Boudreau catches fire for Rush in 13-9 win over Swarm

Saskatchewan takes NLL quarter, advances to semifinal round

The Rush celebrate a fourth quarter goal by Jake Boudreau (#43).

Jake Boudreau admitted he might have let his defence slide to give his squad a boost offensively.

On Saturday, the 26-year-old transition player had the most memorable night of his young NLL career. The Brampton, Ont., product piled up four goals and one assist to power his Saskatchewan Rush to a 13-9 victory over the Georgia Swarm in an NLL quarter-final contest before a raucous 5,434 spectators at the SaskTel Centre.

Boudreau, who is in third season with the Rush, was playing in his first career NLL post-season contest as Rush were making their first appearance in the NLL Playoffs since 2019. His main focus is on making stops on the defensive end, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to score all four of his goals in transition.

Jake Boudreau had four goals and one assist for the Rush.

“It was definitely my best game scoring wise,” said Boudreau. “I wouldn’t say it was my best game defensively.

“Getting a goal from the back end is just huge for the team, so that was pretty nice.”

With the win in the single elimination round of the NLL Playoffs, the second seeded Rush advance to play a best-of-three semifinal series against the third seeded Halifax Thunderbirds. The Thunderbirds advanced to the semifinal round downing the sixth seeded Calgary Roughnecks 16-12 in a quarter-final contest on Saturday in Halifax. The Thunderbirds were 11-7 in the regular season, while the Roughnecks were 10-8.

Boudreau said his team is pumped to be advancing on in the post-season.

Jake Boudreau (#43) reacts to scoring an empty-net goal.

“It feels good,” said Boudreau, who stands 6-foot-2 and weighs 200 pounds. “It would have sucked to work hard all year and lose tonight.

“You could kind of tell we played with everything we had tonight. We want to enjoy the fruits of our labour. They are still not ready to be picked yet.”

Star forward Austin Shanks had two goals and two assists for the Rush. Captain Ryan Keenan and Clark Walter both had two-goal nights for the Rush, while Zach Manns, Mike Messenger and Jake Naso all had singles. Robert Church had three assists for Saskatchewan.

Fans at the SaskTel Centre cheer on the Rush.

Captain Jordan MacIntosh had two goals and two assists for the Swarm, and Lyle Thompson contributed one goal and three assists for the Georgia side. 

Brendan Bomberry and Bryan Cole both had a pair of goals for the Swarm, while Jacob Hickey and Shayne Jackson had singles.

Frank Scigliano stopped 39 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Rush, who were 13-5 in the regular season. Brett Dobson turned away 47-of-58 shots to take the setback in net for the Swarm, who were 9-9 during the regular season.

Brendan Bomberry scored twice for the Swarm.

The Swarm jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first quarter. The Rush closed the frame with a run of four straight goals to hold a 4-2 advantage after 15 minutes.

Saskatchewan would never trail or be tied again for the rest of the contest. Including play in the regular season and post-season, the Rush are 10-1 when their opponents score the first goal of the game.

During the four-goal surge, Boudreau scored his first goal of the night on the Rush’s second tally. 

Working a transition two-on-one rush, Boudreau received a pass from defender Matt Hossack and buried a backdoor chance at the right side of the Georgia net to force a 2-2 tie at that time.

The O16 Electric Crew performs during a quarter break.

“We had a little bit of a slow start, but I thought we were actually getting some pretty good looks on offence,” said Rush co-head coach and general manager Derek Keenan. “Their goalie made a couple of saves.

“Then, we got going there and got our legs underneath us. The one and dones in the first round of the playoffs, they are stressful. We have a pretty young group.

“Fortunately, we have a number of veterans that have been here before. For the most past, we had probably more than two-thirds of our team that haven’t been here and haven’t been to the playoffs in these stressful situations. I think it took us a little while to get our legs underneath us.”

Austin Shanks (#33) had two goals and two assists for the Rush.

The Rush pushed their lead out to 6-3 by the end of the second quarter before running into a little adversity at the start of the third quarter. First, Thompson scored 46 seconds into the third quarter to trim the Rush advantage to 6-4.

