Team USA Hangs On To Win Round 1 Of Their Matchup Against Canada In This Year's World Lacrosse Championships

Jordie7/15/2018 7:26 PM

USA (3-0) 11, Canada (2-1) 10

8 of the last 10 World Lacrosse Championship finals have been USA vs Canada. They’ve gone 5 in a row right now dating back to a 15-14 overtime win by the US in 1998. And it’s been USA vs Canada ever since. Chances are we’ll see them again for a 6th straight time this year in Israel and earlier today, we got a little preview of that championship with their pool play matchup. Now at first I was a little skeptical about holding one of the biggest games of the tournament not only on the same day as the World Cup Final, but also at the same time. Thought the planning behind that move was absolutely asinine. But after watching that game, it lived up to all the hype and held it’s own against the World Cup. Which is great news considering the championship game is going to be at 3am EST on Saturday morning so today’s game was a little bit of a test to see if it would be worth it to wake up extra early/stay up extra late for that final game on Saturday. The answer is a very resounding “yes, set your alarms right the heck now”.

American Heroes

The two most important players on Team USA’s offense are clearly Rob Pannell and Jordan Wolf. When they have the ball in their stick behind the net, that’s where this offense is the deadliest. They can beat you on their own just taking it to the rack like Pannell did right here.

They can beat you with a feed considering so much attention has to be paid to them behind the net that the defense will end up losing somebody inside like what happened in this play here from Pannell to Brown.

And if you give them some actual open space to work with? Well just forget about it because there’s no chance in hell you’re stopping Jordan Wolf from getting to the net once he really gets his feet moving.

Their ability to dodge, feed and finish at an elite level make them pretty much impossible to matchup against and even if your defense comes up with a way to try to stop them, that then opens up more for the other 4 guys out there on the field. One of those guys today was Matt Danowski.

I bet that there’s never been a time in Matt Danowski’s lacrosse playing career that he wasn’t either the best or second best player on his team. He’s usually a guy who ends up creating open space for his teammates, not the other way around. But when Canada has to worry so much about USA’s attack, that opens up some room up top for Danowski to get his hands free and really step into some shots like this low to high laser to tie the game at 10 in the 4th quarter.

And then, of course, there’s this guy who goes by the name Paul Rabil. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

Rabil looked he was struggling a little earlier in the game with his shooting. He was still able to post up 4 assists and ended up with 5 points on the night. But when you think of Paul Rabil, you think of the best shooter in the world. And it just looked like he wasn’t able to hit his spots earlier and a couple of those misplaced shots ended up with the play going down the other end of the field and turning into some Canadian goals. But the GOAT picked a pretty damn good time in the game to unload this bullet right under the crossbar. Almost a minute left in the game, tied at 10, Rabil is able to keep his footing on some shitty surface, put his defender in the ground, roll right out of his dodge and then it’s bombs away for the win. Vintage 99 right there. Kind of tough to beat a team when they have Paul Rabil and your team does not, ya know?

Canada Boys

If there’s one thing the world saw today, it’s that Jeff Teat is going to be an absolute monster. The kid is going to be a junior at Cornell next year. He’s still in college and he was easily one off the best players on the field today. Whether it was a mid-range shot like this one off a feed from the Big Cat Kevin Crowley…

… or knowing exactly when and where to cut and then being on the receiving end of this filthy feed from Ben McIntosh…

… or just being so versatile that defensemen can’t decide how to approach him when he gets the ball and he ends up making everybody look silly.

Joe Fletcher, #17 on USA, was caught in no man’s land here not because he was in a bad position or anything, but because it’s so hard to figure out what Teat is going to do with the ball. You don’t know if you have to break down because he’s about to dodge you. You don’t know if you need to cut off the look to the back door because he’s going to feed from that position. Or you don’t know if you have to get out to his hands because he’s going to shoot like he ended up going with here. It’s really just a pick your poison type of situation and Teat is so good that no matter what decision you end up making, he’s already going to be a couple steps ahead of you.

Border Wars

USA vs Canada is the best rivalry that the sport of lacrosse has to offer. So naturally things were going to start to get a little chippy out there.

We had a few minor scrums, plenty of hits, plenty of chirps, the occasional butt-end to the thigh. These two teams hate each other and it’s only going to get worse on Saturday in the championship game. Especially considering Team Canada ended up calling for a stick check on Greg Gurenlian in the final minute of the game that ended up giving Canada a 3-minute man up to end the game with. Calling a stick check on a faceoff guy is a real chicken shit move, even if you do end up getting the call right. That puts you going down a slippery slope that not a lot of people would want to be finding themselves going down. I’m a firm believer that every single faceoff guy in the world is using an illegal stick at some point during the game. So if you’re going to call for a stick check on a faceoff guy in the final minute of a game in pool play, just don’t be surprised when you get one coming right back your way on Saturday. Even if Team USA doesn’t retaliate with a stick check of their own, it’s still super ill advised of Canada to piss off Gurenlian. Not a great idea, buddy!