Dane Dobbie fires away for Coquitlam. He’s now a former Adanac. (www.thenownews.)
It’s all in how you frame it.
The late Sunday night deal, just before the Western Lacrosse Association trade deadline, that saw the Coquitlam Adanacs send Dane Dobbie, Damon Edwards and Nick Rose to the Langley Thunder for youngsters Brandon Goodwin and Matt MacGrotty and a third-round pick in 2015 makes the Thunder one of the strongest teams on paper that the Senior A league has seen in years.
Hopefully lacrosse fans get that and start packing the Langley Events Centre. A Langley offence with Dobbie and recent Ontario pick-ups Mark Matthews, Jeremy Noble and Adam Jones teaming with holdover stars like Garrett Billings, Athan Iannucci and Alex Turner will be worth watching in the warm-up alone.
That’s the good.
The bad is that people who complained about the league lacking suspense, that you knew it was going to be some combination of the Adanacs, the New Westminster Salmonbellies and the Victoria Shamrocks in the final year after year, have ammunition once again.
The Shamrocks, who loaded up in the off-season with by adding the likes of Rhys Duch, Matt Vinc, Scott Ranger and Cory Conway and then grabbed Jon Harnett from the Adanacs earlier this week, match up with the Thunder on paper. The Maple Ridge Burrards, a young group led by all-everything Curtis Dickson, have shown well so far and might be plucky enough to push the Thunder or the Shamrocks in a playoff series, but a victory would be a decided upset.
The Adanacs were probably the next best team on paper. They were off to a 4-6-1 start, in part due to reigning league MVP Rose missing much of the year with injuries, but with him in goal, the clutch Dobbie leading the offence and a sound defensive system, they had a chance to be a factor. They were the feel-good story of the league last year, making it all the way to the final against Langley with a similar core group.
Word is that when they saw the Thunder add Matthews and Co., some of the players believed they couldn’t compete without marquee additions. That wasn’t happening, so they asked to be traded to contenders. Edwards, Rose and Harnett, all easterners, are said to returning to Ontario to play next summer and Dobbie will supposedly be based out of Calgary and is questionable to be in the WLA in 2014. (If he does play more than four games with Langley, a 2015 first-round pick also goes to the Coquitlam.)
The Burrards did make pitches to get players out of Coquitlam, as the story goes, but couldn’t come up with a deal. It’s anyone’s guess whether the players balked at going there or the Thunder and Shamrocks came up with better offers.
It had been a interesting year due to parity. Even right now, the Shamrocks have a four-point lead atop the standings with seven games to go, but there’s four points between second and seventh.
It doesn’t feel that close after what’s transpired.
The main storyline now will revolve around how Langley coach Rod Jensen, who returns to the bench in two games from his goofy Canadian Lacrosse Association 12-game suspension for the goings-on at last year’s Mann Cup, handles all the talent he has at his disposal.
(Sidebar: Jensen ran his mouth at the Mann Cup. He has a propensity for that. True enough. Lacrosse power brokers spent a lot of time on his behaviour and new face masks and banning fighting, and maybe should have focussed some on getting more fans out to games. But that’s a story for another time.)
Consider, for one, that Jensen has Rose in net and also Brodie MacDonald, who steered the Thunder to the past two league championship. History says Jensen is a loyal guy, so MacDonald will be his No.1, but history also says that he’s not afraid to yank a goalie at the first sign of trouble, either, and that’s before having an insurance policy like Rose sitting there.
Up front, he’s decidedly more to choose from than last year, and that’s minus former 100-point man Lewis Ratcliff, who is out with a suspension for a positive drug test.
Peterborough won the Mann Cup last year with an offence featuring Shawn Evans, John Grant, Jr., Tracy Kelusky and John Tavares. Big names, but many of those guys are getting to their best-before date. Langley can throw out an offence featuring the National Lacrosse League record holder in goals (Iannucci, 71, 2008) and assists (Billings, 82, 2012), as well as the its past two rookie of the years (Jones and then Matthews), not to mention the fearless Dobbie, and there’s not a graybeard in the bunch.
Victoria’s offence, too, should put up numbers with Duch, Ranger and Conway joining Jeff Shattler and Corey Small this season.
They are undoubtedly the two deepest units we’ve seen in B.C. since the 2005 Shamrocks, who had Ratcliff, Dan Dawson, Derek Malawsky and Ryan Ward leading the points brigade. Coincidence or not, that’s the last year B.C. won the Mann Cup.
