The Orillia Mister Transmission Kings clinched their first playoff series victory since 1997 last night.
The Jr. B Kings completed the 3-0 series sweep of the Halton Hills Bulldogs with a 12-10 road victory on Wednesday night.
Third-year head coach Jim Meredith says the Kings were motivated to defeat the Bulldogs after Halton Hills selected Orillia in the annual playoff draft that allows higher seeds to decide which lower seed they would like to play.
"When the No. 2 seed picks No. 6, it gives you a little more incentive," he said. "We weren't that far off from them all year long."
The Bulldogs won five more games than the Kings during the 2024 season. Meredith says most of the Bulldogs' wins can be credited to their dominant power-play unit.
"We really concentrated on that in the last week," he said. "We really worked on how to stop it and take away their strong parts."
Meredith says Orillia netminder Quinton Greenfield played "amazing" in the first round. While some series are still ongoing, to date, he faced the third most shots on goal in round one of the Ontario Lacrosse Association Junior B playoffs.
"If you shoot anything from three or four feet outside the dotted line, he's going to stop it," Meredith said. "He's that good."
Meredith says his assistant coaches and the team’s leadership group put a lot of effort into "hounding" the Bulldogs attackers during the series which led to a dominant defensive performance from the Kings.
According to team records, the last time the Kings won a playoff series was in 1997 when they were crowned Orillia Lacrosse Association Eastern Conference champions. None of the current Kings' players had been born yet.
"I kept bringing that up all of the time at practices and games," Meredith said. "That was a big thing for the players when they realized it."
Meredith says breaking the ice is "huge" for lacrosse in Orillia.
"It will be interesting to see what the crowd will look like for our next home game," he said. "It's a big deal for us."
Meredith hopes the playoff series win will attract more players from out of town for future seasons and will keep homegrown talent in Orillia.
"Hopefully it increases our player pool," he said. "When you win, more people want to come here to play instead of going away somewhere else."
Meredith hopes the successful Kings season will help grow the game in Orillia.
"This shows the kids in the minor system that there is somewhere to go," he said. "When we are in the news, lacrosse becomes something to talk about in the town again."
The Kings won't know who their second-round opponent will be until after the weekend. They could be waiting up to eight days before they play again.
"We are going to take the weekend off to let guys heal," he said. "It's huge for us because we don't have a lot of depth like a lot of the other teams. This lets us get healthy again."
