Whitby too much for ‘Bellies to handle in Game 1

The Whitby Warriors handled the New Westminster Salmonbellies’ near-perfect start Thursday perfectly.

New Westminster put together a tidy first 30 minutes in the opener of the best-of-five Minto Cup Junior A national lacrosse championship, stymying Whitby’s speedy transition game by limiting turnovers, utilizing the shot clock on offence and simply making sure there were no stragglers on line changes.

Whitby never panicked, though, and they scored two run-and-gun goals two minutes, 17 seconds apart in the later stage of the second period to take a 6-4 lead. New Westminster never really recovered from that and the Warriors raced away with a 16-6 blowout before an estimated crowd of 1,500 at Queen’s Park Arena.

Game 2 is Friday at Queen’s Park. Game 3 goes Saturday at the New Westminster facility.

Ontario champion Whitby came into Thursday night as the clear favourite. The Minto starts as a fourteam round robin, and Whitby won all three of their games by a combined scored of 41-16. Included in that was an 11-5 win on opening night against New Westminster.

The Salmonbellies, the B.C. runners-up, needed to beat the provincial champion Coquitlam Adanacs in a semifinal Tuesday, and upended their heated arch rivals 11-7.

If there was any question that they would be spent from that, they seemed to answer it early on Thursday, as they limited Whitby to just three shots through the first seven minutes.

The game felt up for grabs until Ryan Keenan converted a setup from Darryl Robertson and Connor Laird in transition at 14:25 of the middle period, and Jordi Jones-Smith did the same off a Graeme Hossack feed on the run at 16:42, putting Whitby up by that 6-4 count.

Jones-Smith didn’t have a single goal in 18 regular season games.

Reilly O’Connor, Whitby’s leading scorer during the regular season with 101 points in 19 games, finished with six assists Thursday. Dan Lintner supplied three goals and two assists, Keenan had three goals and one assist and Mitch De Snoo came up with a hat trick.

New Westminster received two goals and one assist from Luke Gillespie, two goals from Connor Robinson and one goal and two assists from Josh Byrne.

Alexis Buque made 55 saves in the Whitby net. Frank Scigliano turned away 33 shots in the New West cage before getting pulled with 10 minutes to go.