Aug 24, 2007 -- Adanac Ale, a hefty brew named after Coquitlam’s Sr. ‘A’ lacrosse team, was doing something late Wednesday night in the Sports Centre lounge that the New Westminster Salmonbellies’ offence couldn’t do for four straight games.

Flowing.

The celebration was on after the Adanacs –– bolstered by goalie and series MVP Chris Levis –– once again riddled the Salmonbellies, this time by an 8-7 margin, to sweep the best-of-seven Western Lacrosse Association playoff final and advance as hosts of the Mann Cup national championship. The A’s will play either Ontario’s Brampton Excelsiors or the defending-champion Peterborough Lakers for the Canadian crown Sept. 7-15 at the Sports Centre.

The Salmonbellies saved their best fight for last Wednesday, knotting the score 5-5 on a Cliff Smith marker at 3:57 of the third period. Both teams pledged defence for virtually the next seven minutes, until the A’s Geoff Snider put Coquitlam up 6-5 following an end-to-end rush and a bounce shot through the legs of New West goalie Matt Disher. Joel Dalgarno and Taylor Wray –– on clever long breakaway passes from Trent Smalley and Bruce Murray respectively –– scored within a 2:30 span to seemingly put the A’s in complete charge at 8-5 with fewer than seven minutes left.

But the Bellies refused to stop, with Jordan Hall’s goal with 1:57 to go and Chris Gill’s tally with 41 ticks left closing the gap to 8-7 and keeping Coquitlam fans’ fannies planted in their seats.

However, Snider won the ensuing faceoff, per usual, and the A’s didn’t permit the Bellies so much as possession of the ball again. Levis finished with 43 saves.

“Nobody expected a four-banger and we gave it to them,” said the A’s captain Murray, the leader of a Coquitlam defence that held the high-powered Bellies to just 29 goals in four games. Conversely, the A’s racked up 47 goals in the series and always seemed to strike net at the most crucial time. Despite the lopsided goal differential, New West outshot Coquitlam in three of the four games.

With ice packs strapped to both knees, Murray, for one, was glad to wrap up the series at home against a gritty, young Bellies team and earn a two-week break before the Mann Cup’s start.

‘We know they had too much character to lie down,” Murray said. “That’s a young team over there and if you give them any sort of life they’re going to come right back, so it was really important for us to get this over with tonight and not have to go back to New West and that big floor.”

Regardless if they play Brampton or Peterborough (Brampton held a 2-1 series’ lead heading into last night’s Game 4), the A’s feel they have what it takes to win the big prize. The Adanacs’ first and only Mann Cup crown was captured in 2001, when they beat Brampton in a dramatic seven-game marathon at the Pacific Coliseum.

“This is a childhood dream for a lot of guys... to be able to play for a Mann Cup,” Murray said. “Not a lot of guys get to do it. We just have to play the way against we did against New West, and the way we did throughout the playoffs, and we should be able to hoist the [Mann] Cup.”

Bellies head coach Bob Salt, a two-time Mann Cup champion in 1975 and 1977 as a player with the Vancouver Burrards, believes the A’s are a good bet to win it all this year.

“Absolutely, I think so,” Salt said. “The way they play ‘D’... I think the east [team] will shoot a little better than we did but, yeah, they’ve got a team to win a Mann Cup, no doubt about that.”

As for his Bellies, who were favoured to win the series, Salt agreed Wednesday’s game was their best effort but they still came up short.

“This was the best defensive game we had, absolutely,” he said. “I thought we played well at times but we seemed to have the same problem all series... we just made little mistakes and they put it in our net. I think it tells the story when they [WLA officials] pick their goalie [Levis] as MVP. We just couldn’t beat him. We had our chances and he played really well. When the goalie plays well, what are you going to do?”

Bellies captain Nenad Gajic played last winter with Levis on the National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth.

“I told him in the line-up [to shake hands] that he won the series for them,” Gajic said. “He definitely played out of his mind.”

Everybody appeared in agreement that Levis was deserving of top player honours, even though his A’s teammate Colin Doyle racked up 24 points in the four-game series.

Levis only got the starting nod at the start of the series when A’s veteran Dallas Eliuk couldn’t commit due to personal reasons. A’s general manager Les Wingrove admitted to being a tad stunned by Levis’s overall performance and some of his incredible acrobatic saves versus New West.

“I think I’d be lying if I said he didn’t [surprise me],” Wingrove said. “He really stepped up to the plate. He fully deserved the MVP. I would have been pissed if he didn’t get it.”

Peter Vetman led the A’s offence Wednesday with two goals and one assist. Other A’s marksmen apart from Snider, Dalgarno and Wray were Daryl Veltman, Steve McKinlay ad Jason Wulder.

PoCo product Peter Morgan had two goals and two assist for the Bellies.

RAG LINE: Despite the extremely aggressive nature of the game, only 24 penalty minutes were dished out, including 14 to New West... The retired Pat Coyle, a defensive stalwart and captain of the A’s 2001 Mann Cup-champion team, was on hand to offer congratulations to Coquitlam players after in the dressing room.