 |
| Brock Boyle was a thorn in the Peterborough Lakers side over the last two seasons. Now he is joining the team. (Photo: Tim Prothero, VintageLax) |
The Peterborough Lakers have added
speedy transition player Brock Boyle in the wake of losing yet
another defender from their roster. Andrew Watt was injured in
Minnesota's National Lacrosse League semi-final last weekend and is
likely out for the season, said Lakers Head Coach and General Manager
Jamie Batley. In exchange for Boyle, the Lakers sent a
third-round pick in next year's Major Series Lacrosse draft to the
Oakville Rock.
“We've had a few guys go down this
year and we just had Watt go down and it doesn't look like he'll play
the rest of the year, so we needed to scramble to get a guy to fit
in,” Batley said. “Brock Boyle's a veteran player. I think he's
pretty decent defensively and he transitions very well, which is the
style we like to play. Any time we've played against him in the last
couple of year's he's played really hard and usually scores a goal or
two against us, playing for Ajax. It was a guy we thought we could
get to more or less replace Watt.”
Batley said he isn't concerned about
Brock's play in the CLax season recently completed, in which Boyle
played just four regular season games but led the league with 70
penalty minutes and seemed to be distracted from playing his usual
fast, gritty transition game.
I didn't watch very much of that, so I
don't know the situations, I don't know the history, I don't know
what happened. “We're not looking for Brock Boyle to be a fighter
or anything like that. We're looking for him to play good defence and
transition the ball, and make good decisions,” Batley said. “If
he doesn't do that, he won't play. It's pretty basic and simple. I
think that he has a lot of respect for me and hopefully he has a lot
of respect for the Lakers organization. That's something that we
can't have. We don't condone it. It'll only happen once if it
happens. I don't expect there to be any problems.”
The 30-year-old Boyle has played a
total of 99 MSL games and scored a total of 63 goals and 34 assists.
Joining the Lakers gives him the rare feat of having played for every
team in the league. He even played a game for St. Catharines before
they moved to Kitchener-Waterloo.
The Lakers are without defenders Watt,
Mac Allen and Andrew Suitor, all of who are out for the
season with injuries. They also will likely not have Chris White,
who is getting married this summer, or Mike Hobbins. They are
looking to Boyle and former Laker Alex Henderson, reacquired
from Oakville in early April, to help on the defensive end along with
Junior Laker alumni and CLax standouts Mark Farthing, Pete
Rennie and Eric Bissell.
