By Colton Swiderski

Rush look to get back on track in week two

Jan 14, 2017 | 7:00 AM

After dropping their season opener, the Saskatchewan Rush is looking to make it six wins in a row against Canadian rival Toronto Rock when the two teams meet on Saturday, Jan. 14.

The Rush have not lost to the Rock since Feb. 27, 2015, including a two-game sweep in the 2015 Champions Cup Final where the Rush captured its first title.

Head coach and general manager Derek Keenan said, regardless, Toronto is a hard arena to play in traditionally.

“For a lot of guys from the southern Ontario area, it’s more like a home game to them. The one thing we have to be careful… is to make sure they aren’t trying to do too much and play outside of their normal roles in front of family and friends. But we address that and we usually play pretty good [in Toronto],” he said.

Keenan added while the competition between the Rush and Rock isn’t as intense as with the Roughnecks, there’s still quite the Canadian rivalry between the two teams. While he called the games “intense, physical battles,” Keenan said his team won’t change their regular routine.

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“We’ll grind away at practice Friday night and prepare ourselves for what I think is another tough game because Toronto is an improved team,” Keenan said. “They’ve gotten younger, more athletic and they can really push it from the back-end, so we’ll have to make sure we take care of that and be prepared as best we can.”

The Rush opened the 2017 season on the road Jan. 7 in Georgia with an 18-10 loss which Keenan called a wake-up call for the team.

“We weren’t very good to be honest. Discipline was an issue; we were sloppy. But we had a good 12-minute stretch at the end of the first quarter and into the second we played really well, had things going our way,” he said.

Twenty-one total penalties in the season opener caused breaks in game flow. This took the team out of its typical five-on-five formation. While the season opener spelled misfortune for the Rush, positives included 2016 NLL first overall pick Ryan Keenan scoring his first career goal and newly acquired Adam Jones getting his first markers in a Rush jersey.

“It’s good for [Ryan Keenan] to get that done fairly early in the season. As far as Adam Jones, he’s scored a lot of goals in this league but it’s nice to see him contribute to our offence. I think it’s a sign of a lot bigger and better things to come, too, once he becomes more familiar and comfortable in our offence and playing with the other guys,” Keenan added.

Opening face-off begins at 7 p.m. on Jan. 14, in Toronto.

Colton Swiderski is a news and sports reporter for meadowlakeNOW, paNOW and battlefordsNOW.com. He can be reached at cswiderski@jpbg.ca or tweet him @coltonswiderski.