November 11, 2011
Cannons hope they have the key to MLL success
by Scott Souza/
The Boston Cannons finally got their hands on the Steinfeld Trophy after winning their first MLL championship. (photo: Getty Images)
There wasn’t a lot of talk about it. After all, there was a task at hand — winning the first Major League Lacrosse title in franchise history — for the Boston Cannons as they prepared for championship weekend at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md.
But it was there. Simmering beneath the adrenaline building toward the games, and the focus needed to make sure this was the year the Cannons would break a decade-long playoff curse, was the knowledge that this was their final chance as a collective group to get it done.
Once they left Annapolis — with or without the Steinfeld Trophy — things would never be quite the same. With an expansion draft coming to fill rosters in Charlotte, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio, next summer, key members of the team that earned the top playoff seed two years in a row would be gone. Coach Bill Daye, who’d been with the franchise as a player or coach in nine of 11 seasons, had hinted at retirement going back a full year. Add in the perennial changes that occur with players whose families and full-time jobs have them planted throughout the Northeast, and you had a pivotal moment in franchise history.
“It was said a couple of times in the huddle that this was really the last time we would all be playing together,” said Mitch Belisle, the Cannons’ Defensive Player of the Year. “A lot is going to change for this team next year. The fact is that we’re going to lose three, four, five guys to expansion. That made it a difficult weekend. That we were so tight on and off the field this year is what helped make it special.”
The Cannons extended that special season with a 13-12 victory against the Chesapeake Bayhawks in the semifinals, rallying from a 6-1 deficit amid the torrential rains of Hurricane Irene. The next day, they won the first MLL title in franchise history with a 10-9 triumph over the Hamilton Nationals.
There was a wild celebration on the field, a party in the locker room, then a night on the town, where the bulk of the team toasted its accomplishment.
Then came the flights and train rides late that night and early the next morning to many separate destinations. Some of the New England-based players attended ceremonies at Boston City Hall, Fenway Park, TD Garden and Gillette Stadium honoring the title. For many, however, it was goodbye for now, with no guarantee when, or under what circumstance, the next greeting would come.
Offseason of change
A month after the championship, Daye made official his resignation as head coach. Though he considered staying for one more year to take on the challenge of rebuilding the squad following expansion, he determined that the time spent as Cannons coach and personnel chief was eating too much into the time he wanted to spend with his young family.
While the Cannons embarked on finding a new coach, they also had to decide which 12 players from the championship roster to protect going into the Dec. 7 expansion draft.
“It really is a chess match,” Cannons general manager Kevin Barney said. “Who do you protect? Who do you expose? Who do you think will be selected from you?
“It definitely makes it tougher after winning a championship. In many ways, it’s the worst time for us to have to do this. You know it will be tough for the guys who aren’t protected.”
Those unprotected players included 2010 first-round draft pick Max Quinzani (Duxbury, Mass.); 2010 first-round supplemental draft pick and Cannons’ 11th Man Award winner J.J. Morrissey (Winchester, Mass.); championship weekend scoring standout Mike Stone (Wellesley, Mass.); and starting defensemen Jack Reid and Kyle Sweeney.
The Cannons also left exposed 2011 first-round pick Shamel Bratton and second-round pick Josh Amidon, both of whom never signed with the team after their respective collegiate seasons ended but could be attractive to new franchises, as well as backup goalie Kip Turner, the 2010 MLL Goalie of the Year.
The Cannons also traded 2011 draft pick John Lade — who played three games with Boston before being deactivated late in the season — for the 19th pick in the January 2012 college draft, and sent its first-round pick in the college draft to Columbus for a second-round college draft pick and an 11th-round pick in the expansion draft.
“Our main objective for next year is to preserve as much as possible of what we had this year,” Cannons president and founding owner Matt Dwyer said. “We finally cracked the code, and we want to do it again.”
Once a team has three players selected in the expansion draft, they can pull back one player. For each subsequent player selected, they reclaim an additional player. The Cannons could use the expansion pick acquired via trade to grab one of their own players, with that pick counting in the “players selected from the roster” tally.
“You lose players every year in this league due to attrition and life circumstances,” Dwyer said. “But based on whom we protected and the expansion pick we traded for, we are very optimistic we will be able to bring as much of the team back as we can.”
Championship fever
After a decade of playoff disappointment, the Cannons earned their place among Boston sports champions and hope that earns them an uptick in both merchandising and ticket sales.
The team has championship memorabilia for sale on its website, has planned “fan appreciation” nights and is offering commemorative lacrosse balls with each of the first 1,000 season tickets ordered.
Already one of the league’s most popular franchises with an average attendance of about 9,000, the hope is the excitement generated from the title and publicity from appearances with the Red Sox, Patriots and Bruins will add to interest in the sport and the team.
“We’ve waited for this,” Barney said. “We knew we had to get to the next level to get the type of exposure we need to bring in the casual fan. Now people see that there is another professional sports team in Boston that is a winner. That’s what it takes around here.”
With the league expanding to eight teams, the 2012 season starts earlier — opening night is slated for April 28 — and includes an extra home game that should fall during the prime attendance window when schools are still in session. Last year’s season-ticket package included the All-Star Game, which has been at the team’s Harvard University home field the past two years, while this year’s package includes the seventh home game in its place with the site of the 2012 All-Star Game and championship weekend still to be determined as of mid-October.
“We’re hoping this gives us a little shot in the arm,” Dwyer said. “It’s more of an awareness thing. When we won, we were drafting off the Bruins’ success with the Stanley Cup. That all of the New England teams — except maybe the Revolution — have experienced this type of success has really elevated us.”
The next chapter
With as much as half the roster, plus the head coach, new on the sideline next year, things will be a lot different for the Cannons in 2012. Dwyer said the team hopes to have a new, MLL-savvy coach in place in time for the expansion draft, and is optimistic that the new boss will retain experienced assistants Jim Murphy and Steve Duffy. It’s all part of a quest to maintain the dynamic that made the 2011 team a champion as the Cannons try to become only the second team to repeat as MLL kings.
“Guys just need to do what they did this year,” said Daye, who was acting as a team adviser until a new coach was in place. “They have to improve and they have to accept their roles. These guys understood what they needed to do within our system and that worked for us. We had a lot of guys step up vocally and on the field for us this year and that leadership will have to continue.”
The team ordered championship rings and hopes to have as many of the players from this year’s squad together as possible when the Cannons return to Harvard for the first time since an overtime victory against Rochester in the regular-season finale.
“You watch the Bruins and you think that we didn’t have a parade, we didn’t have the duck boats,” Barney said. “Our big ceremony is going to come on opening night when we see our fans again. It might not be as elaborate as what the Bruins did, but we are excited to come back next season as champions.”
This article originally appeared in the November-December 2011 issue of New England Lacrosse Journal.
Scott Souza can be reached at feedback@laxjournal.com
