NLL Insider

The Major Series Lacrosse playoff picture is all set and kicks off this week. St. Regis and Kitchener-Waterloo are ready for their quarterfinal matchup, and Peterborough’s ready for Brooklin. And speaking of being ready in Peterbrough, John Grant Jr. is ready, too. We celebrated Junior’s July 9 return to the game after his long rehab, but he didn’t play in the Lakers’ final two games, saying he wanted to rest. “There was a little tightness,” he said today from a camp he’s working. “I’m taking this seriously, and I don’t want to risk anything.”

There’s no truth to any rumor that he’s re-injured anything, said Grant. He obviously was fired up in his return after missing nearly a full year of lacrosse. His 3-goal, 2-assist night on July 9 led the Lakers past St. Regis and he had 2-3 in a loss to Brampton on July 12. But he didn’t feel 100 percent — “a little sore” — in that loss to the Excelsiors and ended up taking it easy the next two games.

He said he’s been evaluated by trainers in Rochester and everything checked out with the knee, but he’ll take the rehab slowly as he works is body back into game shape. “It’s just muscle soreness,” he said. “I don’t want to injure myself for the winter season. That’s something I take seriously.”

Peterborough (12-6, 24 points) opens its 5-game series against Brooklin (4-14, 8 ) at home on Wednesday and both teams aren’t exactly rolling into the postseason. In fact, this is the first time the Lakers have had a first-round series since MSL adopted the current postseason format where the top two teams receive byes. The Redmen have struggled for most of the season, winning just 2 of their last 5 games. The Lakers come in with 2 losses in their last 3 games (both to first-place Brampton), and they needed overtime to beat Barrie in the regular-season finale.

There was nothing really spectacular in the head-to-head matchups for these teams this summer, but the Lakers did win the season series, 2-1. Their most recent matchup was a 9-7 Peterborough win on July 1. Derek Collins was in goal for Peterborough in all three games against the Redmen and gave up just 19 total goals so that wasn’t the problem. Of the team’s 18 games this summer, the offense has been held to single digits just six times, but two of those games were against Brooklin, including a season-low 4 goals in a 6-4 loss on June 10.

The Redmen won just 4 games, and their struggles came on both ends of the floor, especially in road games. Brooklin’s 131 goals is second-worst in the league and the 193 goals-against are second-worst in the league. But the Redmen really found road games a challenge, going 0-9 and never scoring more than 9 goals in any of those games. Losing Shawn Williams in a mid-season trade didn’t help the offense, but the Redmen backed into the playoffs by virtue of Peterborough’s win over Barrie over the weekend. The July 15 win over Barrie didn’t hurt, either.

“It’ll be a tough hill, but in order to get to the top you’ve got to start beating some of the better teams,” Brooklin GM Wayne Colley told NewsDurhamRegion.com.

The other series, with St. Regis (9-9, 18) opening at K-W (9-9, 18), kicks off Thursday night. The teams finished tied in points, but K-W’s win over St. Regis on Saturday night gave the Kodiaks the home-floor advantage because K-W won the season series, 2-1. Much like the other quarterfinal, St. Regis has to be wishing it was coming into the postseason with better momentum.

The Indians have just 2 wins in their last 6 games, and they’re running into a Kodiaks team that’s won 3 of its last 5, those two losses coming against Brampton. Still, St. Regis did not have the services of Mark Steenhuis in the first two matchups against K-W, but Steenhuis returned from his upper body injury last week and had 3 goals and 2 assists in the loss. Steenhuis is an impact player, though, so K-W figures it’ll have its hands full with a healthy Steenhuis working with John Tavares, who has 7 goals in his three games this summer against K-W.

K-W brings a balanced offense into the series led by Ryan Benesch, Jamie Rooney and Brenden Thenhaus. That might worry the Indians, whose 212 goals-against are tied for worst in the league. Mike Thompson and Angus Goodleaf have split the tending duties, but both have allowed more than 11 goals per game.

Meanwhile, Brampton and Six Nations await the winners. Brampton gets the lowest winning seed in the semfinal round and Six Nations gets the other winner. It’s obviously impossible to predict what’s gonna happen, but we will say this: A Brampton vs. Six Nations finals will absolutely rock. There are some sweet numbers coming out of both sides, but we’ll save that for later.

Loose balls: Ever wonder why Jamie Batley is coaching Peterborough from a suite?  “The two games I was on the bench we lost, he told The Peterborough Examiner. … No one’s really surpsied that Six Nations’ Cody Jamieson won the MSL scoring title for the regular season, but how he did it is impressive. His 96 points was 15 points better than Josh Sanderson and his 48 goals is 17 better than Ryan Benesch. The line for Jamieson’s last 3 games? 6-3, 4-4 and 4-6 … How cool is Peterborough goalie Pat O’Toole? Cool enough to jump in cage between periods to let the kids shoot on him, just because he remembers how cool it was for him to do that when he was a kid … How much of a roll is Brampton on? Well, in seven straight victories, no team has scored more than 7 goals against the Excelsiors.

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