The Vancouver Warriors are playing playoff style lacrosse and trending to toward just their second postseason appearance in 11 years, but don’t expect Curt Malawsky to get caught up in any future surfing.
Malawsky is Vancouver’s general manager and head coach and he has stressed focussing on the moment all season, with one of his go-to mantras being “we play where our feet are.” He wasn’t straying from that mindset after the Warriors gutted out a 10-4 win over the Albany FireWolves Friday at Rogers Arena that marked their fourth straight triumph and pushed their record to 9-7.
Vancouver was in fourth spot in the National Lacrosse League as of Saturday morning, with two games left in the regular season. The top eight teams in the 14-team loop make the playoffs, and the Warriors franchise currently has just a single postseason game on its resume since moving to the Lower Mainland in 2014, with a quarterfinal loss in 2017 as the Langley-based Vancouver Stealth.
The team’s best record in six years as a Vancouver Canucks’ property playing out of Rogers Arena came had been their 8-10 showing last year in Malawsky’s first campaign at the helm.
But playoffs? Playoffs? Malawsky’s not talking about playoffs. At least not yet.
“We’ve got a veteran back end and a veteran goalie. We’ve got a good coaching staff that understands what it takes to be successful and the value of trying to get too ahead of yourself, and there’s none to it,” he said. “There’s no value in adding pressures from different situations. There’s nothing you’re going to gain from it.
“We’re a grounded group of guys, a humble group. We’re not going to get full of ourselves. We’re a lunch bucket group of guys that plays that meat-and-potatoes style of lacrosse and that’s how we’re going to do it. We’re not going to change that based on the situation or standings or records.”
Kudos to Malawsky for staying on task, but these are intriguing times for the franchise.
Vancouver is at the Toronto Rock (5-9) next Friday and they finish off their league schedule hosting the Philadelphia Wings (5-10) on April 19. The first round is single elimination and a top four placing would get Vancouver a home playoff game, which would do wonders for the brand, and especially in light of the Canucks’ struggles in the standings.
The Warriors have been lauded for their game-day presentation since they moved to Rogers Arena. They drew an announced crowd of 9,492 Friday for Country Night, which has been a staple of their promotions schedule throughout their tenure as a Canucks entity.
The NLL standings remain a traffic jam. The Buffalo Bandits (11-4) and Saskatchewan Rush (11-5) have both qualified for the playoffs already, but they’re followed by three teams with nine wins, four with eight and another club with seven. Vancouver does have the head-to-head tiebreaker with majority of teams in that cluster.
“We’re two games away from being in or being out. Our first goal is to go to Toronto and get a win,” said netminder Christian Del Bianco. “I don’t think you can go in and start counting wins in this league. It doesn’t matter if you’re a top team or a bottom team. Every game is a must win. We’ll keep that attitude and hopefully we get the results we need.”
Del Bianco is that veteran goalie that Malawsky mentioned earlier. He’s a 27-year-old former league most valuable player from Coquitlam who the Warriors added in a blockbuster deal at the NLL trade deadline from the Calgary Roughnecks. Del Bianco backstopped all four of these victories. He finished with 37 saves Friday. He was a key in Albany’s power play going 0-for-4, along with a veteran defence led by the likes of Brett Mydske, Matt Beers, Jeff Cornwall and Ryan Dilks.
The FireWolves (6-10) had come in winners of three straight. They were averaging 11 goals per game. Friday marked their lowest offensive output since a 20-4 loss to Georgia on Feb. 25, 2023.
“I think it just gives you a lot of confidence,” Vancouver forward Keegan Bal said of having Del Bianco in the fold. “You don’t grip the stick so tight on offence. You’re sitting there with six goals in the fourth quarter and then you see him make three amazing saves.
“Of course we want to score but we don’t need to every single possession. We can grind this game down.”
Del Bianco also excels at passing and he finished with two assists Friday, including one to Reid Bowering for a shorthanded marker at 11:22 of the fourth quarter that made it 6-3 and brought momentum back to the Vancouver side after an Albany push in the third quarter.
Del Bianco has four assists in his four games. The league leaders amongst goalies have six, and they’ve played all season.
“I think guys have been doing the right things here for a long time in the organization and it’s nice to see the kind of turn in momentum,” Del Bianco said. “The results are starting to fall. And there’s some guys who grinded it out through some not so good times in this organization and it’s nice to see them finally getting some results.”
Bal once again paced the Vancouver offence, with four goals and seven points. Dylan McIntosh and Adam Charalambides each had one goal and two helpers.
(Keegan Bal photo courtesy of the Vancouver Warriors.)
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