PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- A strong effort by the defence corps helped Canada to the game for gold.
Head coach Ed Comeau, defence coach Paul Day and the rest of the staff had the D-men well prepared for their world indoor lacrosse championship semifinal and the result was a 15-10 win over the United States, setting up another showdown with the Iroquois Nationals for the big prize today.
It wasn't easy -- rarely is -- but Canada took control in the second half to break a 5-5 tie.
"We got into a bit of penalty trouble in the first half and it took us a little while to get into the flow of the game,'' said defence-transition specialist Brodie Merrill. "The pace was quicker than what we expected.
"As Eddie has said all week: we stick to our principles and to our game plan, we're an awfully tough team to beat. We feel like we're the best team in the world. We needed to stay patient and allow that to come through.
"We feel pretty confident in that room. We respect the Iroquois team and our focus right now is Older brother Pat Merrill and the rest of the back-end crew kept the Americans to the perimeter for the most part. Few attackers were able to barge through to goalie Matt Vinc's crease.
"We felt really prepared,'' he said. "Paul Day, Eddie and the rest of the coaching staff did a really good job of getting us prepared.
"We watched a lot of game film and we were familiar with their guys from the NLL as well. They're athletic and they can shoot the ball from the outside so we really couldn't afford to give them much. But we've got a lot of depth on the defensive end so as the game went on our depth really showed. We were able to grit one out and give our offence a chance to get going.''
Mike Carnegie was especially effective for Canada on defence.
"We're committed to winning,'' he said. "There's not a guy back there that's selfish.
"Every guy knows his role. The job is simple: get the ball to the offence and let them do their work. It's just a matter of everyone being on the same page, having the same goal, no one playing outside their role and no one being above the team.''
Jeff Moleski of Prince George, who capped the scoring with an empty-netter, seconded those thoughts.
"It was great to get the win,'' he said. "Everyone knew it was going to be a battle.
"They came out to play and so did we. It was a great, fast-paced game and we came out on top.''
Nobody got rattled when it was tough-and-go in the first half.
"We knew that if we stuck to our game plan the result would go our way,'' said Moleski.
There were a lot of ice packs in the dressing room afterwards.
After mowing down Slovakia, England and Australia 81-8 in round-robin play, it was time for some serious business against a hungry U.S. team stocked with as many NLL pros as Canada's team.
Dan Dawson and Rhys Duch scored four goals each, John Grant Jr. three, Colin Doyle two, and Jeff Zywicki had one. Casey Powell led the United States with four goals, Kevin Buchanan and Brendan Mundorf got two each and Matt Alrich and Paul Rabil also scored.
The 4,900-capacity arena was half full, and it was stinking hot.
"It was like playing summer ball back home,'' said Sandy Chapman. "The temperature gets up pretty high during the games. It's a little bit tough because we're only playing with (the tournament roster limit of) 16 guys. Our conditioning definitely helped us.''
In the other semifinal on Friday Roger Vyse scored six goals to lead Iroquoisto a 19-6 win over the Czech Republic. Brett Bucktooth and Edmonton's Jeff Shattler both had a hat trick for the Iroquois, while Dean Hill and Cody Jamieson had two goals each.
