Where Were You When The Redwoods Won The First Playoff Game In PLL History?!?
It will be a trivia question that you get to answer for your grandchildren one day. And not only will you be able to give them the answer, but you’ll be able to tell them that you watched it happen as the Redwoods won the first playoff game in Premier Lacrosse League history.
What a wild ride these last few weeks have been for the ‘Woods. We go back to week 9. This team gets absolutely shit pumped by the Whipsnakes 17-4. They were already on the playoff bubble as it was and since goal differential meant everything for the final 2 playoff spots, getting worked by 13 was pretty much the kiss of death. The only way they’d be able to get themselves into the playoffs after getting bullied like that is if they closed out the regular season with a shit pumping of their own. So what did they go out and do? Shit pumped the Chrome 18-7 in week 10 too close out the regular season. And just like that, the Redwoods clinched that 4th and final playoff spot.
So that takes us to tonight. The Archers took a 6-5 lead into halftime. But after that the ‘Woods decided they were going to make sweet, sweet love to the back of the net. We had the Motor City Hitman stepping in from 2.
We had Greg Gurenlian absolutely dominating at the faceoff X and scoring on his old high school teammate Drew Adams. They’re the 2nd and 3rd best lacrosse players to come out of Springfield High School right outside of Philly. Who is #1, you ask? Well that is me. But these guys are pretty decent as well.
Ryder Garnsey was doing Ryder Garnsey things, and also set up Wes Berg for this natty hatty at the buzzer to close out the 3rd quarter.
And to deliver the final dagger at the end to lock up the game, it was John Sexton showing off the dangles and breaking out this toe drag for the exclamation point. 16-12, Redwoods move on.
Sure, there was still some time left on the clock but that’s when you knew this thing was over. Tim Troutner was a beast between the pipes. The Redwoods poles were breaking out toe drags on their way to stuffing the back of the net. Perkovic was bombing from 2. Wes Berg snapped. Ryder was a freak. Gurenlian was winning every faceoff. It was just an all around game for the Redwoods to get themselves into the semifinals next week in New York. But while it was a great win for the Redwoods, the game was unfortunately overshadowed by a couple of huge injuries.
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The first being Tom Schreiber. At the beginning of the night, this looked like a classic “Tom Schreiber is the best lacrosse player in the world and there’s nothing you can do about it” game. I mean just look at how absurd this skip pass was to Will Manny. He threads this through so much traffic.
I especially love how Sankey didn’t even reach for that ball because he knows that if it’s not directly in your stick, Tom Schreiber isn’t intending for that pass to go to you. But toward the end of the first half, Schreiber took this hit at the midline.
You could see him saying “it’s out” when he was running off to the sideline, and he’d miss the rest of the game with a dislocated shoulder. Never fun to see the best player in the world be forced out of the game.
And then with just around 2 minutes left in the game, Jackson Place from the Archers ended up running into Eddy Glazener. It was incidental contact and neither of them even saw the other one coming. But Place’s head ended up running directly into Glazener’s shoulder, it looked his neck took a lot of the impact, and he immediately dropped to the ground motionless. It took the medical team what felt like forever to be able to stabilize him and get him onto the stretcher. Just such a freak accident and all you can do know is wish nothing but the best for Jackson Place. He’s a local guy in the Philly area and I’ve never heard anyone say a single bad word about the guy. Lacrosse can come and go, but you really just have to hope for his life outside of the game. So far there hasn’t been any update, but he’s a tough son of a bitch so I’m sure he’ll battle through whatever it is.