It’s lacrosse season! The Vancouver Warriors wrapped up their preseason on Saturday, November 23rd in a 14-13 shootout loss to the Calgary Roughnecks. Now it’s time for the regular season, Vancouver opens their season in Colorado facing the Mammoth. Unlike the last few years, this season feels different. In 2023-24 and the first year under head coach and general manager Curt Malawsky, after starting out 2-8, the Warriors clawed back by winning 6 of their last 8 games, fishing 8-10 and just missing the playoffs.
This season has a much different feel to it. The goal is to make the playoffs, but is it unfinished business from last year for Vancouver? “Not really, we’ll take away the good things that we did from last year and the things that didn’t make us successful we will learn from them, it’s a whole new season a whole different group of guys we’re 0-0 and we’ll go start in Denver in a week,” said Malawsky post-game after Saturday’s game against Calgary.
Vancouver is bringing back superstars Keegan Bal and Adam Charalambides as well as reigning NLL defensive player of the year Ryan Dilks. The Warriors brought in more firepower on offence, signing record-breaking goal scorer Payton Cormier from the University of Virginia in the NCAA. They also bolstered the backend by signing Coquitlam native Jeff Cornwall from the Roughnecks. Defender Matt Beers explained how both the new and old players are going to need to be resilient and stick to the process for Vancouver to be successful.
“ For us its resiliency we have a lot of new faces we have some faces from last year that were a part of the grind but seeing how if we stick to the process we have a lot more success taking it five minutes as a time that Curt (Malawsky) always preaches and just kinda getting to know each other a lot of the new guys integrated into the system so preseason was a success I think we started treading into the right direction and we’re ready for next week.
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Malawsky has changed the culture of the Warriors and you could see that, especially in the second half of last season during Vancouver’s 5 game winning streak. Everyone is committed to the program that Malawsky is building and that’s one of the pillars that he always talks about. The Warriors have a great combination of veteran and young players who will all be difference-makers in many aspects. If Vancouver wants to make the playoffs, they can’t afford to have another slow start explained Beers.
“We have to start on the right foot the first couple (Preseason) games we started to get into it at the five-minute mark. We play a good chunk of our season with a few byes to start, we wanna make sure we get those first wins the first two weeks that’s gonna be big for us, going into the bye weeks you don’t want to be chasing it down 0-2 early in the season. We gotta make sure we start strong”.
The playoffs are a very achievable goal for this team and if they play like they did the second half of last season they could be a dark horse team for the championship. However, that is still a way away, the Warriors first focus is a matchup in Denver facing the Colorado Mammoth in Denver Friday night.