Paul Dal Monte was on the green wooden floor at New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Arena as a player the last time the Salmonbellies won the Mann Cup.
That was 34 years ago.
Now, as the commissioner of the Western Lacrosse Association, Dal Monte knows the importance of bringing the Canadian senior lacrosse national championship back to the old structure.
“From a league perspective, to have it played in Queen’s Park, where you’ve got 3,500 fans every night in a building with such tradition and history — you just have to look around at all the banners and retired jerseys to understand that this is something special,” said Dal Monte, who won three Mann Cups as a player but has yet to witness a WLA team win it during his tenure at the league’s helm that began in 2017.
Dal Monte said the success of the Salmonbellies is often the measuring stick against which the other WLA teams assess their own achievements.
After all, New West has won the Mann Cup 24 times.
And now, with the Bellies’ two appearances in the past three years, others are starting to pull up their bootstraps.
Dal Monte pointed to the Coquitlam Adanacs, which pushed the Salmonbellies to five games in the WLA final after years as the league’s doormat.
He said the Maple Ridge Burrards is another team on the rise again.
“It’s good for the league. There’s great awareness and passion,” Dal Monte said.
It’s also good for the City of New Westminster, said Mayor Patrick Johnstone.
“Lacrosse is in its blood,” he said, equating the Salmonbellies and the team’s iconic logo of a salmon leaping through a giant W to hockey’s Montreal Canadiens and its distinctive CH symbol.
Johnstone said Queen’s Park Arena holds a special place in residents’ hearts, especially when it’s the centre of the lacrosse world.
“It’s the dusty old barn that rocks.”
Dal Monte said players feel that energy, especially if they’re part of a victorious home team.
“There’s that expectation and history that goes along with it because you are following in the footsteps of others,” he said. “It’s like winning the lottery.”
Mann Cup facts
- The Mann Cup has been contested since 1910, after it was donated by Sir Donald Mann, an Ontario railroad baron and entrepreneur
- There was no winner in 1916 and 1917 because of WWI, and the COVID-19 pandemic scuttled the 2020 and 2021 championships
- For the first 22 years, the national senior lacrosse championship was played under traditional field rules
- The first indoor championship was awarded in 1932 at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens
- The Mann Cup trophy to be awarded to the winner of the series between the New Westminster Salmonbellies and Six Nations Chiefs is actually its third incarnation: the original was retired in 1985; the replica that replaced it was destroyed when it was accidently dropped into a bonfire as the Peterborough Lakers were celebrating their championship in 2004
- The last WLA team to win the Mann Cup was the Victoria Shamrocks, in 2015
- This year’s best-of-seven series begins Friday, Sept. 5, with game two scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 6. Games three and four are scheduled for Monday, Sept. 8 and Tuesday, Sept. 9. If subsequent games are needed, game five will be played Wednesday, Sept. 10, game six on Friday, Sept. 12 and game seven set for Saturday, Sept. 13. All games begin at 7:30 p.m. except the seventh game, which would begin at 7 p.m.
MARIO BARTEL 