NLL Insider

While the Sr. A boys are busy clinching playoff spots and preparing for the postseason, the teams of Sr. B are already neck-deep in it. With the Wellington Aces preparing to begin a five-game battle with the Owen Sound Woodsmen tonight, Aces defender Reg Van Velzen takes a little time to talk playoff match-ups, starting goalies, and a few good reasons to pay attention to Sr. B lacrosse.

For all the lacrosse fans who are going to need to play catch-up on Sr. B, where are you in the season currently?
We’re in the playoffs, right now we’re heading into the semi-finals.

Could you talk a little bit about the playoff format?
There’s two conferences and the first place team from each one gets a first round bye, which was my team and Brooklin. The other four teams play a best-of-three series and then the winner of those series move on to play the two first place teams, and that’s best-of-five.

Are you at all worried that the time off is going to take the wind out of your sails a little bit?
No, not too much because it gives minor injuries and things like that time to heal. We still practice really hard and our coach is pretty good at keeping our intensity up so I don’t think that should be a problem.

What can we expect from this series with the Owen Sound Woodsmen?
Well they’ve got [Steve] Dietrich in net and he’s obviously one of the top goalies around anywhere. I think it should be a real battle between two really good defensive teams. I would expect not too many goals, really tight low-scoring games.

Speaking of high-calibre goalies, are we going to be seeing Bob Watson in net for the Aces?
Yes, and that’s another reason why I would assume it would be low-scoring. We’ve got, in my mind, two of the top goaltenders in the NLL playing on either side. We’ve been practicing with Whipper, he’s a really good goalie, it should be an awesome series. It should be really fun watching those two guys play.

As a defender, who are the Woodsmen you’re going to have to shut down or key in on to keep these games winnable?
We’ve gone over a few players they have, they just picked up Chris Driscoll who plays for the Rock, guys like Bryan Kazarian and Jamie Grimoldby, those three guys. I mean we don’t like to focus on specific players too much, we know we need to be keying in one those guys but they have a good team so if we focus too much on those players they have other guys that will fill the net and we need to defend against those guys as well.

If a new fan went to one of your games, who on your team would be the players you’d tell them to watch?
I’d love to say myself but I’m not too exciting. We’ve got a well-balanced team, our scoring is pretty spread out. I’m not from Fergus myself or that area, but guys like Jamie Rooney and Rob Marshall they’re both guys that play in the NLL and they’re hometown boys so I think a lot of the young fans like to watch those guys. And of course we’ve got Bob Watson, people know who he is and he always plays well. Those guys would definitely be worthwhile to watch.

How about the other semi-final match-up? You’ll be keeping an eye on that one. What can we expect from the Brooklin Merchants and Norwood Nitro?
We’ve played both those teams and I think that whole series will be really close. If you look at how the remaining four teams did during the regular season, you’ll notice there isn’t much separating them. I don’t expect it to be over too quickly. I would expect both semi-finals to be really close actually, no matter who comes out on top and gets to the finals, the finals should be really competitive as well.

I know you probably don’t want to look too far ahead, but are there any President’s Cup match-ups you could see happening? I guess Sherwood Park is the obvious choice since they’re hosting.
Yeah and they’re also the defending champs and it’s in their hometown so I would predict them to be the heavy favourites.

For maybe the uninitiated or uninformed reader, could you give me a couple of good reasons to get into Sr. B lacrosse?
Well like I was saying, teams in the league have a lot of players that are local talent. It’s more enjoyable to watch guys from your hometown. I don’t think it’s too far off Sr. A lacrosse. We play a really physical game and it gives guys a chance who don’t live in the area of a Sr. A team or who can’t make that jump quite yet, it gives them an opportunity to play at the senior level. If you look at all the rosters you’re going to see a lot of players that are in the NLL right now or who have been there before. There are a lot of guys who come out of junior who haven’t quite made the jump to Sr. A as well so there are a lot of future NLL players.

I think the stigma that’s out there is that Sr. B is just full of guys who can’t crack a Sr. A roster, when that’s often not the case.
Yeah every team has some players that are going back and forth with a Sr. A team, and it depends on personal situations, sometimes guys can’t travel all over Ontario for lacrosse so they just stay closer to home and play Sr. B. Our team has a lot of talent and there’s a number of guys on our team that would be able to play Sr. A ball, but we’ve got a good team and our team gets along really well so I think a lot of guys don’t feel the need to play somewhere else, everything’s good where they are.

Reg Van Velzen and the Wellington Aces will be in action tonight in game one of their series vs. the Owen Sound Woodsmen, 8:30 pm in Fergus. For the full Sr. B semi-final schedule, head here. To see more photos from Michael Catena and Evil Empire Lacrosse, head here.

Ward began covering lacrosse for The Lacrosse Journal in 2005 and became its editor-in-chief a year later. Email her at lauren.ward@nllinsider.com.

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