John Grant Jr. got off a plane
at 4 pm, made his way to the Toronto Rock Athletic Centre for an 8pm
start and proceeded to fill the net with three goals in the first 25
minutes of play to lead the Peterborough Lakers to a 9-7 win over the
Oakville Rock Monday Monday night. Grant scored the first two goals
of the game and the opening goal of the second period as the Lakers
jumped out to a 5-1 lead.
After that, Oakville started to find
their game in their season opener and outscored the Lakers 6-4 the
rest of the way. The Rock made it all the way back to within one goal
at 8-7 when Stephan Leblanc scored his third goal of the game
at 15:40 of the third period. Mark Steenhuis gave the Lakers
some insurance with two and a half minutes left when he bounced an
off-speed shot past Nick Rose to reach the final score.
Grant, who scored on his first two
shots of the game, arrived from Denver in the afternoon. He'll be
back in the Lakers lineup Thursday when they play the Brooklin Redmen
then will be heading back to the United States for a month. “I shot
till my arms got tired then I was pretty much useless after that,”
Grant said. He gave credit to teammates Scott Self, Brad
Self and Shawn Evans for playing after being in the
National Lacrosse League championship game Saturday night but pointed
out that they may have been a bit tired as the game went on as well.
Matt Vinc was also in the lineup but served as the backup to
Tyler Carlson.
“That is a young, athletic group and
they ran, so we had to run,” Grant said. He expects to be in better
form on Thursday. “I'll be rejuvenated when I get to play in the
Mem Centre and hopefully there's a lot of people there. What can I
say? That's why I come back to play in the summer to play at home.
I'm really excited.”
Leblanc, meanwhile, was pleased with
the performance of his team in their first game of the season,
although he was disappointed they didn't get the win. “We've got a
lot of new faces in this dressing room and it's going to take some
time,” Leblanc said. “This is a good game to build off of.
Obviously you want to come out top in those games but it's definitely
something to build on and the team looked good.”
Oakville is off till next Monday when
they play host to the Six Nations Chiefs.
Peterborough 9, Oakville 7 (Box
score)
