Rush eager to return to playoffs as season gets underway

There’s a new feeling around the Saskatchewan Rush as it gets set to begin the 2024 National Lacrosse League season.

After missing the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, the Rush made a decision in the off-season to part way with some long-time veterans and inject some youth into the roster.

Rush general manager Derek Kennan said it has been a very busy off-season as he attempts to retool his club.

“We had 15 new players at training camp and I think we have six or seven new players in the regular lineup. It was real busy,” Keenan said on The Green Zone this week.

Keenan felt that while the team isn’t that far removed from competing for a championship, it was time to move on and usher in a new era of Rush lacrosse.

“Time goes by quickly and before you know it, guys are getting older and guys tend to get complacent at times and a little bit of entitlement seeps in, and next thing you know you’re out of the playoffs for two years in a row,” he explained. “Most importantly, we needed to correct some areas in our game that I saw after doing a pretty extensive analysis after the season ended.

“We weren’t athletic enough on offence. I didn’t think we were big enough. Our back end — although we’ve done some things to get younger and faster — we’ve enhanced that even more. I think we’ve improved in our goaltending too, so all those things we felt we needed to address, I think we did. I guess we’ll know for sure when we start playing real games this weekend.”

Some of the big names Keenan had to get rid of this off-season included captain Ryan Dilks and veterans Kyle Rubisch, Matt Beers and Mark Matthews.

Ryan Keenan was named the team’s captain in the off-season and is fired up to get things rolling in Halifax on Friday night.

“There’s always that level of excitement when there’s a new season starting, but I think this year in particular, there’s been quite a lot of new excitement within the group,” he said. “I think it’s kind of surrounding the amount of new guys we have and the restructured team.

“There’s a kind of intensity, hunger and will to win that probably hasn’t been there the last few years. I think it surrounds a lot of these new guys and their desire to get to that championship level and a lot of guys out to prove themselves.

“You look around the league and there’s probably not a lot of expectations, but I think you look around our group and there’s lots of expectations internally.”

Ryan Keenan felt the training camp the Rush had in Ontario a couple weeks ago was a lot more intense than what he’d seen in years past.

“For the guys who have been around the last few years, it’s been a major disappointment. When you get used to that level of success and then it falls off, it sucks and you want to get back to that level,” he said.

“There’s been a level of compete in camp. You look at guys like Zach Manns and Patrick Dodds — guys who are expected to jump in and have big roles — there’s a desire to prove themselves and show they belong at the premier of the top guys in the league.

“Our game on Saturday against Calgary (in Moose Jaw) didn’t feel like an exhibition game. There was a level of intensity on both sides that was a regular-season game. I think we’re ready to go this weekend.”

The biggest thing to watch for the Rush this year will be to see how quickly all the new players on the floor can mesh together. Ryan Keenan admitted it might take a little bit to adjust to each other as they only play with everyone on weekends.

“We don’t have a lot of time, so we’ve tried to make the most of the weekends, practices and scrimmages we had. It’s still a work in progress; there was a couple mistakes which cost us last weekend, which will happen as we work together and build chemistry,” he explained.

“It takes time, but I know it will come and the big thing is the effort level and commitment to buy in is there. That’s not an issue.”

The Rush plays in Halifax on Friday starting at 6 p.m. The game can be seen on TSN.

Ryan Keenan is Derek’s son. The GM said the decision to make Ryan the team captain didn’t come from him, but it did create an interesting family dynamic.

“That was entirely a staff decision. My only part in it was that he was going into an expiring contract after this season, so I said to Jimmy (Quinlan, the team’s head coach), ‘OK, but we’ve got to get him on an extension,’ ” Derek said. “It was all the coaching staff who made that decision.”

Derek said Ryan tried to poke some fun at him when the coaching staff made the decision.

“He told me about halfway through (negotiations), ‘I think I’ve got to get an agent,’ ” the elder Keenan said with a laugh. “That was a little awkward, but it all worked out.”