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Lakers miss mark, now face long off-season

In a season where injuries and MIA played a big role in their final position, the Burnaby Lakers can put 2018 behind them and focus on other things.
Shaun Dhaliwal
Burnaby Laker veteran Shaun Dhaliwal, at left, battles a New West opponent for the ball during a tough 2018 WLA season. Burnaby management must now roll up its sleeves to recruit, retain and rebuild a club that missed the playoffs one year after winning its first league title.

In a season where injuries and MIA played a big role in their final position, the Burnaby Lakers can put 2018 behind them and focus on other things.

On the heels of Saturday’s 13-5 loss to Nanaimo, the 2018 Western Lacrosse Association regular season has morphed into the annual playoffs, with the defending champions on the outside looking in.

For the players of the 6-11-1 Lakers, the end brings a chance to recover and reset and enjoy the last month of summer. It’s time to plan that late vacation, heal nagging injuries, even solve that difficult Sudoku puzzle – a return to reality and put the dank disappointment of a losing season away, like burying smelly gloves at the bottom of the sports bag.

General manager Kevin Hill, unfortunately, won’t have much time to forget the difficult season, as he maps a way back into the playoffs.

“This year was a pretty difficult year for us,” said Hill, following last week’s loss in Langley. “Going into the year we felt we’d have a lot of guys coming back and then at the last minute we had guys say they’re not going to play.”

Pluck the likes of an all-star Justin Salt, scoring standout Josh Byrne, defender Matt Beers, transition whiz Jackson Decker and one of the top rookies of 2017 Cam Milligan from a prospected lineup, and suddenly, depth at both ends of the floor are an issue.

Byrne, Beers, Decker and Milligan were players who never suited up, while Salt arrived late after the National Lacrosse League season had ended, then was knocked out of commission in early July.

Long NLL runs kept last year’s MVP, Robert Church, and veteran defender Nik Bilic, out of the lineup until a tough hole had already been dug.

Head coach Peter Tellis, who took over the helm late last season when it was en route to the first league title, had to re-write the 2018 lineup sheet and learn a lot of newcomers’ names and skillsets on the fly.

Another blow came early when last year’s Leo Nicholson Memorial Top Goalie Award recipient Eric Penney suffered a concussion that sidelined him for a month.

“Obviously losing one of our goalies for a good chunk of the year was no help. Then add four overtime game losses as well, those are big points right there. It made a big difference.”

Those overtime losses loom large and leave questions of endurance, strategy and killer instinct – as well as the cumulative effects of a lack of depth.

On the good side, some players stepped up into roles or improved on past trends, with veteran Dane Stevens and netminder Zak Boychuk setting great examples for others to follow, said Hill.

Stevens enjoyed a career-like year with 27 goals, while Eli McLaughlin barely skipped a beat in leading the team offensively with 36 markers. Scott Jones, Shaun Dhaliwal and Church, who contributed 19 goals and 15 assists over just seven games, battled against the tide on too many nights.

Boychuk, meanwhile, carried a lot of the burden and stood his ground in six straight games when Penney was out of the lineup, including every minute of a horrific 18-2 shellacking delivered by New West in mid-June. His record of 4-5-1 was respectable under the weight of nearly 50 shots per game.

Then there were a host of new recruits like Albertans Brandon Luitwieler and Tristan Rai, Ontario’s Adam Perroni and 2018 draft pick Brine Rice who showed that they can be part of the solution going forward, if the team can get them to commit.

Losing has its own silver lining in organized sports, where those at the bottom can benefit in talent drafts. Burnaby, which didn’t select until the fifth round last winter, held onto its top picks for the 2019 draft and should get a couple of strong players to add to the roster.

“We brought in some good players and we got some good players in the (2019) draft as well. Now if we can just add those guys to our roster next year and hopefully get a lot of the guys back – it’s crappy, but out west teams do lose players when it’s not a Mann Cup (in B.C.) year,” said Hill. “That’s just the way it is and you just have to roll with it. But we have some good pieces here and we can build on it.”

In the team’s last game Saturday in Nanaimo, the Lakers scored first, and got the last one too. Between those two tallies, the T-men had control and took full advantage of an 18-0 penalty minute tax on Burnaby.

Athan Iannucci notched a pair of goals in the loss, with singles from Coady Adamson, Keegan Letourneau and Rai. The lineup, which was without the likes of Church, McLaughlin, Jones and Stevens, was no match for the playoff-bound Timbermen.

If the Lakers are truly committed, from the top management on down, to contend for a Mann Cup in 2019, it needs to make Mark Matthews a central discussion point over the next few months. Either the club has to pile up the cash, in transfer and out-of-pocket expenses, to lure the standout Team Canada boxla player west, or deal his playing rights to someone who has a ‘going-for-it’ game plan.  As a teammate with Bilic and Church on the Saskatchewan Rush, Matthews would be an instant attention getter if he were to be signed.

And is often the case, if you land someone of Matthews stature, other pieces will come calling. At this stage of the game, Hill concedes everything is on the table.

“We’re going to explore all avenues when it comes to players and getting this team back into the playoffs, and hopefully in Mann Cup contention, whether it be Matthews or whoever,” he said.

As unsatisfying as the season just past was, the future remains an open book yet to be scripted.