The Halifax Thunderbirds remain perfect on the season.
The new National Lacrosse League team beat the Buffalo Bandits 15-10 in front of 13,576 fans at the Keybank Center on Saturday to improve to 3-0. It was their first road game of the year.
Mike Burke had a hand in more than half of Halifax's goals, scoring twice and setting up six others. Ryan Benesch also finished with a hat trick and three assists for the Thunderbids, who led by as much as 15-6 at one point.
"It was just good ball movement and working as a unit," Halifax head coach Mike Accursi said. "We're offence by committee and defence by committee. We want all of our guys to be able to score and contribute on the front end and they did that tonight and we ended up with the W."
Cody Jamieson (three goals, two assists), Kyle Jackson (one goal, four assists) and Stephen Keogh (one goal, four assists) all had five-point nights for Halifax and Jake Withers won an impressive 22 of 28 face-offs. Austin Shanks, with two, Graeme Hossack, Eric Fannell and Clarke Petterson had the other Halifax goals and Warren Hill made 39 saves.
"I thought we started slow but Warren made some great saves and the D stood tall for us," Keogh said. "On offence we started moving the ball and moving our feet, and (goals) started dropping. It was a pretty good effort."
Josh Byrne (three goals, two assists) and Dhane Smith (two goals, three assists) led the attack for Buffalo (1-1). The Thunderbirds only allowed two goals at five-on-five.
“That is the strength of our team,” Accursi said of his team's defence. “That’s what we expect out of them, and they continue to perform well. It always gives us a chance to win when our defensive unit plays like that.”
The Thunderbirds' next game is on Jan. 11 at home against the Colorado Mammoth.
"I think we've got to keep working and keep getting better, that's been our talk every game," Keogh said. "We've got a bye week so we've got put the work in and just keep going."
