Curtis Dickson is 37 years old and there are times when he has a ball in his stick on a lacrosse floor that it just doesn’t seem fair.
The Vancouver Warriors’ 11-9 triumph over the Buffalo Bandits Friday at Rogers Arena before an announced crowd of 9,392 featured one of those moments. With Vancouver up 8-7 in the third quarter, Dickson took a feed from Jesse King and hammered an outside shot off the crossbar and in past Bandits goalie Matt Vinc.
Vinc left precious little space open, but Dickson showed equal excellence in accuracy and velocity. He was threading a needle with a punch.
Dickson finished the evening with four goals, giving him 28 on the season for Vancouver (7-3). He second in the league ahead of play Sunday. He’s on pace for 50 goals, and if the Port Coquitlam product manages to get there he’d be the second oldest player in NLL history to accomplish that feat. Bandits great John Tavares was 40 years old when he went for 51 in 2009. (Hat tip to Inside Lacrosse’s Adam Levi for that fact.)
“You have this expectation that people are going to slow down with a bit of age, but Curtis seems that he’s speeding up,” Warriors goalie Christian Del Bianco said. “It’s a testament to how much he works and how much time he puts into the game.
“There were one or two goals tonight where us guys on the D were like ‘That was crazy.’ But for him that’s regular stuff.”
Friday’s output also pushed Dickson to 605 goals for his career. He became just the fourth player in league history to get to that milestone. Gary Gait (635) is next in line, followed by John Grant, Jr. (668).
Tavares (815) leads the way. The idea that someone might catch Tavares has seemed far fetched in the past, but Dickson’s efforts the past two years are starting to make you wonder what is possible.
He had 48 goals last season with the Calgary Roughnecks, and signed with Vancouver in the off-season as a free agent, and it’s easy to suggest that coming home to play — flying for nine road games instead flying for the entire 18-week season — will make things easier for him to continue.
Dickson gets to 40 goals this season and it will be fourth time in the past five years that he’s reached that total. Tavares was 46 years in his 24th and final season with Buffalo in 2015.
“I knew Dicks when he was a young kid at 12 and he was super athletic,” said Warriors GM and coach Curt Malawsky, who was Dickson’s coach in Pee Wee in PoCo. “And he just keeps on going.
“He trains hard. He keeps himself in phenomenal shape. He’s dropped weight this year, and we were teasing him about how that was going to play out, about whether he was going to get moved around and whether he was going to get to where he wants to. But he’s so dedicated about getting to the middle of the floor and he plays with zero caution out there.
“You need to know where he is at all times. We love having him here. He gets big, big goals. That’s why we brought him here.”
Vancouver rallied Friday from a six-goal second-quarter run from Buffalo that gave the Bandits a 7-5 lead. They outscored the Bandits 4-0 in the third quarter to take a 10-7 cushion and the game’s momentum.
Vancouver didn’t panic one iota. They looked like the veteran, seasoned team that they are. They kept moving the ball on offence, they stayed compact on defence. They’re built to make an extended playoff run this season and showed some of that Friday.
“Curt’s preparation is second to none,” said Warriors forward Keegan Bal. “Any situation, he’s always going to have something for our team. Knowing that, it’s just easy to play. He’s going to take care of all the Xs and Os and you know that as players we have to go out and execute.”
Vancouver was coming off a 9-8 overtime loss to the front-running Saskatchewan Rush in Saskatoon last week, and Malawsky says he made it clear to his charges that there were no laurels to rested on with that.
“Because you lost to the first place team doesn’t validate you,” he said. “We took the top team in the NLL to overtime and at the end of the day that should still really sting. We wanted to make sure that we corrected what happened last weekend with a win here.”
Vancouver has a doubleheader on the road next week, visiting the Las Vegas Desert Dogs on Friday and then the San Diego Seals on Sunday. The Warriors are home to the Toronto Rock on March 6.
B.C. Sports Page 
Leave a comment