The St. Albert Miners are not backing down from a fight as the heavyweight champions in Canadian senior B lacrosse.
The President’s Cup winners for three consecutive years have pounded out 18 straight victories after knocking out the Beaumont Outlaws in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League provincial semifinal.
“You could say we have a bit of a bull’s-eye on our backs since we’ve won the last three nationals. Every team wants to beat us and they’re going to come and play hard so we can’t take anything for granted,” said assistant captain Graedon Cornfield. “We come ready to work, we rely on our systems and we don’t take any team lightly. Those are the three keys to our success up to this point."
Sunday’s 13-7 series clincher in Beaumont marked the 105th win in 112 league, playoff and national games since losing the 2015 provincial final.
During the stretch of greatness, the Miners suffered only five losses, including two at nationals, and settled for a pair of ties.
“It starts at the top with management and coaching. They set the tone,” said Cornfield of the Miners’ organization lead by Tom Engel’s lengthy involvement at the management level before AJ Johma, the newly-retired Jordan Cornfield and others provided assistance in various capacities while the coaching staff remained stable with Vay Diep at the helm.
“They give us the players all the support we need and anything that will help us out so that kind of trickles down thoughout the players and that vibe. Everybody sees how hard they work at the top so we want to match that and try and continue with that success,” Cornfield said. “We’ve got to keep excelling.”
The 18-1 Miners are averaging a championship-level 11.7 goals and six against this season after out-scoring the Outlaws 41-23 in three playoff games.
“Our goal is to try and get better each game, “ Cornfield said. “We felt like we’ve consistently got a little bit better each game throughout the series and hopefully going into this final series it continues.”
This year’s provincial final is the sixth in a row and the ninth in 10 years as the Miners will face-off against the Calgary Mountaineers or Rockyview Knights of Airdrie for the right to represent Alberta at nationals, Aug. 26 to Sept. 1 at Kahnawake, Que.
Last year’s trip to nationals in Nanamio, B.C., was the fourth in five years and the sixth since 2010.
The first of three President’s Cup celebrations for the Miners was 2016 as the host team for the tournament in Leduc. The championship triumph was also the first by an Alberta team since the 2007 Sherwood Park Outlaws.
Two years ago at Iroquois Lacrosse Arena on the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, the Miners were the first team to repeat since the 2011-12 St. Regis Braves of the Three Nations Senior Lacrosse League.
Last year the Miners joined the 1976-78 Vernon Tigers and 1986-88 Fergus (Ont.) Thistles as the only three-peat winners in the President’s Cup 55-year history.
“If we’re fortunate enough to go to Kahnawake, going out east to play in a national tournament is always a lot tougher than out west because all the east teams really load up,” Cornfield said. “But right now we’re going to take it one game at a time and try and work hard to get out of the province.”
The Mountaineers (10-6) and Rockyview (9-7) placed second an third, respectively, in the six-team standings and the playoff results between the two teams were 8-5 and 15-5 for the Mountaineers before game three Tuesday in Airdrie. The score was unavailable at press time.
“We know whoever we come up against in the final is going to be a tough challenge for us. It’s going to be a really hard series. They’re both pretty good teams who’ve given us good battles throughout the year. We also have a lot of history with both teams in the playoffs,” said Cornfield, noting the Miners have gone head-to-head with the Mountaineers or Rockyview in the last five finals and it was the Knights who beat St. Albert for the 2015 title.
The fourth-place Outlaws (7-9) were no slouches either, despite the playoff sweep as the Miners posted wins of 16-11 and 12-5 at Go Auto Arena before closing out the series Sunday.
“The scores might be a bit deceiving to be honest. A lot of the games were very close throughout, especially the last game (it was 8-6 Miners after two periods) and we kind of pulled away at the end,” Cornfield said of the only team to defeat the Miners, 13-9 in the season-opener May 3 in Beaumont. “It was actually a really hard-fought series. They’re a competitive team. They’re big, they’re physical and they played hard.”
Cornfield led the Miners in goals in the series with 11 and after potting five in game three, with four coming on the power play as the Miners racked up eight with the man advantage, and added three assists. His 16 points in two games ranked third in team playoff scoring behind Richard Lachlan’s 24 (8-16) and Matt Kristiansen’s 19 (7-12) in three games.
Lachlan’s eight points in game three featured six assists, while Kinnear and Kristiansen produced with five points apiece.
In the RMLL scoring race, Lachlan (33-52-85 in 12 games), Kristiansen (35-40-75 in 16 games) and Cornfield (40-32-72 in 13 games) placed one-two-three on the leader board and Kinnear (29-34-63 in 15 games) was sixth.
Cornfield’s 40 goals and Lachlan's 52 assists were league bests.
Lachlan also repeated as the Harris Toth Award recipient as the RMLL’s top scorer after piling up 51 goals and 103 points in 16 games in 2018.
Cornfield was the RMLL's leading scorer in the regular season in 2010 (43-39-82 in 16 games), 2011 (31-35-66 in 18 games) and 2014 (50-36-86 in 15 games).
This year’s lineup didn’t miss a beat without Keegan Bal, the 2016 and 2017 RMLL scoring champion and MVP at nationals, and offensive threats Mike Triollo and Jordan Cornfield to fill the net.
“There’s a long list of names that didn’t come back so we knew it would be a bit of a different season. We had a lot of new guys, so starting off our goal was to get better each game and with all the new guys it took a bit to learn the systems and it comes down to coaching.
"Our coaching has been very good this year, getting everyone in line and getting all the new guys on board with the systems and how they work,” said Cornfield, the fourth-oldest Miner at age 32 who is among a handful of players still with the team from the 2014 bronze medallists at the President’s Cup in Coquitlam, B.C., that finished 27-3 overall and all three losses were at nationals.
