It was Country Night on Saturday inside Langley Events Centre as the Stealth hosted the Roughnecks.
But even having the home court advantage, the Langley-based pro lacross team couldn’t pull out a win against Calgary.
Calgary opened the scoring nearly four minutes into the first, the Stealth answered back with two goals in 23 seconds to close the first quarter with a 2-1 lead.
The offence exploded for both teams in the second as they combined for 10 goals and Vancouver closed the half with a 7-6 lead.
Calgary continued with another five-goal quarter while the Stealth got markers from Matt Beers and Brandon Clelland to finish the third with an 11-9 deficit.
The Roughnecks added two more goals in the final to finish the game 13-9.
It was a busy night for goaltender Eric Penney as he faced 69 shots on goal, turning away 56 of them including a 15-save first, 14-save second and a 16-save third. Corey Small, Logan Schuss, and Pat Saunders each had a pair of goals while Matt Beers, Rhys Duch and Brandon Clelland had the others.
“Any time you lose, it is going to be disappointing. We battled hard and we are coming together as a team, but we came up short again,” said goaltender Eric Penney.
“In the dressing room, everyone has each other’s backs. We are a tight-knit family and although this is not the circumstances we want to be in, we are still battling. The next three games are huge, we need to battle because a lot of us are going to be playing for our jobs next year and hopefully we can play spoiler to a couple teams and we are just going to look at every game as a championship game.”
The Stealth will be off next weekend as they are on a bye-week.
Week 19, Vancouver returns home to host the Saskatchewan Rush in a special Friday night game for Lacrosse on the Move Night. Kids wearing their favourite jersey get in free with a paying adult. In addition, the first 500 kids will receive a Stealth team set of cards.
Tickets to the next home game are available at StealthLAX.com.
