It's coming down to truth or dare in the Western Lacrosse Association.
The Burnaby Lakers settled one score in the tightest league finish in decades, winning the season series against the New Westminster Salmonbellies following a 9-4 victory at home over last year's regular season champions.
Burnaby pulled away late in the middle period on former New Westminster junior and rookie Laker Justin Salt's authoritative breakaway marker.
Two minutes later, Matt Quinton scored the eventual game-winner on Tyler Richards after linemate Scott Tinning threaded the needle with a dandy set up at 15:56.
Burnaby outscored the senior 'Bellies 4-1 in the final frame, sending the visitors packing on the road for the sixth time this season.
Dan Lewis got his second win of the season, boosting his league-best save percentage to .838, while also keeping his goals against average under six goals. Richards stopped 30 Burnaby shots in the New West cage.
Alex Gajic tallied a pair of goals for New Westminster. Tom Johnson, playing in just his second game this season for the Salmonbellies, garnered a pair of assists.
The win lifted the Lakers into a tie with the Victoria Shamrocks for second place in what appears will continue to be a race to the wire with five teams still very much in contention for the final three playoff spots.
New West fell back to fourth-place tie with Coquitlam, both with a dozen points.
Langley appears to have a lock on one of those playoff berths after distancing itself from the pack this weekend with road wins over Victoria and Nanaimo. The back-to-back wins gave the first-place Thunder a six-point bulge on the five tightly packed clubs that are separated by just three points from second to sixth place.
"We're not panicking or anything. We're just not clicking right now," said Salmonbellie defender Ian Hawksbee, who acknowledged it is a similar dilemma to last season when New Westminster failed to find cohesiveness from a constantly fluctuating roster heading into the playoffs.
"We're just trying to battle through it as a team," he said.
While Hawksbee also cited a lack of team discipline at times as another concern, he said it is time everyone stepped up their game.
"We just got to get into the playoffs and start from there," Hawksbee said, adding it comes down to one game possibly separating third from sixth place.
But getting into the post season is tricky business this season.
With the win, Burnaby improved its record to 6-5-2, but both Coquitlam, 9-8 winners over Victoria on Saturday, and Nanaimo are both well positioned and hold a single game and three games in hand over both the Salmonbellies and Lakers, respectively.
New Westminster's only game this week is at home against the 10-4-0 Langley Thunder. Next week, the Salmonbellies meet the two Vancouver Island clubs - Tuesday, July 17 in Victoria before returning to Queen's Park on the Thursday to host the Nanaimo Timbermen. Both games will decide the season series between the teams.
Thursday's game against Langley is at Queen's Park Arena at 7:45 p.m.
