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It’s often said that stats don’t tell the whole story. And that’s true. They can’t even talk. But while the scoring statistics in Alberta Jr. A lacrosse may not sum up everything that’s been going on in the wild wild west, it sure does shine a light on the top two teams in the league. A look at the scoring studs and current standings after the jump.

First off, let’s take a little field trip to the Alberta Jr. A website where you may notice that save for Kevin Wallin of the Edmonton Miners, the top 12 scorers all belong to two teams: the Raiders and Eclipse. Hmm, I wonder how they’re doing in the standings.

1st: Jr. Raiders, 11-4

We hyped them a little bit in the early going, partly because who doesn’t love a Cinderella story, and also who doesn’t love Joel Derechinsky, and got a bit of opposition feedback that the Raiders were a little more on the pretender side as opposed to contender. Fast forward a few weeks and they’re still sitting pretty with their runners hogging six of the top 12 league scoring spots while goaltenders Adam Shute and Greg Hallett are one and two in GAA.

Five games remaining, including two versus Sr. teams, and the Raiders have yet to drop even one against the league’s Senior B counterparts. Since we’re witnessing one of the biggest one-year turnarounds in Jr. A lacrosse, you can’t blame anyone for wondering if the Raiders will have what it takes to win the big ones. You also won’t be able to blame the Raiders for pointing out their ridiculous goals against total of 87 — 23 goals less than the next best Mounties, who have played three fewer games. Oh, and that they were the Alberta champs in ‘05.

2nd: Jr. Eclipse, 10-4

Just one win out of the top spot with their next chance to face the first-place Raiders coming up in just over one week, you can count on the Eclipse being the hungriest team in the league right now with a coaching staff that will settle for no less than the best. They’ve topped the Raiders twice this year, losing once, so they may have the tie-breaker in hand in the event of a photo finish in first place.

Bad news for the Eclipse comes in the form of rumblings that Ontario import tender Marc Nano will be down for the count for the next few, but they’ve still got three of their scorers sitting 1-2-3 in league stats. ‘09 is put up or shut up time for the Eclipse, and by the looks of their 352 PIM — about 100 more than any other team — they’re literally not about to go down without a fight. Can’t imagine Simon Giourmetakis going much longer without taking a major crack at the Minto so don’t be surprised to see the Eclipse casting a big bad shadow over the rest of the league as we head down the stretch.

3rd: Jr. Mountaineers, 7-5

Unless you’re, you know, a direct competitor, the Jr. Mounties are a team that you have to love just a little bit. After finishing second to last in 2008 and then flaming out in the first round of the playoffs, the Minto Cup hosts went storming into the tourney like they didn’t give a damn about their crap reputation, upsetting the Miners and making life a living hell for the heavily favoured Orangeville Northmen and Victoria Shamrocks.

With eight games left on schedule — more than any team in the A loop — the Mounties have the most to gain as well as the most to lose, but considering that they’ve won five of their last six and have three games left to play against the Sr. teams, the Mounties are looking like they have a good chance to head into the playoffs riding all kinds of momentum. A defensive-minded team with good discipline, if they can hurt the Eclipse on the power play and give Mr. Mitch Anders a bit of breathing room with some increased offensive production against the Raiders, we might be looking at one of the tightest seasons in recent Alberta A ball history.

4th: Jr. Miners, 5-10

In the early-going, the Miners were struggling to come up with some consistency. They started with a win over a senior team, then got dumped by the Mounties 12-3, beat the Eclipse in OT, and then turned around and fell to the Eclipse 10-3. Unfortunately for them, things are looking pretty consistent now: they haven’t won against another Jr. team since that OT topping of the Eclipse on May 17th. Since then they’ve gone 3-9 with two wins over the Sr. Miners and one win over the Sr. Slash.

Out of their five remaining games, four are against Jr. teams. You could look at that as bad news for the hard-luck Miners, but if they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps to the tune of 2 or 3 more goals per game things could get pretty interesting at the bottom of the standings, because although they’ve been losing lately, they’ve kept a lot of them close, specifically against the Mounties who they’ll face twice. The great thing about the small AB Jr. A circuit is that each team gets a chance in the playoffs, and the Miners have shown year in and year out that they’re a team that knows how to win when it really, really matters. Anyone looking to count the Miners out of anything probably needs a new abacus.

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