The St. Albert Miners are drilling towards a provincial three-peat after blasting the Spruce Grove Slash in the playoffs.
The reigning senior B lacrosse champions will now dig deep to defeat the Rockyview Knights in a rematch of last year's final following their decisive series victory against the Slash. The winner will represent Alberta at the Presidents' Cup nationals, Aug. 27 to Sept. 2 in Spruce Grove.
"Our goal just isn't to win provincials. Our goal is to make it to the Presidents' Cup and win it," declared assistant captain Chris Schmidt after Saturday's series clincher against the Slash at Northstar Hyundai Arena. "We have the talent to win nationals and we all believe that. We just want to keep working towards that goal and as long as we play as a team and we stick up for each other hopefully we can get there."
Standing in their way are the first-place Knights (13-3). In the regular season the Knights knocked off the third-place Miners (9-6-1) by scores of 11-7 in St. Albert and 9-7 in Calgary and swept the fourth-place Calgary Mountaineers (6-10) in the semifinals.
"They're the team to beat. They're the best team in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League right now, judging by the standings and how their playoff series went," said standout netminder Dave Marrese.
"They've gotten better this year. They've picked up a few players but we still think we can beat them," added Schmidt. "We're looking forward to the series big time."
Games one and two in the best-of-five showdown will be staged in Calgary next weekend. The series shifts to St. Albert for games three and four Aug. 17-18. Game five will be played in Calgary at a date to be determined.
The last two years the Miners were crowned provincial champions at home in the deciding game.
"We haven't won a game in two years in Calgary in the playoffs so it's really important for us to go down there and take two or split it one and one," Marrese said. "We're just going to play our game and see if they can adjust to the way we play and not adjust to the way they play."
Led by netminder Alex Coutts, the Knights averaged a stingy eight goals against in league play. Last year the Miners picked up Coutts for nationals, and when Marrese went down with an injury the former National Lacrosse League player with the Calgary Roughnecks stepped in and averaged 9.63 goals against and was named to the second all-star team for the 2-4 Alberta reps.
"He played really well for our team," Marrese said. "He's a great goalie but we've practiced with him and played against him enough that we know where we want to shoot on him."
The Miners are loaded offensively with captain Nate Schmidt spearheading the attack. The younger brother of Chris Schmidt leads all playoff scorers with 12 goals and 20 points in four games after finishing first in the league scoring race with 28 goals and 64 points in 14 games.
Saturday in game four against the Slash, the Miners' prolific scorer wired three of his team-high four goals on the power play in the 14-9 victory.
Sweet victory
"We know a lot of guys on their team and we love beating them, almost more than any other team because they're our biggest rivals," said Chris Schmidt. "We're just a better team. We worked together as a group, fought as hard as we could and came out victorious."
The Miners posted period leads of 4-3 and 12-8 en route to eliminating the host team for nationals.
"We knew if we stayed out of the box in the series and played those guys five on five we're the better team," Marrese said. "We took advantage of their weaknesses and capitalized on our opportunities. We also had some guys step up in the series that we didn't have step up in the regular season and that proved to be the difference."
Chris Schmidt, Jordan Cornfield, Thomas Sterparn, Jarrett Toll and the underrated Sean Reid potted two goals apiece for the home team. Toll, a newcomer from the Edmonton Rush, also collected six assists. His shorthanded marker at 3:06 in period two after a couple of bing-bang saves by Marrese put the Miners up 5-3.
The lead switched sides several times in the middle frame, until Cornfield tied it at seven apiece on a great pass by Toll 1:26 after St. Albert product Mike Koch of the Slash struck shorthanded.
Power-play goals by Nate Schmidt and Toll 22 seconds apart put the Miners ahead to stay.
"We capitalized more on the power play [for three goals] in the second period and we gave ourselves a little bit of a cushion going into the third," Marrese said.
Comeback charge
The TSN turning point in the semifinal after the teams split the series opener in Spruce Grove 15-13 in overtime by the Slash and 8-4 by the Miners was a shrewd coaching move by Miners' bench boss Vay Diep in the game three Friday in St. Albert. Diep replaced Marrese with Chris Standing after Jamie Shewchuk's hat-trick goal extended the Slash lead to 7-3 at 3:11 in the second. It was the third straight goal by the Slash after out-scoring the Miners 4-3 in the third.
The switch between the pipes gave the Miners a two-minute break instead of wasting a 30-second timeout. It also allowed the Miners to retain their two timeouts.
When play resumed, Chris Buckley scored 18 seconds later and Marrese went back into net. Before the period ended, Sterparn and Toll scored 21 seconds apart, followed Nate Schmidt's power play effort and a pair by Cornfield to put the Miners on top 10-7. The final score was 13-7.
"We got on a roll and we kept going with it. Our defence shut down their offence and we got great goaltending the rest of the way," said Chris Schmidt, 27, who chipped in with two goals in the win. "When we got a couple of goals up on them you could see them hanging their heads. We kept our momentum going and we kept the positivity on the bench going and it worked out for us."
Marrese, 25, was arguably the most valuable Miner in the series next to Nate Schmidt, who racked up three goals and three assists in game three. Marrese limited Slash hired guns Jimmy Quinlan of the Rush and Shewchuk of the Colorado Mammoth to six and 11 goals, respectively, in the series.
The St. Albert Rams Lacrosse Club product is highly regarded as the best shot-stopper in the league, and is even stronger than last year after spending the 2012 season as the practice goalie for the Rush.
"I gained a lot of experience with the Rush learning about the game, which is very important because you never want to stop learning," said the free agent signee by the Rush. "It's a totally different game [in the NLL] because the nets are bigger and you use a smaller stick. I learned a different style of goaltending that I've been able to bring to the box game, just in terms of reading shooters and studying game film, as opposed to actual goaltending itself."
