Predator's celebrate winning their third straight league title. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW)

By Nick Nielsen

defending champs

Predators set for MacDonald Cup defence in Abbotsford B.C.

Aug 5, 2025 | 5:17 PM

The hunt for their second straight MacDonald Cup Western Canada Junior B lacrosse championship starts Wednesday, August 6 for the Prince Albert Predators.

After finishing their second straight undefeated season with a big a gutsy defence of their PGLL title two weeks ago, the Predators have travelled to Abbotsford, B.C. to try and protect the Western Canadian title.

Head Coach Lucas Wells said that the last week and a half getting ready for the tournament has mostly been focused on fundamentals and getting his team healthy again.

“Last week and a half was just kind of getting back to being healthy. Just standing systems, not getting through, not overly exerting ourselves because we did have a big weekend last Saturday and I didn’t want to drain the guys going into this. It’s a long tournament, so just kind of right back to the basics. The simpler drills, nothing too extravagant.”

Between the PGLL finals and MacDonald Cup, the Predators will have gone 11 days without competition, and before that they had to wait nearly three weeks for their opponent in the PGLL finals.

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Now, they’ll be playing three games in three nights during the round robin section of the tournament, and more if they make the playoffs. For Wells, he sees that tight schedule as a welcome challenge for the year.

“We’re a team that the more we play, the better we are. So I think that our first game probably is going to start out a little bit slower, so I expect in the second game to be a little bit quicker, then the third game I imagine will be firing on all cylinders. Now it is a short but long tournament, so you have to win those first three ideally. But I believe, as the tournament goes on, we’ll just get stronger and stronger.”

The MacDonald Cup is an invitational tournament that sees mostly teams based out of British Columbia and Alberta, but this year’s field is just the Predators and seven other teams all from B.C. Wells isn’t sure why there are no teams from Alberta in this year’s tournament, but he thinks the style of play that’s played out here in the prairies is going to surprise a lot of the B.C. teams.

“B.C. lacrosse doesn’t necessarily respect Saskatchewan lacrosse, and quite frankly we’re going to be not well liked here just with the physicality we play and how fast we play, and the in your face style. After watching film, not a lot of the teams here play that way, and I think they’re pretty soft. So I think that if we can use our physicality, it’s going to make teams hate us, just like it did when we were last year in Alberta with Brooks.”

The Predators play their first game at 2:00 p.m. Saskatchewan time against the West Kootenay Timberwolves on Wednesday, and they’ll follow that up with games against the Westshore Bears and the Valley Sturgeon on Thursday and Friday respectively.

All games from the tournament are being streamed on Twitch, and you can find the link to watch by clicking here.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com