NLL Insider

With the National Lacrosse League in full swing — complete with an increasingly intense playoff race — you’re forgiven if you forgot there’s other lacrosse out there. Here’s your wake-up call.

With just a few weeks to go before Junior A training camps open, who better to kick off our coverage than Corey Hallman, GM of the Kitchener-Waterloo Braves and Chairman of the Junior A Board of Governors. A new-school big-wig with an impressive vision and a plan to match, Hallman talks the KW Braves, recruiting Americans, where the league needs to go, and how the NLL can help them get there.

We’ll start off with a quick look at last year — the Kitchener-Waterloo Braves were 8-10, good enough for ninth place. How did those results line up with the expectations you had for the season?
Actually we exceeded expectations. I think we lost about 12 guys from the year before so it was pretty much a rebuilding year for us. We were a little bit disappointed we didn’t make the playoffs, but at the same time you look at it and say okay, well what’s the lesser of two evils? You miss the playoffs, or you finish eighth and end up getting Six Nations in the first round? It would just kind of prolong the inevitable, I guess.

We’re about a month out from the beginning of training camp, is there anything specific the team needs to work on in order to improve on last year?
Heading into this year we’ve got a real good nucleus returning, but we’re short lefties so that’s one thing I’ve been trying to address in the off-season, bringing in some lefties. The righties seem to be a dime a dozen but lefties kind of seem to be at a premium. There’s still some things we’re working on as far as getting some lefties into camp but our right side will be pretty solid with guys like Scotty Tinning and Matty Quinton.

You originally held the first pick overall in the draft but dealt it, in part, for goaltender Adam Hickey. With this being Evan Kirk’s last year in junior are you confident that Hickey will be a suitable number one goalie for the following few years?
Yeah we liked Adam originally when he was back in midget. He played in the prospects game here in Kitchener-Waterloo and he caught our eye, he was pretty high on our radar heading into the draft but Mississauga snagged him. We were able to get him and still end up getting the guy we wanted in the draft, which was a real big bonus. I was real happy with the way our draft went this year.

Speaking of the draft, can you talk a little bit about what you hope picks Mike Cazzola and Ian King will to bring to the team?
Cazzola, he’s a lefty, I’ve seen him play and he reminds me a little of Ryan Benesch with a little bit more attitude, which is nice. I think he’s got the potential to be a real good ball player. If you look at the bantam national team from a few years ago he was right up there in scoring so we expect him to be putting the ball in the net for us for the next five years. Ian King is a London player we saw when they were playing here in the qualifying tournament. Although he is a righty he was the best player on that team and he plays with a lot of grit. We can never have enough guys like that.

Do you have any goals or expectations for the Braves this season?
Top four would be nice. I mean yeah you always want to say ‘hey, let’s get number one’ but let’s set some realistic expectations. Top four and then we’ll see how it shakes down from there.

Let’s say I’m a new fan and I’m going to start going to games, who are the guys I should keep an eye on? Who are you expecting big seasons from?
Obviously Scotty Tinning, Matt Quinton and Evan Kirk — I have to think he’s probably the best goalie in the league right now. That’s up for debate but in our eyes we think we’ve got the best keeper out there. We’re bringing in some players, I don’t really want to go there yet because the deals aren’t quite finalized. Alex Inch is another guy we expected big things out of last year but he ended up getting injured and he missed the whole season so that’s unfortunate. I think people will like what they see out of Mike Cazzola as well.

What do you think the real strengths of this team are?
Evan is the backbone of our team so defensively we need to be there and support him. Phil Wetherup and Geoff George, the two coaches, they’ve done a good job getting the guys to buy into the system of pushing the ball up the floor. We don’t do a whole lot of offense/defense like some teams do. We try to push the ball up the floor as fast as we can and create opportunities that way.

How do you see the rest of the league shaping up?
In our league you’re always looking at Six Nations to do big things. They picked up goaltender Angus Goodleaf from me earlier this year actually. I picked him up two years ago from Akwesasne when he was in Junior B, he played a season with us and then he went out to Burnaby and he played in the Minto against Six Nations last year. He didn’t have the best Minto Cup so I was really thinking his stock kind of dropped but Six Nations were interested in him and he was interested in going so it was a deal that worked out for both sides. You never know what they’re going to bring in. There’s talk of players from the West coming here and what not but we won’t know until we see them on the floor. They’ll always be strong, they’ve got good coaching and a good group of supporters behind them.

Orangeville’s always gotta be a favourite because they’re Orangeville and they always produce good ball players. St. Catharines, I have to think they’re going to be pretty good this year. And from there hopefully it’s us and that makes the four. Brampton’s been doing some good things over the years. I’m not sure what to expect out of Burlington this year. They’ve really picked up their program over the last few years so I expect them to be in the mix-up there, fighting for a spot as well.

