Photo Credit: Vancouver Warriors twitter
The Vancouver Warriors defeated the Philadelphia Wings 17–10 in their regular season finale on fan appreciation night Saturday. The Warriors also got some help from the Calgary Roughnecks, who beat the Colorado Mammoth. With the Warriors’ win and the Mammoth’s loss, Vancouver finished as the top seed in the NLL and will play Halifax in the quarterfinals.
All teams want to play well heading into the playoffs, and in Saturday’s game the Warriors were firing on all cylinders. After falling behind 1–0, Vancouver went on a 7–0 run. Forward Keegan Bal, who dominated all night with six goals and 11 points, said that the Warriors’ selfless approach on offense is one of their keys to success.
“ There’s no me guy on our offense, and I think that’s what makes it work so well. Everyone’s just rooting for one another, and we all just want to score as a unit. We don’t really care who scores.”
Even though Bal led the charge offensively, Adam Charalambides chipped in with five points, Jesse King with seven, and Curtis Dickson had six.
Bal, who’s one of the most humble and selfless players in the NLL, was looking to become the first Warriors player to lead the NLL in scoring. He entered Saturday’s matchup with a one-point lead in the scoring race and clinched it with his 11-point performance. Bal touched on what the scoring title meant to him.
“ I’ll look back on it when I’m done playing… and I think my season is just a testament to the guys that I play with. The coaching staff that we have here, the management, it’s just such a great culture and with so much skill and so much depth.”
You may see the 17 goals the Warriors put up and think they only dominated offensively. Well, they did play extremely well. Generating high quality chances and getting to the middle of the floor and getting goals from throughout their lineup. But they also played amazing defense and didn’t give Philadelphia many high-end scoring chances. They play a really mean and physical style of defense, all while being backstopped by all-world goaltender Christian Del Bianco. This is the second year in a row the Warriors have finished in the top two in goals allowed.
Head coach and general manager Curt Malawsky spoke on what makes their defense successful.
“ I like how heavy we play. I like how we finish our checks and slides, and I like how we get in shooting lanes. I like how we just battle together as a five man unit. It’s never just one guy, everyone’s pulling on the rope on the back end.”
Del Bianco also added his thoughts on how well the defense has played in front of him this season.
“ All year just their ability to adjust and how many different skill sets we have, the veteran presence, the young athletes. I think just that ability to match up with different (styles of) teams, athletes and goal scores, it shows with our goals against.”
“ As a coaching staff that’s something they’re very good at, and I think it just makes it easy for us players to succeed. We think less, and they tell us what we need to be doing. But also having that veteran presence on the back end that’s able to do so.” added Del Bianco crediting the Warriors coaching staff for putting them in the best position to succeed.
With the regular season now officially in the rearview, the Warriors’ focus will shift to the Halifax Thunderbirds, who will make their second visit to Rogers Arena in three weeks, this time for the quarterfinals next Friday at 7 p.m. The Warriors, who were eliminated by the eventual champion Buffalo Bandits in the semi final last year, are hoping to make another deep playoff run. With much more scoring depth than last year and a defence playing well, they have all the makings of a championship level team.
