Tag: lacrosse

‘It’s like winning the lottery;’ What a Mann Cup championship would mean for New Westminster, WLA

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.

MARIO BARTEL PHOTO An honour guard from New Westminster Police Department stands watch with the Mann Cup.

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.
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Todd Labranche has been booed by lacrosse fans, players and coaches for 21 years. He’s loved every minute of it

This story first appeared in the Tri-City News on April 13, 2022

Todd Labranche decided pretty quickly that an ongoing problem with shin splints would limit his lacrosse aspirations as a player.

So the former PoCo Saint pulled on a striped referee’s jersey.

On Saturday (April 16), Labranche will officiate his 400th National Lacrosse League game, between the Vancouver Warriors and Calgary Roughnecks at Rogers Arena.

He’s one of only two referees in the pro league to reach the milestone.

Labranche, who grew up in Port Coquitlam but moved to Red Deer, AB, in 2014, said he fell in love with the speed and athleticism of lacrosse the minute he picked up a stick and ball when he was nine years old.

A few years later — as soon as he was allowed — he supplemented his passion by refereeing mini-tyke games.

Wear and tear

Labranche played in the Saints system through junior. But the sport’s quick starts and stops, turns and cuts across the floor pained his shins so much he could never finish a game. Referees, however, move mostly in straight lines.

So Labranche put away his lacrosse stick and devoted himself to officiating, working his way up through the ranks until he was hired at the age of 22 as one of three part-time referees at the time in the Western Lacrosse Association.

As the “new kid” with a whistle, Labranche opened his ears to learn all he could from senior officials in the league like future Hall-of-Famer Ron Crosato and Ray Durante.

Labranche said they taught him how to carry himself on the floor, how to talk to players and coaches so each would walk away feeling like they got a fair shake.

They showed him the importance of developing thick skin and a short memory because no referee is ever perfect and they can’t afford to dwell on past mistakes.

Don’t take it personally

Most importantly, Labranche said, he learned how not to take things that happen in a lacrosse game personally.

“Lacrosse is so subjective,” he said. “Not always is everybody going to agree with your opinion.”

A chance encounter with lacrosse legend Chris Gill at Coquitlam Centre mall in 2001 led Labranche to apply for a referee post at the NLL, just as the pro league awarded a franchise to the Vancouver Ravens.

Now, instead of being the bad guy in front of several hundred people in dark, local barns like the old PoCo Rec Centre or New Westminster’s Queen’s Park Arena, he would bear the scorn of 10,000 or more fans, with his every error or missed call replayed on the giant video scoreboards overhead and potentially inciting even more wrath.

Labranche said he also had to wrap his head around the multitude of rule differences between the way lacrosse is regulated by the Canadian Lacrosse Association and by the pro game, as well as making himself heard over the constant din of loud music that plays through games in the big league arenas.

Still, when Labranche was standing on the floor of the Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo with 19,000 fans singing the national anthems prior to the NLL’s championship game in 2008, he said the hair stood up on his neck with the thrill of it all.

Players are getting quicker

Over the course of his 21 years as an NLL official, Labranche said he’s seen the players get quicker and more skilful.

“Everyone can score goals, everyone can play defence,” he said. “The pace has increased dramatically.”

Labranche said the secret to his longevity has been coming to terms with his role.

“It’s really just a feeling of how you managed the game,” he said. “We know we’re not going to get everything; there’s some calls that will be left out there. But you have to make sure the players are safe.”

Now 57, Labranche figured 400 pro games would be his ultimate achievement in lacrosse.

But two seasons lost to the COVID-19 pandemic bought him time to build a gym in his basement so he could be in shape to shoot for 500.

“The league is getting younger and I’m not,” Labranche said.

But, he added quickly, “I love the game.”

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