Rush prepare for change as expansion draft nears
Derek Keenan celebrated his National Lacrosse League championship on a fishing boat with buddies in western Quebec.
Then he went back to work because this off-season will feature plenty of moving pieces.
“It’s a tough one. Tough, tough, tough, tough for a team as talented and deep as we are,” Keenan, the Saskatchewan Rush head coach and general manager, said of the upcoming NLL expansion draft.
Two new teams, the San Diego Seals and Philadelphia Wings, will begin play in 2018-19.
They’ll take two players from each franchise in a draft that takes place July 16.
Keenan, whose Rush clinched the NLL title June 9 by taking two of three games from the Rochester Knighthawks, can protect 11 players, with a maximum of five on the offensive side of the floor, and up to one goalie.
He plans to do a 5-5-1 split: Five forwards, five defenders and goaltender Evan Kirk.
The protected lists will be submitted Monday, and the new teams will have two weeks to get in touch with available players and familiarize themselves with what’s available.
Given the depth of Saskatchewan’s roster, Keenan knows some good, and coveted, players are about to leave the team.
“We’re going to lose a couple of guys, and it’s tough,” Keenan said. “We’d certainly like to keep the group together and try to win again with the exact same group because I think it’s awfully good. But at the end of the day, it’s good for the expansion teams, it’s good for the league, and it’s good for the players because there’s going to be 48 more jobs if you count practice players. It’s good, but it’s not good for us.”
Keenan said the expansion draft now is different than what he’s experienced in the past. It’s easier for incoming teams to build their rosters, but he’s not complaining, he said.
“We started an expansion team in Portland in 2006, and it was a lot more difficult because teams could protect more players. You were delving into the bottom of rosters. That’s who you were getting as an expansion team back then — you were getting the bottom of rosters. Now, you’re getting the middle of rosters. And for us, the middle of our roster is pretty darned good.”
On the bright side for the Rush is their stockpile of first-round draft picks. They have three this season (fifth, 10th and 11th overall) and three in 2019.
Keenan has the option of using those picks to fill roster spots or trading them to bolster the lineup — whether it’s bringing back a player they lost in the expansion draft or somebody else.
The Rush also have two key unrestricted free agents to negotiate with: defender Brett Mydske and transition/defender Jeremy Thompson. But in the meantime, Keenan will submit his protected list and then he’ll wait to see what happens.