After struggling to score goals throughout the Canadian Senior Broomball Championship, the Yukon Coates Lead Dawgs finally unleashed their offence in their last game of the tournament.

The Yukon routed host Alberta 6-1 to claim fifth place in the mixed division Saturday, earning a black medal known as B Side Mixed Gold.

Justin Saunders scored four goals in the contest to give him a territory-leading five in the tournament.

"It was just a lot more aggressive and a lot more contact than we play, so it was kind of tough at first,” Saunders said of the national championship.

"We kind of got surprised when we first started playing.”

Matt McDonald and Amber Saunders also scored for the Yukon in the fifth-place game.

Meanwhile, goalie Sheena Laluk allowed just a single goal against.

After dropping their first two games to Manitoba 2-1 and Alberta 3-1, the Yukon dropped their final three to finish last in the round robin.

Cody Claggett scored the territory's only goal in a 3-1 loss to Saskatchewan, before the Yukon was shut out in consecutive games, 8-0 versus Quebec and 3-0 against Ontario.

Quebec beat Ontario 5-1 in Saturday's gold-medal final.

"We knew it was going to be hard, because you can't expect teams to be bad, especially when they're coming from big leagues with lots of players,” said Saunders.

"I'm really disappointed but in the end, we got the win against Alberta. At that point, that was pretty exciting.”

The fifth-place game was the only contest where the Yukon was able to play with a lead, when McDonald buried a shot after a pass from Yukon-league MVP Scott King.

"We didn't have a lead all tournament,” Saunders explained. "We got the first goal and that really made a difference. Everybody loosened up and we got a couple quick ones after that.”

Saunders went on to score four straight before his sister, Amber, redirected a pass from Milford Allain to give the Yukon its sixth goal.

Allain, the president of the Yukon Broomball Association, said the level of competition at the nationals provided a steep learning curve for the Yukoners.

"It really showed us how fast we had to learn to adjust to each game,” he said. "We had to adjust really fast and that was our biggest problem – adjusting to that level right away. It's not that we couldn't do it, but we had to change our defence and offence accordingly.

"We just didn't make the adjustments quite as fast as we wanted to.”

Allain said the 8-0 loss to Quebec was the biggest wake-up call for his club in terms of strategy.

"By the final game, we felt if the tournament started over, we would have no problem beating some of these teams that were a little bit closer. I think the players got a new perspective of the level they're capable of.”

Post-tournament, the Yukon earned an award for sportsmanship.

Allain called it a "nice acknowledgement” of his players' respect for others demonstrated on and off the ice.

The next major tournament on the calendar for the Yukon is the World Broomball Championships in Japan this November.