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| Hatley Castle on the campus of Royal Roads University. |
Moving back to Peterborough has been
fantastic—you really appreciate what a great city it is when you
return after an extended absence. Getting to be close to my family as
well as the chance to be immersed in lacrosse the way I have been
adds wonderful richness to my life. But there's no question that
walking along Dallas Road rekindles fond memories of Victoria and my
life here.
It's been great catching up with old
friends—with more gatherings planned for the final few days of the
trip—but best of all, of course, is the chance to watch the Mann
Cup at the Q Centre. The 2013 Mann Cup was my first experience with
lacrosse at the arena; when I was a Shamrocks fan back in the day the
team played out of the Memorial Arena downtown. It's a great venue
for the game, with a passionate fan base that is just thrilled about
the team's return to prominence after a period in the shadows of the
New Westminster Salmonbellies and Langley Thunder.
The view from the press box is
excellent, but as with two years ago I've enjoyed the chance to sit
in the stands for some games and experience the atmosphere of the
rink full-on. With apologies to New West, which is probably next,
there's no question that Victoria and Peterborough are the two best
places in Canada to watch a senior lacrosse game. Packed houses,
great lacrosse and excellent venues make it highly enjoyable. If
only, as Victoria
coach Bob Heyes suggested to the Peterborough Examiner,
the series could be played in both cities.
Coaches
Speaking of Heyes, he's an absolute
pleasure to deal with as a member of the media. He may not want to
come and speak to us after a loss, but he always shows up and is
always forthcoming with interesting and insightful comments. It's
hard to imagine a bigger booster of the Mann Cup and senior Canadian
lacrosse in general.
Heyes makes for great copy, giving
interesting quotes in post-game interviews that tend to stretch
toward the five-minute mark. For those not aware of media practices,
that's a very long post-game talk. Most interviews with players and
coaches will be two minutes or less. That can be a single answer for
Heyes. No complaints here—it can lead to extra time transcribing
but it's worth the effort.
Mike Hasen is a bit different.
The Lakers' head man is also a great coach—one of the best in the
game—and a good guy, but you get the sense he'd be happy if doing
interviews weren't part of his job description. He's always
accommodating but not inclined towards loquaciousness the way Heyes
is.
Dallas Road
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| Dallas Road at the south end of Victoria. A little slice of heaven on earth. |
When my girlfriend Kerry was a
teenager, she and her mother moved from Vancouver to Toronto. A few
years later, they drove back across the country planning to return to
Vancouver. They made a visit to her brother in Victoria, though, and
one stroll along Dallas Road had Kerry convinced they shouldn't get
back on the ferry. Her mother didn't take much convincing to abandon
the plan to head back to the big city.
There are many beautiful things to see
in Victoria, but Dallas Road may just be the piece de resistance. The
sweeping sky looking across the Strait of Juan de Fuca towards the
mountains of Washington is truly spectacular. We couldn't miss the
chance to take that walk while we're here and I have to admit that
while I love living back in Peterborough, it did feel good to be back
by the ocean and the mountains. If you get a chance to come out to
Victoria, you should take it; you won't be disappointed, especially
if you can pair the visit with some Mann Cup lacrosse.
Referees
Officiating is always a hot topic in
sports and lacrosse is no different. This year's Mann Cup has
certainly had its share of discussion of how the referees have
performed. Heyes summed up his thoughts on the matter succinctly
after some discussion of a pair of disallowed goals in overtime of
Game 5. “I used to be a referee for one year,” Heyes said with a
wry grin. “Hated it. Referring is tough. For a referee to be from
the east and have to make those tough calls, you're going to look at
it the wrong way for sure. It's a tough game to call, especially when
you've got such dynamic players.”
Heyes suggested that going to the video
would likely verify the two crease calls made by Ontario referee
Blair Ferguson and he was correct. The first one, on Jesse
King, was very close as to whether King's legs touched down in
the crease before the ball went in the net. Ferguson was in perfect
position to make the call. The second one wasn't even close. Scott
Ranger's foot was a good two feet past the crease line when the
ball left his stick. In Canadian summer lacrosse, the ball has to
enter the net before your foot crosses the cylinder of the crease to
count. Anyone complaining about that call just didn't know the rule.
