The Georgia Swarm play a game unlike most you may have seen, yet there exist similarities between more traditional sports and the team that Saturday night punched a ticket to the National Lacrosse League’s Champions Cup.
Box lacrosse, an indoor – pinball machine-like — version of an outdoor game created by Iroquois Native Americans and cousins in and around New York State, Pennsylvania and Ontario, comes with plenty of nuances.
Its themes and participants are not so different from professionals in other sports.
Take goalie Mike Poulin, a blockade in the Swarm’s 13-9 win over the Toronto Rock before 6,382 fans at the Infinite Energy Arena. He’s kind of like, say, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan. They’ve both played once in their sport’s biggest game, had a late lead, lost, and yearn for another shot.
Poulin, the 6-foot-2, 210-pounder from Kitchener, Ontario, stopped 82.4 percent of the 51 shots he faced, back-walling the Swarm (15-5) to the NLL title game for the first time in franchise history (2004-’15 in Minnesota).
“I’ve been there before,” he said, mindful of his Calgary Roughnecks squad of 2014 that made a run to the Champions Cup. “To lose a two-goal lead in the last two minutes … I’m glad to be back.”
Shayne Jackson, one of 14 Swarm from Ontario, scored three times, and fellow forwards Lyle Thompson, Randy Staats and Jordan Hall added two goals each as the NLL’s top scoring team played a little more like its regular-season self than in Georgia’s 11-8 win last week in Game One at Toronto.
Staats, from Six Nations, Ont., whipped a wicked laser 14 seconds after faceoff on the first of the game’s 100 combined shots. Miles Thompson (Lyle’s brother) and Kiel Matisz soon pierced the tiny goal, and the Swarm led 3-0 lead just 2:56 into the East Conference finale.
“It was huge,” said Lyle Thompson, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2015 NLL draft after he became the NCAA Division I all-time leader in points (400) at the University of Albany (N.Y.). “The first minute of the game was the biggest.”
After goals less than a minute apart by Lyle Thompson (short-handed at 9:18) and transition player Bryan Cole (10:10), Georgia led 5-2 and Toronto coach Matt Sawyer subbed out goal tender Brandon Miller, who stopped just four of nine shots, for Nick Rose.
Georgia marked on 7-of-39 shots the rest of the way, not counting an empty netter by Hall with 1:11 left in the match.
But Toronto never evened because Poulin and the defense in front of him were so stiff. At halftime, head coach Ed Comeau suggested pushing the Rock wider, and Toronto rarely saw clean shot opportunities thereafter.
Atlanta led 9-6 by halftime and Toronto scored once in the third and twice in the fourth.
Like a red-hot batter in baseball, Poulin saw the ball as if it were bigger. Think Freddie Freeman.
“We weren’t letting them get the over-the-top shots, and the angles were good,” Poulin said. “I could see them coming.”
Georgia will face two-time defending NLL champion Saskatchewan Rush (14-6) June 4, at 5:05 p.m. in the Infinite Energy Arena after controlling special plays.
After Toronto forward Dan Lintner was whistled for a body check in the fourth, Jackson took Lyle's pass and converted a power play for an 11-8 lead with 9:34 left.
As in the NBA, there is a shot clock, and with the way defenders whack at and check into the boards their opponents like in hockey, turnovers are a risk. Loose balls are big.
That reminds of the goal of the game, by Lyle Thompson, with 2:04 left in the third.
With the ball jarred roofward upon a thunderous collision 12 meters before goal, Lyle — as if jumping center in the NBA — lept, thrust his stick up with one arm, and amid three Rocks came down with the rock.
He spun and back pedaled, firing low from 15 meters under the massively-armored Rose for a 10-7 lead.
“I knew the shot clock was low, so I put it on net,” said Thompson, a native of Onondoga Nation, N.Y., near Syracuse. “I know that Rosey steps out quite a bit.”
About the Author
