Comeau’s first priority as GM? Replacing himself
The resume grows thicker and thicker for the man with the lacrosse golden touch.
Hamilton’s Ed Comeau is the new general manager of Canada’s men’s box lacrosse national team, as it points toward the 2019 world indoor championships in Langley, B.C., next September.
The 52-year-old has enjoyed extensive coaching and managerial success in Canada’s national summer game. He helped found McMaster’s men’s field lacrosse team as a player then coached it for 23 years culminating in the 2010 national title. He’s been in the National Lacrosse League for more than 20 years, has twice been its coach of the year, and once its GM of the year, and his teams have won six league titles.
And he’s been with the Canadian box lacrosse team since its inception in 2002.
The national team has won all four previous world indoor championships, with Comeau behind the bench as assistant coach in 2003 and 2007 and head coach in 2011 and 2015.
“It’s a great honour to be in the national team program at any level,” says Comeau, who’s also head coach of the Georgia Swarm, the 2017 NLL champions. “I’ve been involved for a lot of years and it was a logical step to stay involved, but move into a new role. I’ve been head coach for
two world championships and it’s something others deserve a chance to do.”
Comeau will set up tryout and training schedules and help evaluate players for the national team but one of his first priorities will be to replace himself. He expects to have sifted through applications for coaching and support staff positions and have made his choices by the end of the year.
The player selection process will begin in the first quarter of 2019.
This is an important healing period for Canadian international lacrosse. A bitter dispute between the Canadian Lacrosse Association and the National Lacrosse Team Players Association over health insurance, and the CLA’s charity status, was not resolved until mid-June.
That clash resulted in the resignation of the previous national team’s board of directors and the scrapping of the Heritage Cup game between Canada and the Iroquois Nationals, planned for FirstOntario Centre next month.
Comeau, who’d coached Canada to its Heritage Cup win over the U.S. in Hamilton last October, stayed on as coach until the turmoil settled down. Then he applied for the GM position and was unanimously awarded the job by the selection committee.
“We had some really strong candidates, mostly other NLL executives,” said Jason Donville, the CLA’s Director of High Performance. “Ed had a stronger resumé and we knew his commitment to the program. He’s player-centric, and that’s particularly important for a national team: the players aren’t getting paid so the GM and coach have to be somebody the players really want to play for.”
Next year’s Mann Cup for the senior men’s national
championship will be played in the west in early September, followed closely by the Worlds.
That could impact the national team roster as some top eastern players might not be able to take that much time away from their off-floor careers. Comeau plans to build roster depth accordingly.
Canada is 24-0 at the world championships and has also won the last three Heritage Cup international games.
Comeau was an assistant coach under GM Johnny Mouradian and head coach Les Bartley in the first of the four Heritage Cups, against the U.S. in Mississauga in 2002.
“We picked an all-star team instead of picking players for specific roles and the U.S. came in and gave us a really painful lesson,” Comeau recalls of 2002. “It was a revelation, and we haven’t lost since.”