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The Saskatchewan Rush are heading to the final four in the NLL playoffs.
After falling behind 2-0 early to the Georgia Swarm in a winner-take-all game at the SaskTel Centre on Saturday night, the Rush found its stride and took care of business, securing a 13-9 win.
“We had a little bit of a slow start, but I thought we were getting some pretty good looks on offence. We got going there and got our legs under us,” said head coach Derek Keenan, who felt his team played a pretty complete game.
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After falling behind 2-0, the Rush were able to get its first lead of the game by the end of the first quarter and from that point on, it never trailed for the rest of the game.
Jake Boudreau led the way on the offensive side of the ball, he had four goals and an assist on the night.
Boudreau credits his team’s young legs for a big reason why the Rush were able to pull away with the win.
“We knew they were going to run. Our game is running, so we kind of took that personal and made sure we were fast,” Boudreau said. “I think they tired out as the game went on – you could kind of see us pushing forward and they kind of dosed off a little bit and that was the game.”
The playoff game on Saturday night was the Rush’s first since 2019. The team from 2019, compared to 202,5 is a lot different and made up of much younger players.
After missing the playoffs for six years in a row, including three consecutive seasons from 2022-2024, when it missed the playoffs by a single game, Keenan was impressed by what his group was able to do in a very intense situation.
“The one-and-done first round in the playoffs is stressful,” Keenan said. “We got a pretty young group, fortunately, we have a number of veterans that have been here before, but for the most part more than two-thirds of our team haven’t been here, haven’t been to the playoffs.”
“We faced some adversity tonight, we had some penalties and we got through that kind of unscathed,” Keenan added. “All in all, we just stuck with our game plan and our goaltender was really good.”
In the net, Frank Scigliano made 39 saves in the Rush’s win, including a couple of massive ones in the third quarter to prevent the Swarm from clawing their way back.
He credits the young guys for not being intimidated by their first playoff moment.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys, but we’ve got some old guys who’ve been there and got it done. We kind of feed off of that and I throw some of my leadership and experience into that as well, but our young guys are super confident and we feed off of each other,” Scigliano said.
“At the end of the day, you just got to dig in. For the most part we did that tonight, so it’s nice to see.”
The win on Saturday night means the Rush will face the Halifax Thunderbirds in a best-of-three series starting next weekend.
A date for when the series would begin wasn’t given after the game, but the NLL has said the series will be played between the dates of May 1-4. Both teams will host a home game, with the Rush having home-field advantage.
The Thunderbirds have given the Rush problems in the last number of years, including earlier this season when they blew them out with a 17-9 win.
Keenan is looking forward to the challenge.
“They’re very good. They’ve been a bit of a nemesis to us. We’re going to get in there early, but we’ll be ready,” Keenan stated.