In addition to being the GM of the KW Braves, you’re also the Chairman of the Junior A Board of Governors. Can you talk a little bit about what that job entails?
Dean McLeod is the Commissioner of the Junior ‘A’ Board and my job is to support him. I’m also to assist the Commissioner in any meetings where required. For example, this past weekend I was out in Edmonton with Dean McLeod and the OLA crew - John Doherty (OLA President), Stan Cockerton (Executive Director), Ron MacSpadyen (Marketing Director) and Doug Luey (VP of Junior and Major). We were out there as representatives of the Ontario board to meet with the National Lacrosse League and discuss a working relationship with them. Obviously we’ve put a lot of players into the National Lacrosse League and we’re just looking at ways that we can work a little more closely with them. The National Lacrosse League called it a “Summit”. There were representatives from Major Series Lacrosse, and then Alberta was represented and so was British Columbia. It was a full day meeting on Saturday where we discussed a variety of points.

Well I hope you got to go to the All-Star Game too.
We got to see the Rochester vs Edmonton game as well as the All-Star Game, which is always good. The All-Star Game was good and I got see some of the guys I hadn’t seen in a long time.

What kind of a vision do you have for Ontario Junior A? What changes or improvements would you like to see implemented?
You know what, I addressed this Saturday in the summit, so to speak. I like to compare our Junior ‘A’ league to the OHL where we’ve got the best players in the province playing at the highest level. No doubt our league has produced some of the top lacrosse players for the National Lacrosse League and I think it would be great for them to help us out with things like sponsorship and kind of push us in the right direction. The NLL for example has a league-wide deal with Reebok. There’s no reason that Reebok can’t be a sponsor for our league and I’m sure with a little encouragement from the NLL this could happen.

We’re never going to be as financially strong as the OHL because we’re never going to have thousands of people in our seats night in and night out. We’re a summer sport and people have better things to do than go sit in hot arenas all summer long. However we’re producing some of the top talent in the National Lacrosse League and I think people could get an opportunity to see these guys develop before they move on to the next level. We’re taking some steps to market the league, the players, everything about it a little better. Hopefully it creates some interest and gets some people in the seats.

It does kind of seem like a one-way relationship with the NLL.
You know to be honest with you, it’s a little frustrating. We’re sending players on to the next level but we’re not getting anything back. You look at the OHL and the NHL or the CHL and the NHL for that matter and when an NHL team drafts a player, there’s some kind of compensation going back to the CHL as a developmental fee. I’m not asking for tens of thousands of dollars, but there needs to be something coming back so we can keep developing these players for them. If you look at the midget draft, we pay the minor association that each player is drafted from.

The Majors, for example, if they draft a player from Kitchener-Waterloo they pay us a nominal fee for developing their players but for some reason players get to go to the National Lacrosse League and nothing comes back our way. It is a little frustrating at times, there are a lot of teams out there that run on really tight budgets and that money would really be helpful…I mean even if a first round pick was a thousand dollars, that’s a bus to Peterborough for me. That money all goes back into the system so we can buy helmets, gloves, pay the bus bills… Every little bit helps.

For a long time we’ve seen Canadian junior players wanting to go to the US to play NCAA ball, and now it’s kind of coming back the other way where we’re starting to hear rumblings about American field players wanting to come play Canadian junior ball to increase their chances of a pro career. Has there been talk about getting any sort of system going to funnel American players into Ontario junior A, anything like that?
Every time your players go off to the US you always say ‘hey, if there’s any kids there you think would want to play summer ball, by all means have them come down here’ and you do get some but the reality is that those kids have pretty good summer jobs down there. When Merrick Thomson was playing here he was bouncing back and forth because he was working camps down in Albany. A lot of kids do that, they work camps or have a good summer job. When they move on to the next level — and this is something I just kind of learned this year being involved with the New York team — these guys don’t have a clue what Junior ‘A’ lacrosse is. It was kind of funny, I’ll ask ‘where did you think all these players and coaches were coming from?’ A lot of them will say ‘I knew they were coming from Canada but I didn’t know much about your lacrosse.’

To be honest, New York is a bit of a special situation. These guys aren’t going to come play box lacrosse up here in the summer time because they’ve got some pretty good jobs going on and careers that they’re focused on, but for the most part, I don’t know how many top players you’re going to get. I’m not going to pull a guy from Long Island and have him come play lacrosse in K-W, it’s just not going to happen. I’ve tried recruiting kids from Orchard Park before and we didn’t have a whole lot of success with it. It’s tough, but a kid like Frank Resetarits, for example, from Hamburg, NY ended up playing in Niagara and St. Catharines, went on to have a pretty good junior career and now he’s doing some pretty good things at the pro level. I wish more kids would see that and take a chance.

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