’Rocks counting on experience
GAME DAY: NANAIMO AT VICTORIA, 7:30 P.M.
The Victoria Shamrocks won’t have to leave the Island for a Western Lacrosse Association playoff series for the first time in 61 years.
It seems the most natural of rivalries. Yet, the last time the Shamrocks and Nanaimo Timbermen met in a WLA playoff series, the Soviets had just launched Sputnik, Elvis was swivelling with Jailhouse Rock and a glass of beer at the old Ingy on Douglas was 10 cents.
The regular-season second-place Shamrocks (12-6) and third-place Timbermen (10-7-1) open their best-of-seven semifinal series tonight at The Q Centre. It will be the first post-season WLA meeting between the Island cities since 1957. Both previous venues, the old Memorial Arena on Blanshard and Civic in Nanaimo, are long gone.
This series will be especially emotive for Shamrocks head coach Bob Heyes, who hails from Nanaimo.
“The Civic Arena was jam packed when I was growing up,” said Heyes.
“It was awesome. I hope this series rekindles that sort of passion for the WLA in Nanaimo. There are more Shamrocks fans travelling up and in stands at Frank Crane when we’ve played in recent seasons than Nanaimo fans. The Timbermen have worked their butts off to put a quality team on the floor and I hope people in Nanaimo respond to that. This is going to be a great showcase for Island lacrosse.”
A big reason for the dearth of Harbour City fans — not to mention historic lack of playoff meetings between Victoria and Nanaimo — rests with Nanaimo’s many failures on the floor up to this point. The Timbermen are in the playoffs for the first time in 11 seasons and for only the second time in the 14 seasons since rejoining the WLA in 2005. Their only previous appearance in this incarnation was in 2007, when they lost in five games in the first round to the New Westminster Salmonbellies.
Nanaimo previously played in the WLA from 1951 to 1961 and 1975 to 1981. The first was a successful era which led to Nanaimo’s only Mann Cup national championship in 1956 and second WLA title and Mann Cup appearance as runner-up to Port Credit, Ont., in 1960. The Timbermen never made the playoffs during their second run in the league, despite a team that boasted the likes of Kevin Alexander, Bob Cool, Brian Evans and Jim Lynch for the early part of that second era.
(The Nanaimo Luckies were a one-off when the Shamrocks and other WLA franchises went pro in 1968 and 1969 in the National Lacrosse Association. So Nanaimo’s WLA title and Mann Cup appearance in 1968 comes with an asterisk.)
Nanaimo’s current ascension is a tribute to two-time Shamrocks Mann Cup champion Kaleb Toth, who was such a slashing and dynamic offensive threat at Memorial Arena in green and also in the pro NLL for his hometown Calgary Roughnecks. In eight seasons as a player with the Timbermen, followed now by five seasons as head coach, Toth has painstakingly retooled this former punching-bag franchise.
No longer are Lower Island and Lower Mainland draft picks allowed to beg off when drafted by the Timbermen. Toth used tough love, saying to his recruits: Let’s turn this around and build this together. It’s worked.
“We’ve been through a lot of players, but we changed the mentality,” said Toth.
Now, however, the Timbermen go into their first playoff series in more than a decade, as prohibitive underdogs, against a Shamrocks club that is an annual WLA contender and which has practically lived in the post-season.
“We have experience on our side. We have been through the playoff battles and Mann Cup battles, both wins and losses,” said Heyes.
“I am hoping our experience is a deciding factor in this series.”
But he knows the problems that can be presented by a team with really nothing to lose, especially one that won six of its last seven games to clinch a playoff berth.
“Nanaimo has youth and speed, and they don’t know any better, and don’t feel the pressure,” warned Heyes.
If long-in-the-tooth history is any harbinger, Victoria beat Nanaimo in that last playoff meeting en route to the 1957 Mann Cup national title.
Meanwhile, much like in hockey, playoff lacrosse is often decided by crease play. Each of the other three 2018 WLA playoff teams has a clear No. 1 goaltender — Charles Claxton of Nanaimo, Alexis Buque of New Westminster and Frank Scigliano of Maple Ridge. The Shamrocks, instead, answer with a tag-team tandem of Cody Hagedorn and Adam Shute. The Shamrocks are playing it close to the vest as to which one will get the start tonight.
“We’ve told both our guys to just make the saves you need to make,” said Heyes, himself a former goaltender.
Nanaimo’s six-foot-four Claxton, former B.C. Junior A first-team all-star with the Junior Shamrocks, could be the X-factor in the series. And not because of his historic two goals in one game, both scored into empty nets, on July 15 against Maple Ridge. He’s unlikely to do that in the playoffs. But Claxton has had a breakout season in Nanaimo and may be capable of stealing a series with his saves.
“Our shooters have to give Claxton shots that challenge him and force him to be acrobatic,” said Heyes.
The second game of the series is Friday at Frank Crane Arena in Nanaimo, Game 3 on Sunday at The Q Centre and Game 4 on Tuesday at Frank Crane. If required, the following games would be Aug. 10 at The Q Centre, Aug. 12 at Frank Crane and Aug. 14 at The Q Centre.
The other semifinal series, between the regular-season champion Salmonbellies (15-3) and fourth-place Maple Ridge Burrards (9-8-1), begins on Thursday at Queen’s Park Arena.
The semifinal winners will meet in the WLA final, starting Aug. 17. The WLA champion advances to the best-of-seven Mann Cup national championship series, at the home of the Ontario champions starting Sept. 7.