While the spotlight was turned on Robert Church for his four-goal effort, coach Derek Keenan hit the nail on the head in his postgame comments after his Saskatchewan Rush defeated the visiting Rochester Knighthawks 16-9 in the opening game of the best-of-three NLL final.
“The defense was our backbone and [goalie Evan] Kirk was excellent,” said Keenan.
Just the way it was planned.
The Rush have been No. 1 on defense three years running and for five of the last seven seasons, and it took a tablespoon of trades, a dash of draft day diligence and a lot of luck to come up with the winning recipe.
Luck loomed large in 2011 for the Rush when a decision was made to fold the Boston Blazers. The Rush, playing out of Edmonton at the time, selected Kyle Rubisch and Ryan Dilks in the dispersal draft as building blocks. We all know how that worked out: Rubisch earned the award as the league’s defensive player of the year in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 and Dilks won it in 2016.
Also in 2011, the Rush traded the ninth pick in the 2011 entry draft and a 2012 first-rounder to Buffalo for Chris Corbeil, which seemed a hefty price for a gangly guy from Oakville with just two years of NLL experience. The tag looked mighty affordable in 2015 and 2016 when Corbeil was carrying around the Champion’s Cup.
The Rush already had big Brett Mydske thanks to a 2009 trade. Edmonton got a third-round pick, 25th overall, that year for sending forward Mike Hominuck to Toronto and used it on the six-foot-four Mydske.
That’s how it started: Mydske, Corbeil, Rubisch and Dilks via the Rock, the Bandits and the Blazers.
The Bandits persisted. They traded Jeff Cornwall to the Rush during the 2012 season for two second-round picks and they traded Jeremy Thompson to the Rush for forward Aaron Wilson and a 2013 second-rounder.
Nik Bilic was acquired from Minnesota for swapping first-round places in the 2013 entry draft. The Rush still got the man they wanted most that year, Church, at fifth overall.
That same year, Adrian Sorichetti was drafted 13th overall. Mike Messenger was drafted third and Matt Hossack 14th in 2016.
The icing on the cake is Kirk.
Aaron Bold helped win the 2015 and 2016 titles, but Keenan felt after losing the final to Georgia last spring that Kirk, the 2016 goalie of the year with New England, would be an upgrade. Nobody was disputing Keenan’s daring deal last Saturday.
The defense is the backbone.
Meanwhile, Rochester looks to even the series and it could very well do that if it can put a better transition breakout effort on the floor in Game 2. They got only one goal from defensemen in Game 1, while Saskatchewan got five from a back-end brigade that continuously sprinted into ‘Hawks territory.
The ‘Hawks also need left-side attacker Cody Jamieson to get more than the four shots on goal he managed in Game 1. The checking on Jamieson is intense as the Rush know they must corral this formidable ‘Hawks weapon to be successful.
“It was a complete effort, but the job is not finished and we’re going to start focusing on that almost immediately,” Keenan said after Game 1. “We’re going to have to be even better because they’re going to be desperate.”
The ‘Hawks remain confident they can continue to defy odds stacked against them after a 2-6 start.
“It comes down to a do-or-die game,” said Jamieson. “It seems weird because it’s a position we have been in all year. We felt that way eight games into the season. We took the mindset that we couldn’t lose another game and that every game was a must win. It’s really like that right now. We can’t lose again.”