‘WE HAVE TO BE BETTER’
Rush look to get season on track against Calgary
The Saskatchewan Rush is accustomed to a nice little perch atop the National Lacrosse League’s Western Division standings.
But when they look up now, they see the expansion San Diego Seals in that spot — not by much, granted, but it’s a different sort of view for a team that’s lost two straight games and is 3-3.
“We have to be better,” Saskatchewan Rush head coach Derek Keenan said of his squad, which returns to action Saturday against the visiting Calgary Roughnecks.
“We play good stretches of defence, then we don’t. Same as our offence. We’re in a stretch right now, it seems, where we make a mistake, no matter where it is on the floor, and it ends up in our net. And then guys start to force things a little bit, rather than sticking to their plan and playing through things. We start forcing things, and that makes it worse.”
The Rush has played in each of the last four National Lacrosse League finals, winning three of them, including last season. The only other time they’ve lost two straight games since moving to Saskatchewan prior to the 2016 campaign was in 2017, when they started the season 0-2.
They started this campaign at 3-1 before losing 13-10 to Georgia and 16-13 to Toronto. The expansion San Diego Seals were 4-2 heading into their Friday night game against Vancouver, one game up on both Calgary (4-4) and Saskatchewan.
“We have to do a better job of moving on to the next thing and not worrying about what just happened,” Keenan said.
“We got a little bit of that woe-is-me attitude. Let’s just move on. That’s what we’ve been good at in the past — that what’s next attitude, rather than what just happened? We have to get back to that.”
Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. get-together at SaskTel Centre is the first meeting of the season for the two teams. The division rivals will play twice more: March 2 in Saskatoon, and April 20 in Calgary.
Saskatchewan downed Calgary 15-13 in last season’s conference finale before beating Rochester in the championship series.
“Everybody in our room knows we’ve got to be better,” Keenan said. “We’ve got real good leadership, and we’ll get through it. No better time than this weekend against, probably, our No. 1 rival. It’s a division game, which is important.”
We got a little bit of that woe-is-me attitude. Let’s just move on. That’s what we’ve been good at in the past.