The King call could have been a tough
one for Shamrocks fans to take had they not won the game because Mark
Steenhuis had scored earlier on a similar play that was also
close but stood. From my seat, I had a good view of the Steenhuis
marker and thought it was almost too close to call. The King non-goal
was at the far end of the arena from me, so I had to judge on the
video and even watching it several times it's too hard to say with
certainty. When it's that close, you have to give the benefit of the
doubt to the ref who is in position on the floor and making the call
at full speed with only one chance to see it.
That being said, the referees didn't do
themselves any favours by letting the series get out of hand early.
As my IL Indoor colleague Marty O'Neill noted, Victoria
came into this Mann Cup clearly trying to intimidate the Lakers with
excessively physical play. It probably came as a bit of a surprise to
Peterborough that the Shamrocks brought a more aggressive style of
play than the Six Nations Chiefs had in the Major Series Lacrosse
finals, given that the Chiefs are known for being big and rough and
tough.
The Lakers, no shrinking violets
themselves, responded to the tone the Shamrocks set and voila, you
have a series that degenerates to what we saw in Games 2 and 3. The
teams have, for the most part, reverted to the kind of tough,
physical but not over-the-line lacrosse you'd expect from a Mann Cup.
Most of the games seem to have been
called fairly evenly, an observation reinforced by how upset both
teams have at times been with the refs. The problem for the most part
has been, as is usually the case when teams are complaining, that the
calls haven't been consistent. Something will be called at one end
then not the other or vice versa. Players and coaches want to know
what to expect, how they're going to be able to play. In this series
they haven't always known that.
A good
example of the vagaries of the refereeing occurred in Game 3, when
Curtis Dickson
received a cross-checking minor then a pair of misconducts and a game
misconduct when he continued to complain vociferously to the ref. His
frustration had been mounting and in that particular instance he
appeared to be upset at getting a cross-checking penalty when he was
just trying to wrest his stick away from Greg
Harnett, who was holding
on to it. Dickson did slam Harnett into the boards in his efforts to
free his stick, but a cross-checking call was a big stretch. Now, if
you roll the tape back a bit, you'll see why Harnett was holding on
to Dickson's stick. It was because Dickson had levelled a nasty
two-handed chop on Harnett's hip/leg area that crumpled the Victoria
defender momentarily. Seeing that, you can hardly blame him for
grabbing Dickson's stick to avoid further whacks and for being upset
that Dickson wasn't penalized. The slash should have earned a
penalty, perhaps even a 5-minute major, but the cross-check never
really happened.
The
inconsistency problem may be almost unavoidable when you have
officials from two different leagues trying to work together to call
a game in the most important series of the year. WLA and MSL refs
call games differently; not just in terms of how they call penalties
but also in the mechanics of how they follow games. WLA refs
generally have one man follow the ball and the other watch off-ball
until play moves right down in front of the net. In MSL, they employ
more of a zone approach. No matter how much experience the refs have
or how hard they try to work together, it will take a while for a
crew to get comfortable with each other and some calls will be
missed.
That
said, you'd expect the game reffed by a pair of WLA officials might
be the best-called of the series. That was far from the case in Game
4 when two western refs were on the whistles. While in the other
games calls seemed to balance out, the Shamrocks definitely appeared
to get the better of the calls in Game 4, both in terms of penalties
and possessions awarded. The Lakers didn't complain too much since
they managed to win the game, but you can bet there would have been
howls of protest had they lost.
Wildlife
Kerry
and I have enjoyed some encounters with animals during the trip. Of
course there was the Wawa goose, under which I recorded Kerry playing
for her upcoming music video, but we've seen plenty of real live
animals, too. There was a friendly cat in Sintaluta, Saskatchewan who
got me started on filming critters for the video.
