SEASON CANCELLED
Lakers will have to wait until next year to defend MSL title
For a second consecutive summer, there won’t be lacrosse played at the Peterborough Memorial Centre.
The Major Series Lacrosse league in Ontario and the Western Lacrosse Association in British Columbia announced Tuesday that their 2020 seasons and the Mann Cup national championship have been cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It means the Peterborough Century 21 Lakers, who were displaced from the Memorial Centre last season by floor repairs, will have to put off their pursuit of a fourth consecutive Mann Cup title until next year.
For Robert Hope, captain of the Lakers, it really hasn’t sunk in that the lacrosse season has been cancelled.
“It doesn’t feel real yet,” he said. “We are so early in the summer, but I know it is going to start hitting home here. It is a bunch of mixed emotions, I guess kind of run through you, it is going to be a different summer.”
Hope, who has been with the team since 2013, said during a team video chat, they discussed the inevitability of the cancellation of the season.
It was bound to happen as everything else was being cancelled, he said. “We talked briefly as a team in our group chat,” Hope said. “I don’t really know how it will affect us in the long run, but again it is shocking. Everyone saw the writing on the wall.”
Hope was hoping against hope the season wouldn’t be cancelled despite what he knew to be the inevitable conclusion.
“I think it was in all of our minds that it could happen,” he said. “I was hoping to kind of get a season underway at some point and then get into the playoffs to defend what we have been working at for the last three to four years, another Mann Cup.”
The Mann Cup had been played without interruption from 1925 to 2019.
It was not played five times in the Challenge Cup era: in 1915, ’21 and ’24 due to no challenger and in ’16 and ’17 because the First World War was going on.
Lakers officials had held out hope of getting the season in. The MSL season was set to start in late May with the home opener and return to the Memorial Centre set for early June.
Brian Cowie, media director for the Lakers, said the cancellation of the season might have a negative impact on the talent the team can acquire for next year.
“It might have an effect on young guys coming in,” Cowie said. “We have to continue replenishing our talent every year and get some work done.”
Cowie said he was confident the team still had what it would take to defend the Mann Cup championship title again this year, if the cancellation did not happen.
“For the sake of lacrosse, this would have been our fourth shot at the Mann Cup playoffs,” he said.
“Every year makes a bit of difference, what players are able to play, what’s happening out there,” he added.
“We were pretty confident that we were going to take it again this year. What will be will be next year, I guess.”
The team was hoping to be able to come out strong and really dominate for the fourth win at the Mann Cup playoffs.
“One year old makes a big difference for some of the guys that are out there,” Cowie said.
Many Lakers players also play in the National Lacrosse League, which suspended regular-season play March 12 due to the pandemic
Some also play in the MLL field lacrosse league and Cowie believes their season is still going ahead for now.
“There are a few guys that will continue to play over the summer,” he said.
“They might end up having a oneweek tournament or something, but I am pretty sure the way things are going that it is going to be shut down for them, too.” Commissioners with both leagues had created revised schedules to delay the start of the season in an attempt to get in the Mann Cup series, hosted by Ontario. MSL commissioner Doug Luey and WLA commissioner Paul Dal Monte, in consultation with the
Canadian Lacrosse Association and while considering directions from government and public health authorities, concluded it would not be possible or responsible to play box lacrosse in 2020 under the restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus.
“As disappointing as it is cancelling the 2020 Mann Cup, without question, it is the absolute correct decision,” Luey said.
He said they were delaying the inevitable by holding out hope they could salvage any sort of season.
“We had some provisional plans for a reduced schedule,” Luey told The Examiner.
“Then we revisited that and made an even shorter one and it just got to the point where some facilities weren’t available.”
On Friday, the Ontario Lacrosse Association announced that all lacrosse activities in Ontario have been postponed until at least June 15, while holding out hope that compressed seasons could still be played by Ontario’s other leagues.