The Oakville Rock have made their first
major statement that they intend to be competitors in Major Series
Lacrosse, acquiring talented lefty forward Stephan Leblanc
from the Six Nations Chiefs. In return the Chiefs get a pair of first
round draft picks and Corey Fowler, who led CLax in scoring in
its recently-completed season.
Leblanc had spent the past two seasons
with the Chiefs after playing his first two years of major with the
Langley Thunder. He scored 20 goals and 34 assists for 54 points in
2011 before having an off year last summer, in which he missed time
with an injury and only played 4 regular-season and 9 playoff games.
Oakville GM Terry Sanderson is
familiar with Leblanc because the latter has played for the former
with the Toronto Rock. “We think we're going in the right
direction,” says Sanderson, who has also added Toronto forward
Brendan Thenhaus to his MSL team and has Colorado netminder
Tye Belanger—who is having a breakout NLL season—between
the pipes.
“We're coming in with a youth
approach and knowing that it's going to take a couple of years before
teams realize that Oakville is going to be a team that you've
actually got to show up to play against. It's going to be a little
bit of a building process but the fact that we've got a couple of NLL
guys playing for us now along with some guys who have had very strong
NLL camps is positive,” Sanderson added.
The draft picks that Oakville sent to
the Chiefs were not their own; they were acquired in earlier trades.
One is the Peterborough Lakers' first pick in 2014 and the other is
Six Nations first choice in 2016 that now reverts to the Chiefs.
Sanderson says things are changing
since the Rock moved from Ajax to Oakville, emphasizing that they'll
have “30-some guys trying out for this team and some of these guys
have had previous tryouts with our Toronto Rock club and they showed
very well there. It's going to be guys that want to be there and it's
going to be a good club to play for. We're also realistic to know
that we're not going to go from doormats to the penthouse all in one
year, either.”
The GM pointed out that if, as most
people expect, the Rock still finish near the bottom of the league
this year and next, they still retain their own draft picks which
will give them access to very good lacrosse players who will help the
team continue to grow more competitive. “We're being realistic. If
we finish bottom one or two this year, which is where everybody's
going to have us pegged, we're going to have a great pick next year
and a really good player,” Sanderson says. “That pick's not going
any place. Then in 2015, we have two first-round picks: ours and
Kitchener's. I think for the next one or two years, anyway,
everyone's going to have Brooklin, Peterborough and Six Nations up
there, so we could have two of the first three.”
Six Nations opens their season on
Saturday, May 25 at home against the Kitchener-Waterloo Kodiaks. The
Chiefs and Rock then face off in Oakville's season opener at their
new Toronto Rock Athletic Centre home on Monday, May 27.
