RUSH TO VICTORY
‘Unbelievably talented’ NLL Cup squad will lose key pieces during expansion draft
Saskatchewan Rush goalie Evan Kirk celebrates after defeating the Rochester Knighthawks during the championship game at Sasktel Centre on Saturday to claim the team’s third National Lacrosse League title in four years.
Smoke swirled around Jeff Shattler’s head Saturday night deep in the bowels of Sasktel Centre. He clenched a stogie in his teeth, as city bylaws tumbled.
He’d just won a championship, hugged it out in a confetti shower, discovered with teammates there really was no way to drink out of the National Lacrosse League’s new and impossibly shiny NLL Cup.
“Apparently we can’t,” said Saskatchewan Rush head coach Derek Keenan. “Apparently if you do, you could die.”
Well, we don’t want that. So cigars it was on a night when the Rush and 13,645 onlookers felt so very, very much alive — a 15-10 victory over the Rochester Knighthawks giving the team a 2-1 series win and its third title in four years.
“I’m so glad they welcomed me into their family,” Shattler said, “and I had the opportunity to win a championship tonight.”
Shattler — a free-agent signing after 11 seasons with the Calgary Roughnecks — collected four goals and an assist Saturday after picking up seven points the week before during a 13-8 loss in Rochester, N.Y. He was named the NLL’S playoff MVP for his troubles and said one reason he signed with Saskatchewan was because he wanted to enhance his odds of winning another title. He certainly did that. Shattler wasn’t around last year, when the Rush pulled their netminder while holding a onegoal lead in the dying seconds of a do-or-die finale with the Georgia Swarm — trust us, in lacrosse, that’s a thing they do. Captain Chris Corbeil failed to corral a pass from Jeremy Thompson at mid-field. Georgia recovered the turnover and scored into an empty net, tying the game with two seconds on the clock, then won in overtime.
Corbeil told Keenan the loss, and that Georgia celebration, was his fault; if he’d been a better lacrosse player in that split-second at mid-field, the series would have gone another way.
Nonsense, said Keenan, who quickly put the blame on his own shoulders.
But the moment has run in a replayed loop through Corbeil’s brain since.
“Oh yes, it was (my fault),” Corbeil said while watching his teammates celebrate on the Sasktel Centre floor.
He thought about it in the week leading up to Saturday’s Game 3.
“There’s a lot going through your head,” Corbeil said. “You can’t help but go back to what happened last year. Derek’s an unbelievable coach, general manager and leader of this group and of course he took the blame for it. But anybody who watched knew. That was a routine catch I needed to make. But I’ll be forgetting about it for tonight.
“I think it’ll be a little more the loops of the performance Shattler had tonight and the saves (Evan Kirk) made and the shutdown defence Kyle Rubisch had. That’s what’ll be running through my head.”
Corbeil watched the NBA’S Golden State Warriors win their third title in four years Friday night and noted that “it didn’t seem that emotional.”
“I remember turning and saying, ‘Guys, if we’re fortunate enough, I promise you this: It’s going to mean a lot more to me and this group than it does to those guys’ — or at least it seems to. It means so much.”
That meaning ramps up even more, Corbeil said, because this particular group will never play together again. The league is adding new franchises in Philadelphia and San Diego for 201819 and the Rush will lose two players to the expansion draft. They can protect 10 runners and one goalie or 11 runners and no goalie. Just five offensive players can be protected.
“It’s something I touched on a couple of times before the game,” said the 30-year-old Corbeil, who scored three goals Saturday, a hefty number for a defender. “I told them this is the last chance this group will get to play together and this is one special group. Unbelievably talented, but not just great lacrosse players. Great people who work hard and go to bat for each other. I’m proud of every single one of my brothers tonight.”
Keenan, meanwhile, said he’s going fishing next Saturday. After that, he’ll get to work. He has until July 3 to submit his protected list and the draft goes July 16. On the bright side, he’s stockpiled a ridiculous array of draft picks — three first-rounders each in 2018 and 2019.
“I’d like to keep these guys for as long as I can,” he said. “But the reality is expansion’s good for the league, good for the game, good for the players who should be in this league and aren’t.”
The team will congregate one final time later this week, which may or may not delay Keenan’s planned fishing trip. Team owner Bruce Urban plans to send them to a faraway place.
“We’re probably flying out on Thursday, the whole organization, for a really well-deserved four days to let loose,” Urban said. “I’m sure the players have a lot of bruises and welts and stitches that need to heal up after this series. The medical staff has been working on some guys, trying to keep them together. It’s going to be a well-deserved gathering — somewhere hot.”