The Vancouver Warriors won their sixth straight game, assured the franchise its first home playoff date since 2017 and along the way Saturday night looked like this is every bit business as usual for them.
The 11-5 triumph over the Philadelphia Wings before an announced crowd of 10,876 at Rogers Arena means that Vancouver finishes the National Lacrosse League regular season at 11-7, which is good enough for fourth spot and gives them home floor against the fifth-place Rochester Knighthawks (11-7) in next Saturday’s single-elimination quarterfinals.
The Warriors had gone 27-58 in their previous five seasons as a Vancouver Canuck property and that first-round loss eight years ago under the Vancouver Stealth banner marks the lone postseason appearance for the franchise in those past 10 seasons. By the numbers, this is new territory for the Warriors, but they came across very even keeled after the win over the Wings, with precious little celebrating evident afterwards.
The team seems like it believes it has even more to give, despite how far it has come already this year.
“We all understand that there’s a lot more lacrosse ahead of us,” Curt Malawsky, who’s the Warriors’ general manager and head coach, said afterwards. “The goal at the beginning of the season was to make the playoffs and we did that. And the goal tonight was that there was a team in our way from getting a home playoff date and we were able to deal with that. The next step in front of us is Rochester, and we’re just going to play that one now. We play five (minutes) at a time and where our feet are. That adage works.”
As much as this is an unfamiliar position for the club — this year marks the best record for the franchise since 2010, when they went 11-5 based out of Everett as the Washington Stealth en route to winning the playoff title — they have brought in people who have won at the NLL level in other cities.
Goaltender Christian Del Bianco is the most recent. This six-game streak coincides with a trade deadline blockbuster that saw the former league most valuable player come over from the Calgary Roughnecks.
Malawsky in his second year at the helm following a run with the Roughnecks that included the 2019 league championships. Vancouver landed marquee free agents, too, over the past two off-seasons, securing the likes of defenders Jeff Cornwall, Matt Beers and Ryan Dilks as well as forward Kevin Crowley.
The Warriors owned the head-to-head tiebreaker with Rochester going into Saturday, thanks to a 10-7 win at home in the teams’ lone meeting this season on Dec. 13. That meant that the Knighthawks needed to jump the Warriors in the win column to get home floor for the first round.
Rochester fell 11-10 at home to the Toronto Rock in a game that finished when Vancouver was in the first quarter with Philadelphia. That outcome wasn’t announced over the public address system in Rogers Arena until the fourth quarter, though, and Malawsky is so detail oriented that here’s betting he was a part of that, worried that his team might lose focus if they found out about the Rochester final score.
Malawsky didn’t flat out admit to that after the win versus Philadelphia, but he certainly hinted at it.
“We wanted our fans to know that we were back next week, so that message needed to go out,” he said. “So it’s a bit of a juggling act, but I’m glad we earned ourselves a way in.”
He admitted to being pleased with where his team is at now, but couched that with “there’s so much more preparation.”
“There’s a lot of excitement around the organization for getting in (the playoffs), but a lot of us have been there and understand that the real grind starts now, the pressure comes now,” he added. “We have to temper our excitement tomorrow. Tonight this organization and our fans deserve it. Tomorrow morning, it’s back to work. It’s pushing the rock up the hill. It’s going to get harder. We’re excited about the opportunity and we’re going to see what we can make of it.”
Rochester had won six in a row prior to losing to Toronto. They’re led offensively by Connor Fields, who finished the regular season with 46 goals and 123 points.
Vancouver is 7-2 at home on the season, with their last loss at Rogers Arena coming with a 10-7 setback to the Saskatchewan Rush on Feb. 21.
Keegan Bal had two goals and two assists versus Philadelphia and finished the regular season with a team-best 43 goals and 111 points for the Warriors. Adam Charalambides had two goals and three assists and wound up with 30 goals and 83 points on the campaign.
The third-place Halifax Thunderbirds also finished 11-7 but had the tiebreaker with Vancouver thank to a 10-9 win over the visiting Warriors on Jan. 31 in the teams’ lone meeting this year.
(Photo of Dylan McIntosh driving to the net is courtesy of the Vancouver Warriors)
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