Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look back at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
A season with much promise ended on Saturday night for the Saskatchewan Rush, falling 16-13 in National Lacrosse League quarterfinals to the Toronto Rock.
The Rush rallied to close an early deficit in the first half, but the visitors from Toronto proved to be too much in the fourth quarter as they knocked off Saskatchewan in the single elimination contest.
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Rock forward Chris Boushy starred in the win for Toronto with five goals and one assist to move his team on to the NLL’s ‘Final Four.’
It’s a disappointing end to the 2025-26 campaign for the Rush, who led the NLL standings with a 10-1 record at one point and now will pack up their gear for the season.
“I’m at a bit of a loss for words right now,” said Rush co-head coach Jimmy Quinlan post-game. “The only thing that is coming to my mind is that it sucks.”
The third-seeded Rush were one of three top seeds to see their season come to an end with upset losses to underdog opponents this weekend, with the Vancouver Warriors and Colorado Mammoth also failing to advance.
Rush alternate captain Robert Church said there’s an element of shock running through the dressing room knowing the opportunity they had slip away Saturday.
“Everyone is obviously pretty devastated,” Church said.
“We had a great start to the season, kind of had our downs at the end. But we kind of figured out how to get a win last week and we knew it was going to be a tight game.”
Toronto’s Josh Dawick opened the scoring 2:23 into the game, which was answered a few minutes later by Rush forward Austin Shanks with a snipe from distance to tie it at 1-1.
From there, the Rock controlled the first quarter netting five of the next six goals including a hat-trick from Boushy to take a 6-2 lead over the Rush after 15 minutes of play.
Allowing six goals against on 12 shots, Rush goaltender Frank Scigliano was briefly swapped out for backup goaltender Thomas Kiazyk before Scigliano finished out the rest of the quarter.
Both Scigliano and Toronto goaltender Nick Rose came out of the break with a handful of stellar saves, keeping it a 6-2 game until Saskatchewan’s Levi Anderson let a low, screaming shot fly 7:31 into the second quarter.
Rush captain Ryan Keenan quickly made it a 6-4 game, before Toronto responded on the power-play with a flukey goal banked off rookie phenom CJ Kirst to restore the Rock’s three-goal lead.
An unlikely goal scorer cut the deficit to 7-5 for Saskatchewan, as stay-at-home defender Connor McClelland sniped his first goal since the 2024 NLL season with 5:29 remaining in the opening half.
Saskatchewan continued to pour on the offence before the end of the first half with an end-to-end goal by Ryan Barnable and a power play marker from Church to tie the game at 7-7.
Toronto got the last laugh to end the second quarter courtesy of Latrell Harris, who picked off a Rush pass and netted the go-ahead goal for the Rock to lead at the half by an 8-7 count.
Sophomore forward Brock Haley needed just 17 seconds out of halftime to net his first goal of the night with some fancy stick work, setting the stage for Church to complete the hat-trick and give the Rush their first lead of the night.
Saskatchewan’s goal scoring dried up from that point on in the third quarter, as Toronto netted goals from Dawick and Boushy to re-take the lead 10-9.
Former Rush star Mark Matthews made his mark with just 3.6 seconds left in third quarter with a back-breaking snipe on Scigliano, as that goal boosted Toronto’s lead to 11-9 heading to the fourth quarter.
Zach Manns cut the deficit to 12-10 with a spectacular goal while falling to the floor early in the fourth quarter, but that was quickly erased off the rush by Toronto’s Elijah Gash to make it a three-goal game.
Rush co-head coach and general manager Derek Keenan said the team struggled to move the ball effectively and maintain possession at key moments.
“We just made a lot of really uncharacteristic defensive errors tonight and that really is what it came down to,” Keenan said.
Toronto piled on more goals late in the fourth quarter from Boushy, Kirst and Brad Kri on an empty-net to take a 16-11 lead.
Shanks netted two goals in the final 1:06 to complete his hat-trick, however the late deficit was too large to overcome for Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan will now head to the off-season full of questions after reaching Game 3 of NLL Finals last year and racing out to nearly a record-breaking start to their season, only to now be ousted in the opening round of playoffs.
For the captain Keenan, there’s plenty of lessons to be learned entering an off-season much earlier than expected.
“It’s learning to just execute right to the end,” Keenan said.
“We took the foot off the gas at the end of the year, just well below our expectations now. Guys are going to be down I think for a while, but you just got to come back hungrier right?”
Saskatchewan returned nearly all of their roster from last year’s team which finished one win shy of the franchise’s fourth NLL championship.
Even though the job wasn’t finished in 2026, Church feels the window hasn’t closed on the Rush’s aspirations of lifting the NLL Cup in the near future.
“I think we got a good enough team to win a championship,” Church said. “We just didn’t have the moments to get it done.”
The Rock will now advance to face the San Diego Seals in NLL semifinals, while the Halifax Thunderbirds will take on the Georgia Swarm after upsetting top-ranked Vancouver on Friday.
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