The next mountain for the national champion St. Albert Miners to summit is the Calgary-based Mountaineers in the senior B provincial final.
It will be a steep climb for the Miners against the only team this year to beat the winners of back-to-back Presidents’ Cups.
“We’re expecting a hard-fought grinding series,” said Jordan Cornfield, captain of the 19-1-1 Miners in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League.
The fifth consecutive provincial final and eighth in nine years for the Miners starts this weekend at Strathcona Olympiette Centre. Game one is 8 p.m. Saturday and game two is 2 p.m. Sunday.
The Miners’ home floor at Go Auto Arena is not available for the final.
The series shifts to Calgary next weekend for game three at 9 p.m. Friday and game four, if needed, is 5 p.m. Saturday at Max Bell Arena.
If a fifth and deciding game is required, it will be played next Sunday at 3 p.m. at Strathcona Olympiette Centre.
The winner advances to the Presidents' Cup, Aug. 26 to Sept. 2 at Nanaimo, B.C.
The last senior B team to win three nationals in a row was the 1986-88 Fergus (Ont.) Thistles.
Last year’s nationals was the third in four years and the fifth since 2010 for the Miners, the first team to repeat since the 2011-12 St. Regis Braves of the Three Nations Senior Lacrosse League.
The Miners were 2-1 against the Mountaineers (14-8) in league play with wins of 14-5 June 3 in St. Albert and 10-9 in overtime June 10 in Calgary and the loss was 9-8 June 23 in Calgary.
“They’re a very gritty hard-working team. They’re very well coached (by John Kilbride). They’ve also added some pieces to their offence on the left side in the Getz brothers,” Cornfield said of Travis (30 goals and 54 points in 11 games) and Jordan (16 goals and 32 points seven games) Getz.
As for the one-goal decisions against the Mountaineers, “In both games we played down in Calgary we had low numbers,” Cornfield said. “I’m not taking anything away from them, they’re a very good team, but they haven’t seen our whole team so I’m really looking forward to that. We have another level when it comes to playoffs and we’re really looking forward to displaying that this upcoming weekend.
“We’re definitely prepared for this series.”
Both teams enjoyed lengthy breaks after winning their respective semifinals. The last game for the Miners was July 22 in sweeping the best-of-five series against the Edmonton Warriors (9-10-2) and the Mountaineers eliminated the second-place Rockyview Knights (14-8) of Airdrie in four games July 28.
“It’s good for us because it gives any guys injured a chance to heal up. Some of us older guys need to kind of recoup just from the day-to-day injuries of playing lacrosse. We also have a guy who has been out for the last two months with a knee injury, TJ Cowx (on defence), and he is going to be back up and running for the provincial final which is really exciting,” Cornfield said. “But right now we’re chomping at the bit. We would’ve loved to jump right into a series with the Mounties or the Knights the following weekend so what this does is give us a little bit more drive, a little bit more intensity to just get out there and get down to business and play our game.”
The Miners are a stacked team once again with Connor McDavid-like scorers in Richard Lachlan (51 goals and 103 points in 16 games), Mike Triolo (50 goals and 99 points in 17 games) and Keegan Bal (23 goals and 62 points in nine games).
“I feel this could be our strongest team yet because we know what it takes to win,” said Cornfield of the 76-3-2 Miners in regular season, playoffs and nationals combined since losing to Rockyview in the 2015 provincial final.
“Last year, we were kind of counting our chickens before our eggs hatched. From the beginning of the season we were trying to prepare for the Presidents’ Cup where we should’ve been preparing for the season and the playoffs so we were kind of getting ahead of ourselves. We learned from that mistake and we’ve kind of taken a different approach this year where we haven’t earned anything, we haven’t punched our ticket to Presidents’ Cup yet, we just prepare. Every single time we step onto the floor we try and get better and because of that we’re doing all the little things right this year that maybe we eased up on last year.”
The late-season acquisition of netminder Aaron Bold, a National Lacrosse League veteran, further solidified a position of strength.
“You’re allowed to bring a third goalie to Presidents’ Cup, but this is the first year we’ve actually carried three on our active roster and we’re very lucky, we have three very capable goalies and any one of them can step in at any given moment to win a game or play a game for us,” Cornfield said. “We have Brady (Johnson) who is kind of a new up-and-comer who has a bright future with us. We have Matty Hiebert who has kind of been our go-to guy and our steadfast goalie the last few years and then you have Aaron Bold, a guy who has a high level of experience and a veteran leadership in the dressing room.
"The good thing with Aaron is that he’s played in front of this exact defensive system with the Rush (in the NLL) that John Lintz and Chris Stachniak are running. He’s very familiar with that defence and there are little things that he points out to our defence, things that we need to work on and areas of concern where it’s like let’s adjust this for the next period kind of stuff.”
Cornfield, 35, is the team’s elder statesman but that didn’t stop the offensive threat from compiling 15 goals and 42 points in 14 games as the sixth-highest scorer on the Miners in the regular season.
“This is my last year of lacrosse for senior B,” said Cornfield, who plans on lighting it up next season with the senior C Miners. “This is all in for me. It’s been a very kind of an emotional season knowing it's winding down but at the same time it’s winding up.”
