Bob Heyes certainly did not like what he saw on the floor at The Q Centre on Friday night and expects a bigger effort from his Victoria Shamrocks, who venture into Frank Crane Arena tonight at 7 to face the Nanaimo Timbermen in Western Lacrosse Association play.
The 13-11 home loss to Coquitlam didn鈥檛 sit well in Heyes鈥� belly, but he will welcome the adversity after having an 11-game winning streak snapped in the defeat, in which his team鈥檚 defensive play was obviously lacking.
鈥淎dversity isn鈥檛 bad. When you鈥檙e playing 15-3 and 18-8 games and everything is going your way, it鈥檚 easy. But when there鈥檚 adversity 鈥� we still have a lot to shore up on the mental side of things,鈥� said a disappointed Heyes.
There was a lot not to like.
His team came out late for the warm-up and that spilled over into the first period, in which the now 11-3 Shamrocks trailed 7-3 after allowing just 6.6 goals against, on average, in the previous five games.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 an internal thing,鈥� Heyes said of the warm-up. 鈥淭he guys weren鈥檛 ready, it鈥檚 been addressed and it won鈥檛 happen again. It showed, yeah, we weren鈥檛 ready to play. A little comfortable, I think, seeing that in most of our recent games there wasn鈥檛 a lot of competition, to be honest.
鈥淲e talked about it, that [the Coquitlam Adanacs] would be a team that would be focused. Our hard work wasn鈥檛 there. When we don鈥檛 work hard, we look awful. You rest on your laurels and you think you鈥檙e better than we are. We鈥檙e not. Plain and simple, we鈥檙e not as good as we think we are,鈥� Heyes said.
Heyes pulled starting goalie Matt Roik twice in that Friday loss. Putting him back in shocked a lot of people in the press box.
鈥淥ur defence wasn鈥檛 great. They left Matt out there by himself and I felt I needed to make a change. I wanted a chance to talk to the guys and give them a wake-up call. It didn鈥檛 work,鈥� Heyes said of putting Roik back in. 鈥淪ometimes your goalie isn鈥檛 playing great and you want him and your whole team to battle through.鈥�
Heyes is expected to go with Cody Hagedorn in net tonight and starter Aaron Bold is due back for the final three regular-season games.
The Shamrocks now face 2-10 Nanaimo, which recorded its lone two victories against Victoria in the first two games of the year.
鈥淣anaimo had our number early and I would expect us to come really focused and get back in that win column,鈥� said Heyes. 鈥淲e still have a playoff spot to secure and first place to secure. It may sound funny, but we鈥檙e not in the playoffs yet. And [the Timbermen] will be up for it. Their season is done, so this will be another thing they want to do is give us another good game.鈥�
CLOVER POINTS: The Shamrocks were without Tyler Burton on Friday, their key face-off man and stellar defender, along with Bradley Kri. Both were out with undisclosed injuries. ... The Junior Shamrocks are down 2-0 in their best-of-5 series after 14-6 and 7-6 losses to Delta with Game 3 on Saturday at Panorama Rec Centre at 5 p.m.
