The Vancouver Warriors are doing their part to bring playoff action to Rogers Arena this spring.
The Vancouver Canucks’ National Lacrosse League team clinched a spot in their 14-team boxla loop’s postseason Friday via a 10-8 win over the Ottawa Black Bears at Rogers before an announced crowd of 10,003.
Vancouver (11-4) and the Saskatchewan Rush (11-4) are tied for the top record in the league with three regular season games remaining apiece. Saskatchewan has the tiebreaker thanks to a win in their head-to-head meeting.
Eight teams make the playoffs in the NLL. Vancouver needs to finish in the top four to have home floor advantage for the single elimination quarterfinals and they’re currently 1.5 games up on the fifth-place Toronto Rock.
The Canucks’ painful season comes to an end with their regular season finale in Edmonton on April 16. The Warriors will start the playoffs the following week. Vancouver is an event town and a postseason run is among the most treasured of events. There’s a opportunity here for the Warriors to build up their brand, to add to their fan base.
“I watched the Canucks play the Oilers in the playoffs and the whole building was chanting J.T. Miller’s name and it was one of the coolest environments I’ve ever been in for any sports game. I remember looking at my wife and saying: How cool would this be this if it was a Warriors game?” right-hander Keegan Bal said of the idea of filling up Rogers for postseason action.
“We have great fans who come out and support us. We are just hoping to fill the barn every week and get a little taste of that.”
Friday’s crowd was the second largest of the season — Vancouver announced 10,971 for a Jan. 16 visit from San Diego and the Warriors are fourth in the league in announced average at 9,764 — and they were particularly raucous in the fourth quarter.
Bal bagged the winner with 2:51 remaining, firing one home in transition off a feed from Reid Bowering. Curtis Dickson added an insurance marker into an empty need with 0:37 showing on the clock after taking a long-bomb feed from goalie Christian Del Bianco.
Del Bianco was superb all night in the Vancouver cage, making 42 stops.
“The crowd was going nuts. When Keegan scored it was just outstanding. I had never seen it like that in here,” Warriors general manager and head coach Curt Malawsky said. “I’ve been to a lot of hockey games and I know it’s pretty cool, too, but as far as lacrosse that topped it.”
And the idea that an extended playoff run could capture the imagination of even more fans?
“When I first signed on here with the Aquilini family, that was there dream,” said Malawsky, a Coquitlam native who was recruited away from the Calgary Roughnecks three seasons ago. “They want this to be a mainstream sport.”
The Canucks bought the Vancouver Stealth ahead of the 2019 campaign and gave them them a new name and new look after moving them to Rogers Arena from the Langley Events Centre. The squad went 11-7 season, which was their best-ever showing in the 11 years based out of the Lower Mainland. They beat the Rochester Knighthawks in the quarterfinals before getting swept by the Buffalo Bandits in the best-of-three semifinals.
They had a single playoff game to show for the previous 10 seasons combined.
Malawsky’s been able to coax B.C. based free agents to play closer to home, including this year landing Dickson and Jesse King, who were both 100-point scorers in 2025 with the Roughnecks.
With the additions, Vancouver is loaded with offensive firepower. They have been better this year, too, at grinding out close games. The Warriors are 6-2 in contests decided by two or fewer goals so far this season. They were 4-4 in that situation last season.
“It’s something that you build on because that’s the way the playoffs are. Very rarely in the playoffs do you see a team mop somebody up. It’s always tight,” Malawsky said.
Bal was in on eight of Vancouver’s 10 goals Friday, with three goals and five helpers. He leads the NLL with 107 points, including 36 goals. The 34-year-old Coquitlam product’s career high is 112 points, set last season.
Vancouver has a bye this week and then visits Buffalo (8-6) on April 4 before finishing off its league play schedule with home games versus the Halifax Thunderbirds (5-9) on April 10 and Philadelphia Wings (3-11) on April 18.
For what it’s worth, Saskatchewan is home to to Buffalo on March 28 before hosting the Colorado Mammoth (10-5) on April 11 and the Toronto Rock (9-5) on April 18.
The Warriors’ franchise went to the NLL finals three times in four years playing out of Everett under the Washington Stealth banner. They won it all in 2010, and lost out in 2011 and 2013. They moved to the LEC the following year.
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