A postseason appearance could do wonders for the Vancouver Warriors’ brand, and they helped their chances of achieving that this season with a playoff-style win Saturday.
The Warriors hung on against a late push from the Georgia Swarm to nab a 15-13 win over before an announced crowd of 9,435 at Rogers Arena. The win bumped up the Warriors to 7-7 on the season and left them in seventh place in the National Lacrosse League standings with four games remaining in their regular season.
The top eight teams make the postseason. The Warriors franchise has a single playoff game to show for the past 10 years, and that came two seasons before the Vancouver Canucks bought the club and moved it from the Langley Events Centre to Rogers Arena in 2018-19.
And the Canucks have made a decided pushed to improve the team the past two years especially, led by recruiting general manager/coach Curt Malawsky away from the rival Calgary Roughnecks and giving him a five-year contract in a bid to lead a turnaround.
Vancouver’s had three one-goal losses this season, so winning a close game has to be a boost to the team psyche. As well, the Warrior offence continually drove the ball to the high-traffic areas against the Swarm and the Warriors certainly had lulls in their game in that regard throughout the season.
“That’s just the way you have to play in this league,” Malawsky said afterwards. “If you stand around the outside and don’t get there you’re not going to be successful.
“I think they have been times where we’ve been deciding if the water was too hot or too cold and we didn’t want to go there, but I think tonight we went right to the net.
“I’m super proud of the guys. They know what it takes to be successful in this league and it’s to get right down Main Street and they’re doing it.”
Keegan Bal (three goals, nine assists), Ryan Martel (four goals, one assist) and Marcus Klarich (three goals, two assists) were among the Warriors driving to high-traffic areas most often.
Georgia goaltender Brett Dobson was frustrated by all of it that he cuffed Martel a couple of times in the back of the head during a melee in the crease resulting from Martel going hard to the net with the ball.
“I love that stuff. I love getting into goalies’ heads. That’s one of my favourite things in the game. So that doesn’t bother me,” Martel said of Dobson getting after him at the bottom a dogpile.
Christian Del Bianco made 43 saves in the Vancouver net to record the win. The former league most valuable player made his debut with the Warriors last week in a 13-8 win over the Toronto Rock after being acquired in a trade deadline deal with the Calgary Roughnecks. He wasn’t as sharp Saturday as he was in his first game, but he made key stops when needed.
That included stoning Shayne Jackson on a clear-cut breakaway with a stick side save with 3:11 to go and the Warriors holding a 14-12 margin.
Malawsky talked after about how it was important for his team to be in the winning side of a close game.
“I said to the guys in the room after the game that earlier in the year it’s not because we didn’t care, but we folded and we lost those games,” he explained. “We just stayed resilient. We just stayed with the process. And even even though there’s a couple (of goals against) that we probably wanted back we just went right back out responded
“I do think that you put scars on your body throughout a season, and that’s a scar that we’re proud to have because we got through it.”
The NLL standings are a logjam. There are three teams with eight wins, two others beside the Warriors with seven and one with six.
Vancouver is on the road next week against the Buffalo Bandits (11-3) and then home to the Albany FireWolves (6-9), at the Rock (5-9) and home to the Philadelphia Wings (5-9) to finish off.
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