have been announced and five Warriors will play in the game slated for Aug. 9 at Iroquois Park. Zack Greer, Steve Hutchins, Jay Winder, Matt Carroll and Joel Weber will represent Team Minto.
