The title’s in their grasp: Convincing Rush win sets up a trek to Rochester
Two groups of men are scheming what to do next Saturday atop a 200-by-85-foot patch of carpet in Rochester, N.Y.
The Saskatchewan Rush want to end the evening by rolling around the thing, by jumping, hugging, hollering, and clutching a trophy.
There’s a lot to do before they get to that point.
“We don’t want to have a Game 3 back here. We just want to put this thing away, no matter where it would be,” Rush forward Robert Church said Saturday night after his Rush — 16-9 victors over the visiting Rochester Knighthawks — put an early headlock on the National Lacrosse League final.
Saskatchewan leads the bestof-three championship series 1-0, with Game 2 Saturday at Rochester’s Blue Cross Arena.
If they win, they’ll nail down their third NLL title in four years. If they lose, Game 3 will be played June 9 in Saskatoon.
Both teams will haul loads of memories into Rochester. The Knighthawks, who finished 10-8 during the regular season, dismantled Saskatchewan in both head-to-head meetings before meeting a grisly fate Saturday night.
Rochester captured three straight NLL titles from 2012 to 2014 — “they’ve got a roomful of winners, too,” says Rush head coach Derek Keenan — and retain a strong core from those powerhouse teams.
The Rush, 14-4 during the regular season, lost last year’s league final to the Georgia Swarm. A two-game sweep, it was, with the deciding game lost in overtime, after a blown lead steeped in heartbreak.
They’ll remember this, too: That title win from the season before. Jeff Cornwall’s breakaway goal with 11 seconds to play gave the Rush an 11-10 victory, and the championship.
They like that memory. It’s a thing they’d love to replicate, though the late-game heroics aren’t a necessity, Cornwall said Saturday.
“We’re definitely trying to recreate the victory,” he said. “I’m not so sure about a player scoring a last-minute kind of goal. The big thing is controlling the tempo of the game, bringing the pace to them, and executing our game plan. (That’s) going to really help us get to that point. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to the last couple seconds.”
The fast-running Cornwall was a buzz-saw on defence and in transition Saturday night. He scored twice, added an assist, and made himself a constant — and very, very quick — nuisance.
“The goals are one thing,” Keenan said of Cornwall. “But defensively, he was just a beast. He had timely slides and doubleteams, and was real aggressive on the ball — I thought, probably, his best defensive game of the year. And when he plays that way defensively, he tends to make things happen in transition, as well.”
Big-game performances abounded for the Rush, who outshot Rochester 64-44 before a crowd of 11,842. If not for Knighthawks’ goalie Matt Vinc, the damage would have been much worse.
A seven-goal Saskatchewan run, spread between the second and third quarters, made the difference. It also made a bold declaration: This is not the same team that lost twice to Rochester during the regular season.
They’re better on transition, stronger defensively, tougher, more determined to stand their ground when provocation strikes. This is the best they’ve been all season, which is saying something.
Rush sniper Mark Matthews, the NLL scoring champion, didn’t register a point until Saturday’s third quarter. The team had tallied nine goals before that, without his name hitting the scoresheet. In case you’re wondering, Matthews has collected at least one point in every single NLL game he’s ever played, starting with his first one in 2013.
He finished with a goal and an assist Saturday, and the Rush showed that they don’t need him to post big numbers on the sheet — his presence is enough, thank you very much.
“Like I’ve said the entire year, we’ve been focused; we’ve been dialed in from the very beginning of training camp on what our goal is,” Keenan said. “Our guys have worked extremely hard, and now we’re one win away from doing it.”
Keenan said he’s not planning to practice with the team this week. Players are spread out across the country, and he figures it would be too taxing for the B.C.-based Rushers to make their way east and put in a Fridaynight practice on the eve of the biggest game of the year.
The only way to make it work, he says, would be to practice in Toronto before continuing on to Rochester.
“Like I said to the guys, if we don’t know what we’re doing by this point, then we might be in trouble,” Keenan said. “We’ll be fine without it.”
Saturday night will tell the tale. Either they end the season with a celebration, or they work up a one-week extension and a clash in Saskatoon.
Thirty-eight men will figure it out on that Rochester carpet.