We saw
plenty of animals at the Beacon Hill Park farm, including some
frolicking with the goats in the petting area. Truth be told, at this
time of year there aren't any baby goats and there isn't a lot of
frolicking; there's much more chewing and moseying.
Wildlife
was an integral part of Elements and Insights in Colwood, where we
rented a suite for four nights. There was a slug on the stairway
railing (I like slugs, although I recognize they aren't popular with
everyone). Upstairs, the household cats like to come and visit the
guests. A walk over to the grounds of nearby Royal Roads University
introduced us to the wild peafowl that wander about the campus. And I
caught a hip caterpillar on camera as he was crawling around outside
the Coast Collective Art Centre, which is a really cool place with
galleries and classes that is just a few hundred metres from where we
stayed.
On our
last day, as we were moving out of the suite, we were greeted near
the hot tub by a little amphibian. He (or she—I didn't check and
I'm not sure I'd know how to) was just hanging out in the sun while
we were carrying things to the car. I went and got the camera,
worried that he (or she) would be gone when I got back. Not to
worry...the critter was in no hurry to go anywhere. In fact, he (or
she) quickly proved not to be much good in front of the camera,
unlike our caterpillar friend who practically crawled into the lens.
I
checked with the proprietors, Frank and Angela, to see whether it was
a gecko or a newt. Angela seemed fairly convinced it was actually a
salamander. I'd need to check with a taxonomist to be sure; here's
a page that may help figure out the difference if you're interested.
Wooden
sticks
Much
has been made of the use of wooden sticks in the series. The primary
focus, of course, has been on Rory Smith. He used a woody for the
last two years with the Six Nations Chiefs because they are allowed
in the Ontario Lacrosse Association. Smith couldn't use one in the
regular season with Victoria because they are banned in the WLA, but
CLA rules govern the Mann Cup so he is free to use his stick.
It's
quite a club that Smith wields. Many wooden sticks are beautiful
works of craftsmanship, if not art. They are graceful and elegant and
lovely to behold. Smith's is not. It is thick and heavy and it hurts
like hell when you get hit with it. That's not to say that Smith is
using it only for intimidation and to inflict maximum punishment, but
there's no question that's part of the equation.
There
was quite an uproar among Victoria fans when Shawn
Evans fired the ball at
Smith's head. I don't mean to condone Evans' action, but it needs to
be viewed in context. With Dickson bent over going after the ball,
Smith brought his stick down full force the back of Dickson's neck.
It was easily the most vicious single action of a series that has
seen plenty of hacking back and forth. The ball rolled to Evans as
Smith was chopping Dickson, so the Lakers' forward picked it up and
fired it at Smith in retaliation; I think many players would have
done the same thing.
After
Smith was ejected for going after Evans and his cousin Turner (though
not penalized for the attack on Dickson), three Victoria players
emerged with woodies: Steve
Priolo, Ben
McCullough and Tyler
Hass, the latter of whom
went down the tunnel and got Smith's stick to play with the rest of
the game. The Lakers were lucky enough to have a big lead in the
game, so they were able to avoid the woodies to a large degree, but
pulling them out wasn't a classy move on the Shamrocks' part.
To his
credit, Heyes said after the game that he didn't realize they players
had grabbed the wooden sticks and it wouldn't happen again because
that's not how they want to play the game. Since then, only Smith and
Peterborough's Wenster
Green have used woodies
and Green hasn't wielded his like a weapon, so things haven't
escalated. Hopefully the woodies won't become a story again in the
final two games.
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| Wading in the ocean just outside Esquimalt Lagoon. It was chilly. |
Lagoons
One
final note: I didn't know what a lagoon was until I looked it up
today. I knew of
lagoons, of course, but I'd never thought about what exactly one was.
Then our hostess Angela mentioned the Equimalt Lagoon—located right
behind us—being a mix of salt and fresh water and I started
thinking about that. It turns out she is partly right; a lagoon
is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a
shoal or reef. It generally does mark a mixing of salt and fresh
water with the former coming in from the sea and the latter coming
down from the land. Here endeth the lesson.
