A season of firsts has the NAMLC Crude on the cusp of a provincial title.
The St. Albert junior B team is three wins away from representing Alberta at the Founders’ Cup national championship after a long playoff drought in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League.
The Crude will challenge the south-division champion Calgary Mountaineers for provincial honours after surviving Sunday's 9-6 thriller against the Red Deer Rampage in the deciding game in the Tier I north final at Akinsdale Arena.
“It’s pretty awesome,” declared Simon Hansen, who sniped two clutch goals in the third-period comeback against Red Deer. “Our coaches have been here five years and this is the first year they've even won a playoff series so it really means a lot to them. For the rest of us players it’s great because we’re playing more lacrosse.”
The Crude climbed the ladder to finish on top of the north with a franchise-best 14-5-1 record after a steady diet of fourth and fifth place results in the five-team division. The few times they made the playoffs the team bowed out in the first round.
“Pretty much from the opening camp we had a good feeling going. It looked really good and now here we are,” said Hansen, an offensive runner and second-year Crude player.
The Crude were backstopped by the top netminding duo in the north in Troy Boucher and Cory Evans with 170 goals against in 20 games, the league’s third-best mark.
Boucher was first Crude rookie to go undefeated in the regular season at 8-0.
An explosive Crude attack surpassed the 200-goal mark for the first time with 217, the third-highest league total.
“Our defence is really strong. We’ve got a lot of support,” said assistant captain Erik Turner, the No. 2 point producer in the north with a team-record 90 in 13 games. “We have so many weapons. We have a lot of guys offensively that can put the ball in so it’s hard to cover us. We’ve got guys always moving, always working.
“But I think our biggest strength is everybody buys in to what we’re trying to do. We’re a very tight knit group. We like to use the word family a lot so when we’re playing we’re playing for each other.”
Turner, 20, was also the runner-up in the north goal-scoring race with 43, including nine on the power play and three shorthanded.
“I have a lot of good teammates with me working offensively. They move, they cut, they get the ball to me. They work to get me open. It’s all been due to them,” said the Paul Kane High School graduate.
The offensive gunner fired his playoff-leading 13th goal and notched three assists to boost his league-high total to 28 in six games to make it 8-6 with 4:21 to play in the series clincher against Red Deer.
The third-period outburst by the Crude, ignited by Cody Stannard's second goal of the game 27 seconds into the frame from the high slot on the power play, rallied the home team to victory after trailing 2-1 after the first and 5-3 after two periods.
“Red Deer played us really hard. It took us a couple of periods to figure out the press and kind of settle down offensively. We weren't shooting where we were supposed to shoot,” said Turner, a second-year Crude attacker. “We figured it out in the third and then kind of rolled from there.”
Several areas of concern were addressed in the locker room between periods.
“We talked about playing some shutdown defence, which we did,” Hansen said. “We talked about shooting from the right spots when we could and moving our feet on offence and the breakout and then we went out and got it done.”
Hansen, 18, evened the score at five apiece two minutes after Stannard’s seventh playoff goal. Matt Murphy’s shot was stopped by the netminder, who dashed out of the crease to get the rebound but overplayed it. Hansen scooped up the ball and drilled it into the open net.
“It just kind of popped out in front and the goalie went for it and kind of gave it to me, said Hansen, the fifth-leading Crude scorer this season with 15 goals and 38 points in 18 games.
Matt Hamson clicked on the power play to give the Crude a brief 6-5 lead. Two minutes later, Red Deer capitalized on a turnover to knot the score.
Hansen’s game winner with 9:57 remaining was wickedly shot from the side that was too hot to handle. Turner and Stannard were credited assists on the slick passing play for Hansen to finish seconds after a successful kill by Red Deer.
“I just ripped it into the top left corner,” Hansen said of his seventh goal and 15th playoff point.
Jason Williamson closed out the scoring by depositing the ball over the fallen netminder and into the Red Deer net with 73 seconds to play.
Jacob Dion tallied on the power play during an opening period filled with Red Deer penalties.
Stannard, who set a Crude rookie record with 78 points in 14 games for fourth spot in north scoring, and Murphy replied in the second.
It was the third do-or-die playoff game for the Crude, who needed a third and deciding game to eliminate the Saskatchewan Swat, a team they had not beaten in the last five years. All three games were played in St. Albert: 13-10 Crude, 10-9 Swat and 11-9 Crude.
In the north final against Red Deer, ranked second in the north at 13-6-1, the Crude dropped the series lid-lifter at home 12-6 Friday before rebounding to win 9-6 on the road Saturday.
In Friday’s lid-lifter the period scores were 3-2 and 8-6 for Red Deer. The Crude gave up three power play and two shorthanded goals.
Turner potted a pair and Hansen, Stannard, Dyllan Dokken and Mathew Meek-White added singles. Stannard also chipped in with three assists.
“We weren't playing our brand of lacrosse. We were a different team. We weren't moving the ball. We weren't doing a lot of things correctly,” Turner said
Saturday the Crude turned a 3-1 deficit after the first into a 6-5 lead entering the third. Turner, Dion, Joe Fowler, Meek-White and Hansen filled the net in the decisive middle period. Meek White scored in the first and Turner struck twice in the third, including his second power-play goal of the night. Graeson Neddow wrapped up the scoring with the man advantage.
“I don't know what happened in the second period when we were down in Red Deer, but something clicked. We got back to all the things we were doing all season and we rolled from there,” Turner said.
The best-of-five final between the Crude and Mountaineers, the south leaders at 16-3-1, goes this weekend but dates, times and locations were unavailable at press time.
In the playoffs the Crude are 4-2 and the Mountaineers 4-0, who swept the Manitoba Gryphons, the host team for nationals, in the south final.
The Crude never lost a game to a south division foe this season, which is another team first, but didn’t play the Mountaineers because of the flood in Calgary.
“We have to make sure we play our game and don't buy into their systems and play ours,” said Hansen, a Strathcona Composite High School graduate.
The winner will compete at nationals, Aug. 19 to 25 in Winnipeg.
