NLL Insider

When it comes to men’s lacrosse, of any kind, nothing compares to the history and drama surrounding the pursuit of the Mann Cup, the solid gold trophy annually awarded to Canada’a best men’s box lacrosse team.

Moments after the Toronto Rock won their first National Lacrosse League championship in 1999, in front of more than 15,000 fans (at the time, the largest audience in Canadian lacrosse history), all-star defender Pat Coyle said to me, “This is great, but it’s still not the Mann Cup.”

The purpose of this anecdote is not to diminish the importance of winning the NLL’s Champion’s Cup. Coyle was simply stating the fact that for him, and for most Canadian lacrosse players, the ultimate goal is to win the Mann Cup.

The Mann is to Canadian lacrosse players what the Stanley Cup is to hockey players. Sir Donald Mann, chief architect of the Canadian National Railway, donated the trophy in 1910, and ever since, the eastern Canadian champs have played the western Canadian champs in an annual seven-game series to determine the national champion. In 95 years, the East teams have won the cup 49 times to the West’s 45.

I played on the Mann Cup-winning Six Nations Chiefs team from 1993-1995. We were a team that was built to win the Mann Cup, with such superstars as Paul Gait, John Tavares, Darris Kilgour and Cam and Cory Bomberry. No visiting team has won the Mann Cup since we did it in New Westminster, B.C., in 1994.

I still remember workhorse teammate Peter Kazarian making an impassioned speech to the team, promising that he would do whatever it took to ensure we won the Mann Cup because his late father had won it 40 years earlier. That kind of deep-rooted history is unmatched in lacrosse.

Legends are made in the Mann Cup, and many good lacrosse players are not called great until they’ve won one. The Gait brothers won their first Mann Cups relatively early in their careers, playing for the Brooklin Redmen in 1990. They won a few more individually before ending their Canadian careers by winning the 1999 Mann with their hometown Victoria (B.C.) Shamrocks.

John Tavares has won the Mann Cup six times, including five consecutive from 1992-96. Until John Grant, Jr. won his first Mann Cup last September—20 years after his legendary father won his last one—many lacrosse fans labeled him as, “The world’s most talented lacrosse player who can’t win.” That’s how important the Mann Cup is to Canadian lacrosse.

On May 14, the NLL’s championship game between the Arizona Sting and the Toronto Rock was televised to a worldwide NBC audience of almost one million people, while 19,432 fans watched live at the Air Canada Centre. Within a month, almost every player from that championship game had reported to a small town in Ontario or British Columbia to begin the summer season and the quest for the Mann Cup.

Colin Doyle, the NLL MVP, is playing for the Coquitlam Adanacs in British Columbia. Josh Sanderson is playing for the Brampton Excelsiors in Ontario. And Arizona’s Dan Dawson is playing for the Victoria Shamrocks.

The average attendance at a Toronto Rock Game was over 17,000 fans this year at the state-of-the-art Air Canada Centre. The average summer game attracts less than 1,000 fans, and most of the rinks can only seat about 4,000 total.

The leagues (the Western Lacrosse Association and Ontario Lacrosse Association) are not professional, although many teams entice the best players with perks that include rent-free housing, summer jobs and a little cash.

Money occasionally plays a role, but the best way to lure star players is still to show that your team has a good chance to make it to the Mann Cup, which is no easy feat. The Toronto Rock won their recent Champion’s Cup with two playoff victories in two weeks. When the Peterborough Lakers won the 2004 Mann Cup last September, they played 20 playoff games in six weeks.

While the average summer game might be played in front of small crowds, the Mann Cup is a different story. The crowds get larger when the playoffs start, and by the time a team has won the two playoff rounds to qualify for the championship Mann Cup series, the home crowd has been worked up to a feverish pitch.

There’s no television coverage here, either; the Mann Cup can only be seen live. Lacrosse is still not as mainstream as hockey in Canada, and television networks have said they won’t consider televising such a “fringe” sport until it is condensed to a one-game championship.

But don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. The Canadian lacrosse community would rather retain the purity of the Mann Cup competition than cater to the mainstream.

In 1981, my older brother Danny played for the Brampton Excelsiors when they represented Ontario in the Mann Cup. The home-team New Westminster Salmonbellies swept Brampton four games to nothing that year, and that was the closest my brother got to winning the cup.

Eleven years later, I played for the Excelsiors as we hosted the Salmonbellies. We won the series in a very hard-fought five games, and as I walked to the locker room afterward, my brother was the first to meet me. He hugged me and said, “You don’t even realize what you’ve just accomplished.”

He was wrong. I had achieved a lifetime dream, and I knew it. Today, the NLL is largely responsible for the resurgence of lacrosse in Canada. Quite possibly, many young lacrosse players dream of winning the NLL championship and know little of the Mann Cup.

However, by the time today’s tyke player is old enough to play in the NLL, he will probably have learned all about the tradition of the Mann Cup. And the quest will continue.

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