The celebration was audible but muted.
Moments after whipping the Langley Thunder by a 16-2 margin Tuesday, members of the Burnaby Lakers were noshing on post-game pizza and staying decidedly even-keel despite having established a franchise first. Winning the organization's first regular season banner, in 27 years of trying, merited somekind of celebration.
But the Lakers to a man were keeping it on the down-low. After all, there is still more lacrosse to play.
“I think there are so many guys who’ve been here for eight, nine years who never had a sniff, they’ve gotten to the first round but not beyond. Our goal now is to get out of the first round," noted team captain Robert Church.
That's a fairly reasonable ask, although the Victoria Shamrocks will put up a counter argument in a series that started Thursday. Still, a taste of winning does wonders for players who've gotten close -- like pushing Victoria to a seventh game in last year's semifinals -- but no cigar.
“It is history, and Burnaby needs this. Especially the senior program," noted veteran Shaun Dhaliwal. "I’ve been lucky enough to play in the junior program where it was a winning program and got to play some big games, but this is a huge step in the right direction. We have great potential for the future too."
The team's senior players -- Dhaliwal, 35-year-old Neil Arbogast, Chris Manwaring, Bryan Safarik (on the inactive players' list) and Dane Stevens -- have seen a lot of preseason hopes dashed during the summer circuit. Even before them, when the senior A team should have been benefiting from a strong junior A Lakers program -- which challenged and won the Minto Cup five times over a 12-year span, ending in 2007 -- the Lakers had difficulty attracting and retaining players. Now, shrewd drafting and dealing have put them among the favourites in a year where parity played a big role.
Ed Safarik has been on the scene for 14 years, mostly serving as an owner/operator for a franchise with hopes of better days. The current ones (days) are pretty sweet, but with still some promise to fulfill.
“I’m really pleased and its obviously a good team that’s come together. There’s no dissension, no problems," said Safarik. “I think we’re a better team than we were last year, but I think the reason for that is not one or two players – it’s the whole attitude around the team. When the team’s playing better and things are going better, players have a different mindset. They don’t do the stupid thing or the selfish thing. I hope I don’t eat my words on that."
His mood was also muted due to circumstance. A week earlier, Safarik decided to relieve first-year coach Jim Milligan of his duties despite an improving on-floor record, and a resume which glittered with Mann Cup rings. Safarik said it was one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make, but felt "a change" was necessary. Having brought Milligan to Burnaby and seen how committed the Peterborough native was in bringing in a winner, made the firing all the more difficult.
It didn't seem to knock the players off course, however. Burnaby finished the season on a five-game win streak, including the last two under new coach Peter Tellis, and leapfrogged from fourth to first. The players, Safarik said, are playing unselfishly for each other. But the keys to this year's surge go back to building blocks from others who've stepped back or been let go, including long-time general manager Paul Rowbotham and former coach Rory McDade.
Winning in other arenas -- for Church, that includes a Minto and a couple of National Lacrosse League crowns -- fuels the competitive fire. The club drafted and brought in a handful of MVP-types, like Josh Byrne, Eli McLaughlin, Cam Milligan (the son of the former coach), Justin Salt and goalies Eric Penney and Zak Boychuk. All the pieces came together, but until they won something it remained an incomplete puzzle. And a regular season title represents progress, not mission accomplished.
A drought as lengthy as Burnaby's doesn't come around easily. Twenty-seven seasons where they finished second only four times, and advanced out of the semifinals another four times, speaks to a calamity of bad luck, poor management and lowered expectations. That the team wasn't moved -- after all, losing organizations don't draw big crowds, and the Lakers certainly have played many games before gatherings just a little larger than friends and family on occasion -- is not such an anomoly in a league where both the Thunder and Burrards bounced around three towns over the past 25 years before settling in their current communities. Perhaps because there's no place to go, the Lakers built a legacy of mediocrity that proved hard to crack. But over the past three seasons they've started moving up the charts, drafted better and got players to commit. That says something about the men in charge, too.
That the roster includes long-time veterans who are playing important roles in the current run, makes it all the more sweeter.
“We stuck it out and we’re best buddies outside of the rink too," said Dhaliwal of his long-time teammates. "Every summer we’re like, ‘Are you ready for another one?’ Yes. We could have walked away after finishing fourth or fifth three years ago. We believed in our coaching, we believe in our management and everyone is here for the right reasons."
Can they keep the ball rolling? That the club has emerged unscathed after last week's inner turmoil and the dismissal of a coach, is a good indicator. For one, the team has taken its share of adversity the past two years and bounced back.
“Going down 3-0 was tough last year (against Victoria in the semifinal) but we came back and made it a seven game series," recalled Church. "That was nice because of my three or four playoff runs here I think we only won a couple of playoff games. Hopefully we can put a good one together against Victoria and come out on top. We’ve just got to play our game."
Pleased for the team, Safarik said he wasn't exactly in a celebratory mood and carried the weight still of the coaching change on his shoulders.
“I feel good. I’m really pleased for the players, pleased for the team but I’m a little sad with the way things evolved. I’m not going away from the rink (feeling) ecstatic," he said.
Hopefully a few more winning rounds will change that.