Just 22 seconds after Thompson’s goal, Walter was given a major penalty for cross checking. Cole scored quickly in the power play for the Swarm to cut the Rush lead to 6-5. Just 20 seconds after Cole’s tally, Shanks netted a short-handed goal for the Rush to push their edge out to 7-5.

After Swarm defender Jeff Henrick was penalized for holding inside the final two minutes of Walter’s major, MacIntosh scored during four-on-four play to slice the Rush lead to 7-6 with 10:06 remaining in the third quarter.

Frank Scigliano makes one of his 39 saves for the Rush.

A short time later, the Swarm had a huge chance to pull even on the scoreboard. Thompson put a midrange shot net that rebounded out to the right of the Saskatchewan goal to Jackson.

Jackson put a diving shot toward a seemingly open part of the Rush net only for Scigliano to flash up his stick to deny the scoring chance.

“We faced some adversity tonight too,” said Keenan. “We had a few penalties and the five-minute major.

“We got through that kind of unscathed. We got one and only gave up one. All in all, we stuck with our game plan.”

The Rush proceeded to go on a three goal surge that allowed them to control the contest the rest of the way. Walter scored with 37.6 seconds remaining in the third quarter to give Saskatchewan an 8-6 advantage.

Captain Ryan Keenan had a pair of goals for the Rush.

Just 85 seconds into the fourth quarter, Ryan Keenan put home a backdoor chance at the right side of the Swarm net on a five-on-three power play to push the Rush lead out to 9-6. Bourdreau completed the surge scoring a power-play goal on a transition breakaway to make the Rush lead sit at 10-6.

“We knew they were going to run,” said Boudreau. “That is our game is running, so we kind of took that personal.

“We made sure we were fast, and I think they kind of tired out as the game went on. You could kind of see us pushing forward, and they kind of dozed off a little bit, and that was basically the game.”

Boudreau scored his third goal on another transition breakaway into an empty-net and completed the game’s scoring with a transition breakaway tally with 5.7 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

The Rush faithful do their chest thump celebration after a goal.

While offence took centre stage in Saturday’s contest, Derek Keenan praised the work put in by the goaltenders on both sides in Scigliano and Dobson.

“You’ve got to get saves,” said Derek Keenan. “Our goaltender was really good, and their goaltender was really good as well.

“All in all, it was a good effort by our whole team.”

Scigliano, who has played in the NLL since 2012, thought the Rush had a good outing to open the 2025 post-season.

Matt Hossack (#94) defends against Lyle Thompson (#4).

“I think it was an exciting week,” said the 33-year-old Scigliano, who is still searching for his first NLL title win in his career. “You kind of prepare for this all year.

“I kind of said to the boys earlier the regular season kind of flew by. We had a lot of success. In a single elimination game, anything can happen, so there is kind of a lot on the line.

“We played a pretty complete game for the most part. There were a couple of hiccups, but I thought we did our job tonight. You see the results on the scoreboard.”

The Rush faithful get the rally towels going on Saturday night.

The other best-of-three semifinal series sees the top seeded Buffalo Bandits, who were 13-5 in the regular season, take on the fourth seeded Vancouver Warriors, who were 11-7 in the regular season. The Bandits, who are the two-time defending NLL champions, slipped past the eighth seeded San Diego Seals in a quarter-final on Friday night in Buffalo 5-4. San Diego had a 9-9 record in the regular season.

The Warriors downed the fifth seeded Rochester Knighthawks 15-10 in a quarter-final on Saturday in Vancouver. The Knighthawks were 10-8 during the regular season.

The dates and times of the two best-of-three semifinal series are still to be announced.

Before Saturday, the Rush’s last post-season win came back on June 9, 2018, when they won the NLL title with a 15-10 victory in a series-deciding Game 3 at the SaskTel Centre over the Knighthawks in the NLL Championships Series.

The Rush celebrate their win on Saturday night.

Boudreau wants to see the Rush make their current post-season run a long one. After posting respective 8-10 records in each of the three previous regular seasons during a reloading period, Boudreau believed his squad was ready to take off in the current campaign.

“I came around three years ago, and a lot of the guys came the same year as me or after,” said Boudreau. “We always kind of said in 2025 we should be pretty primed.

“To have it kind of come to fruition and we still have more lacrosse to play, it is awesome. You can’t (be satisfied). The celebration will be done in the morning.”

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------

If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.