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June 2, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Memorable first campaign ends with playoffs, league MVP honor

by Justin Rice/

Deciding to house as many players as possible in Boston’s North End proved to be the best tactical move of the Boston Blazers’ inaugural season. But the strategy hit the team’s bottom line harder than planned.

Bucking the norm in the National Lacrosse League — in which most players work full-time jobs in their respective hometowns and commute to games every weekend — the Blazers recruited 13 members of their 24-man roster to relocate to Boston for the winter. But paying to rent four North End properties just steps from TD Banknorth Garden — including a five-room house dubbed the Blazers Den — turned out to be more expensive than it would have cost the team to pay players’ commuting costs each weekend. However, Blazers coach and general manager Tom Ryan said the team — which finished the season 10-6, in a three-way tie for first place in the East Division, before losing to the Buffalo Bandits in the opening round of the playoffs on May 2 — would not have been so successful otherwise.

“Our physically being out in the community helped spread the word about the Blazers at the grass-roots level, that’s important,” Ryan said on May 13 as he was reviewing the club’s financials and starting to put together a business model for next season. “A large part of our success was connected to guys living with each other and in the community and really believing what the team is all about. That took us farther than we would’ve been able to go otherwise. The reality of the league is, a lot of guys are from other areas and play with guys they don’t know well.

“Guys were living in nice apartments in the North End, where it is not cheap to live,” Ryan continued. “But as I said before, that was something we felt strongly about. Having the guys down here living together in a place they were excited to live in — at the end of the day, if you look for reasons why we were successful — was the most important piece to the puzzle.”

“I loved hanging out over there,” said Marshfield, Mass., native Sean Morris, a South Boston resident who hung out in the North End with his teammates. “They left (in mid-May). It’s a little different with them not around.”

Ryan said the team will not house as many players in Boston next season and will instead look for players with Northeast roots willing to live here on their own. Yet, while Ryan also said living together next year will not be as important to the team’s success now that the Blazers have a nucleus of players, there’s no question about how important immersing his players in Boston was to this year’s team.

After losing the first two games of the season to New York, the Blazers won two games, lost another and then went on a five-game tear before losing, 9-8, to Toronto on March 14. Boston closed the regular season by going 3-2, including a 13-12 overtime win over Buffalo in the finale on April 18. But the host Bandits bested Boston, 11-8, in the opening round of the playoffs.

In the regular-season overtime thriller vs. Buffalo, Morris scored 26 seconds into the extra period. But that was not even the most dramatic win for the Blazers this year. A month into the season, on Feb. 7, Kyle Ross scooped up a loose ball and scored with a half-second left in regulation to snag a 9-8 victory over the New York Titans, who had defeated Boston in the first two games of the season, 19-14 and 13-9.

“Starting off 0-2 against a tough New York team and losing our home opener was tough,” said NLL MVP Dan Dawson (30 goals, 74 assists). “We wanted to start off the season with a bang, but at the same time it was some tough love that was good for us. As a young team, we didn’t realize how hard it is to win a game in this league.”

While the Blazers lost their home opener, the game provided one of the most memorable highlights of the season. Mitch Belisle laid a huge hit on Jarrett Park that brought the biggest cheers from that night’s TD Banknorth Garden crowd. Belisle stormed out of the penalty box and blindsided Park, jarring the ball, the helmet and the wind from his unsuspecting opponent and former teammate. The hit made it into the top 10 plays of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and as of late May had received more than 32,000 YouTube views.

Belisle is one of four Blazers who will stick around this summer and play for the Boston Cannons. Morris, Jack Reid and rookie standout Daryl Veltman also are playing for the local team in Major League Lacrosse, which underwent a financial restricting this offseason that includes keeping players closer to home or their NLL teams to save on travel expenses.

“We’d love to have more overlap with the Cannons,” Ryan said. “They work well with us to get some of our guys on their team and vice versa. It’s definitely a good working relationship.”

Yet, while major synergy between the two pro leagues would seem to make financial sense, Reid isn’t so sure it will happen, especially because he estimated that only about 30 percent of the players play in both leagues.

“I think we’ll see a slight shift in keeping guys, when possible, in the same market. But really, the two games are so drastically different from each other,” said Reid, a native of Glastonbury, Conn., who played for Rochester’s MLL team last year and Rochester’s NLL team the year before that. “At the end of the day they are both lacrosse, but they are two starkly different games that it makes it hard to have too symbiotic of a relationship.”

While the poor economy has forced both leagues to think more regionally, it also has forced some fans to choose between saving up for two Celtics or Bruins tickets or taking their kids to a Blazers game.

“That’s the area we can do even better in. That’s the best area for growth, to get that casual sports fan to realize there’s actually great sports entertainment at the Garden and it’s half the price of a C’s game or Bruins,” said Reid, who was optimistic about the team’s ability to improve on the roughly 7,000 fans per game the Blazers reported drawing. “It will be great when we have a packed arena,” Reid said. “I can only imagine what 10,000 to 15,000 fans will sound like.”

Ryan said the team fell shy of perhaps an overly ambitious goal of 8,000 fans per game, but that was partially because the team made a conscious effort to give away as few free tickets as possible. Ryan said once fans get a ticket for free they are less likely to pay the next time.

“It’s easy to point to the economy, but the bottom line is we have to make this thing work,” Ryan said. “We definitely think we provide an affordable alternative for families going to the Garden. It’s easy to get four tickets and spend under 100 bucks. In this economy, everyone is scrutinizing every dollar, but I think dollar for dollar we offer a great deal.”

With a few teams folding recently and the possibility of further league contraction, Ryan said he feels pressure to make the business break even faster than most startups are asked to perform the same feat.

“Our owner, Tim Armstrong, is very supportive,” Ryan said of the president of advertising and commerce for Google. “He’s also a successful businessperson and is putting pressure on us to do the best job we can. I can’t fault him on that. You don’t get to where you want to be without pressure to be the best. We’re under the gun because our owner wants us to be as successful in the front office as possible. The other reality is, this is a tough business. Teams do fold. We like our jobs and we feel strongly about the team. We want to succeed.”

Unlike last season, when Ryan spent almost his entire summer recruiting players in Canada, this summer he can focus on strengthening the business model and promoting the team. The Blazers will run several youth lacrosse clinics and camps throughout the summer as well as attending camps and clinics put on by other organizations. For the second straight year, the team also had a presence at the NCAA men’s championships at Gillette Stadium over Memorial Day weekend.

Another big advantage to having their infrastructure in place is that the Blazers don’t have to worry about establishing a routine or waiting to install their system until after the season starts as they once again set their sights on a championship.

“It was a good season. We didn’t accomplish our goals, but everyone got to know the Blazers,” said Morris, who finished with eight goals and 16 assists in just six games after recovering from an early season ankle injury. “We fell short of our goal to win a championship, but hopefully that’s something I can do this summer with the Cannons.”