Despite competing for the Minto Cup national championship last season and winning it the year before, Coquitlam Jr. Adanacs’ coach Pat Coyle still has no idea what his team is capable of when the BC Junior A Lacrosse League kicks off its 2018 season this weekend.
Coyle does know he’s lost eight defenders from last year’s squad that surrendered only 136 goals and didn’t lose a single game in regulation time en route to a league championship as well as berth in the Minto Cup. And he also knows that many of the veterans, like team captain Reid Bowering, he’ll be looking to provide the leadership and guidance to youngsters stepping into the roster won’t be available to play until sometime in June when they return from school in the United States.
“We’re still learning what we’ve got as we go along,” Coyle said. “That’s the tough part of our season.”
But from that adversity comes opportunity for those Intermediate call-ups looking to make an impression or even stick with the team when the veterans return, Coyle said. And when they look behind them, they’ll have the steadying presence of fifth-year keeper Christian Del Bianco.
“With him in the net, that really helps,” Coyle said of the veteran netminder who spent his winter getting a taste of the pro life guarding the goal for the Calgary Roughnecks of the National Lacrosse League. “He’s one of the best leaders of our team.”
In contrast to the mystery of the Adanacs’ back end, the team’s corps of forwards and runners is still intact.
Coyle said veterans like Dennon Armstrong, Ethan Ticehurst, John Hofseth and Thomas Semple are only getting better.
“We like how we’re shaping up.”
Especially as Coyle expects the competition and battle for playoff spots to be as stiff as it’s ever been with every team setting its sights on the Adanacs who’ve lost only once in the past two seasons.
“I think it will be a tighter league,” Coyle said. “By no means is it a given we’ll win.”
One of the teams looking to take its game to the next level is the crosstown Port Coquitlam Saints.
After weathering a tough start last season as they awaited the arrival of some key veterans from their school commitments, the Saints rallied to finish third and qualified for the playoffs where they were ousted in three straight games by the New Westminster Salmonbellies.
Saints’ coach Kelly Scott said his young charges are ready to “make some noise.”
Offensively, the loudest contributions should come from veterans Dylan Foulds, Clark Walter, Carson Reese, Connor Frost and Daylin Kellough with youngsters Garrett Winters and Coleton Lundy prepared to chime in.
Defensively, Ryland Rees, Graden Bradley, Ty Goff and Broadie Gillespie are back while young up-and-comers NIck Scott, Austen Cooke and Daytin Vidovich will bring speed to the Saints’ transition game, Scott said.
Anchoring the team will be veteran goalkeeper Cam Overby, who’s ready to take on the starting duties after the departure of Andrew Gallant, who was selected sixth overall by the Coquitlam Adanacs in the Western Lacrosse Association’s draft of graduating juniors last February. Overby saw action in 13 games last season, earned three wins along with a loss, and stopped 150 of the 194 shots he faced.
He’ll be supported by rookie Diesel Deguzmen, out of Richmond, who started his lacrosse career as a forward before switching to the job of preventing goals.
• The Poco Saints open the BCJALL season when they host the Victoria Shamrocks on Sunday, 4 p.m. at the PoCo rec centre.
The Adanacs will also play the Shamrocks in their first game of the season, May 5, at the Q Centre in Victoria.
