Following a season-capping win against the Toronto Rock, the Saskatchewan Rush are hitting the playoffs with a strong victory under their belts.

The Saskatchewan Rush started out their regular season strong. Ten games played, nine games won. The team was positioned to be the top seed in the league through most of the early season.

Rush announcer Cody Janzen says from his experience, this was part skill, part luck.

“They came out guns a-blazing, it’s a real hot start,” said Janzen. “It’s one of those situations you find in the NLL of scheduling where the first half of the season was light for them, they were able to take advantage of that. They were standing first in the league.”

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The Rush’s earlier hot hand grew colder as the season went on, facing a handful of high seed teams like the Colorado Mammoth and the Buffalo Bandits. Forward Levi Anderson explained that experience.

“I was joking in the car on the way here, we kind of forgot what it felt like to lose, but the last four games we’ve kind of gone on a downward spiral,” said Anderson.

“Luckily we’ve made playoffs. I think you learn a lot more from losses. We’ve done that in the last month, we’re itching to get back into the win column, and have a hot start.”

On Saturday, their last regular season win against the Rock was vitally important for the team. The Rush were down and dragged the rock into overtime where they secured the win. Coach Derek Keenan explained that experience.

“The funny part about it, we were down by two, with under two minutes to go but there was no panic in the group because it’s something we actually worked a lot on, talked a lot about in practice on Friday,” said Keenan.

Because they were able to win that game, Toronto will play their game against the Rush in Saskatoon, rather than the other way around.

“For us it’s big, because I think our fans are second to none. The alternative of us playing in Buffalo and Toronto — could have been a bunch of scenarios — it wasn’t as good as this,” said coach Keenan.

The first round is winner-takes-all elimination. That game against the Rock will take place this Saturday at SaskTel Centre.

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