Rush rose back to NLL title contender status in 2025

Reload efforts have paid off for Saskatchewan

The Rush celebrate a goal by captain Ryan Keenan.

At the start of the 2024-25 NLL campaign, the Saskatchewan Rush wanted to return to the post-season.

In their three previous seasons, they posted respective 8-10 records and just missed qualifying for the post-season in each of those campaigns. The Rush were going through a reload, but they didn’t totally bottom out.

As the 2024-25 campaign motored on, the hopes of the players on the Rush grew. The goal of returning to the post-season changed to aiming to make the NLL Championship Series and capturing the fourth NLL title in team history.

Early on in the campaign, there was a sense around the Rush that 2024-25 had the potential to be special and that the rebuild from the previous campaigns was starting to pay off. The Rush won their first three straight games and started out 4-2. While lots of teams in the history of the NLL had better starts, one wondered how good the Rush could be.

After the 4-2 start, a five game winning streak followed. By the end of the regular season, the Rush compiled a 13-5 record, which was their best mark in the regular season since 2018 when they topped the NLL standings with a 14-4 record and won their third NLL title in franchise history.

Fans at the SaskTel Centre cheer on the Rush on May 18.

The Rush’s record in 2024-25 placed them second overall in the NLL. The Buffalo Bandits, who entered the campaign as the two-time defending NLL champions, also posted a 13-5 record and took the standings tiebreaker for first place having beat the Rush 9-7 at the SaskTel Centre on March 1 in the lone regular season head-to-head encounter between the two sides.

When the post-season started, it felt like 2018 again around the Rush. The confidence was there the post-season run would be a long one and the belief was truly real that they could win the NLL title.

Only Robert Church, Ryan Keenan, Mike Messenger and Matt Hossack remain from that 2018 championship winner. Keenan currently serves as the club’s captain The Rush were going into the post-season relying on a new generation.

The O16 Electric Crew performs during a break between quarters.

A couple of veteran pickups were key in the revival of the Rush. They picked up veteran goaltender Frank Scigliano in a trade with the San Diego Seals in July of 2023. On September 7, 2024, the Rush signed forward Austin Shanks.

Scigliano and Shanks were stars at their respective positions, and both were in search of being members of an NLL championship team for the first time in their respective careers.

The Rush roster was filled with young players who are coming of age in Zach Manns, Clark Walter, Brock Haley, Levi Anderson, Bobby Kidd III, Jake Boudreau, Jake Naso and Ryan Barnable. Rookie goaltender Thomas Kiazyk showed real big self-belief in his first season with the squad.

In another cool development, Messenger, Manns, Boudreau, Haley, Anderson and Jerrett Smith all lived in Saskatoon full time during the season.

Ryan Keenan had a strong season as the captain of the Rush.

Manns came to the Rush in a trade in July of 2023 that sent all-time great Mark Matthews to the Toronto Rock. During the 2024-25 regular season, Manns, who is 26-years-old, topped the Rush in scoring with 74 points coming off 35 goals and 39 assists.

The Rush piled up a number of major league awards at the end of the regular season. Scigliano was the NLL’s goaltender of the year, Hossack claimed honours as the NLL’s defensive player of the year, defender Keegan Bell was the NLL’s teammate of the year, co-head coach Jimmy Quinlan captured the award as the NLL’s coach of the year and co-head coach and general manager Derek Keenan was tabbed as the NLL’s general manager of the year.

In the NLL Playoffs, the Rush downed the Georgia Swarm in a single-elimination quarter-final 13-9 at the SaskTel Centre on April 26.

Saskatchewan swept the Halifax Thunderbirds in a best-of-three semifinal series 2-0. On May 3, the Rush hammered the Thunderbirds in Halifax 16-7 in Game 1. The Rush needed a thrilling come-from-behind 10-9 win in overtime to lock up the series victory in Game 2 on May 10 at the SaskTel Centre.

Frank Scigliano was the NLL’s goaltender of the year.

Saskatchewan then faced the Bandits in the best-of-three NLL Championship Series. The first two games of the series were heated battles.

The Bandits claimed Game 1 at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York, 12-10 on May 16. The series shifted to the SaskTel Centre for Game 2 on May 18 with the Rush claiming an 11-10 victory to force a series-deciding Game 3 back at the KeyBank Center.

The first half of the winner takes all Game 3 played on Saturday saw the intensity from the first two games continue on. The Bandits went into the halftime break holding a slim 7-6 lead.

In the second half, the Bandits showed their recent championship pedigree and took their game to another level. They outscored the Rush 8-0 in posting a convincing 15-6 victory to the delight of a sellout crowd of 19,070 spectators.

It might have been at that point the youth on the Rush team started to show. As the Bandits lead grew, you started to see the body language on the Rush players start to sag and a realization grew that they weren’t going to get the NLL Cup at game’s end.

Matt Hossack was the NLL’s defensive player of the year. 

The Bandits would be crowned NLL champions for a third straight year and for the seventh time in team history. Their seven NLL titles are the most for a franchise in the history of the NLL.

The passion of the Buffalo fanbase showed through too, if you looked at the comments on the posts on the Rush’s social media accounts that piled up in the six hours after the game. A number of Bandits fans took exception to Shanks saying the Rush were going to win Game 3 and Boudreau saying playing in the Bandits home rink wasn’t that big of a deal.

A number of Bandits fans left disparaging comments about the Rush and their fans including comments that said the Rush only had 50 fans and the team would leave Saskatoon and the province of Saskatchewan in three years. You had to admit the comments were pretty harsh but also in the bounds of fair play.

If you check out the accounts of the Bandits fans that left comments on Rush social media posts, it was pretty clear they are full out Buffalo professional team supporters also backing the NFL’s Bills and the NHL’s Sabres. Those fans have seen their share of heartbreaks and go all the way in letting people know when the Bandits win it all.

Zach Manns led the Rush with 74 points in the regular season.

Still, the Rush have jumped up to once again be one of the NLL’s top teams. When players arrive for training camp at the start of the 2025-26 campaign, they will have the goal and legitimately believe they can win the NLL championship. The feeling will be what the Rush franchise had during the 2010s when contending for the NLL title was a legitimate reality.

Of course, the elephant in the room for the Rush this season revolved around attendance. The highest attendance figure the Rush posted for any of their home games in 2024-25 was 8,216 which came in their Game 2 win of the NLL Championship Series.

When the Rush won the NLL title in 2018, they averaged 14,639 spectators per game in their nine regular season home dates and 12,351 spectators per contest in their three post-season home dates.

After the Rush franchise moved from Edmonton following the 2015 campaign to Saskatoon for the 2016 season, it was decided the club would be dubbed the Saskatchewan Rush to try and mirror picking up a provincial following similar to the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Austin Shanks was a big off-season addition for the Rush.

A sizable media contingent used to cover the Rush with media staffers coming from various parts of the province. 

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that started in March of 2020 and the shutdowns that followed saw the number of sports reporting positions in Saskatchewan cut to what would be considered less than a skeleton crew. The media following that used to cover the Rush has been cut down significantly.

When the Rush began their run in the 2025 NLL Playoffs, I saw someone comment on social media on being a resident in Regina and that you barely heard anything about the Rush in the Saskatchewan capital city. 

The Rush were known at one time for the ability to draw fans from all over Saskatchewan.

The challenges the Rush face in drawing fans and getting media exposure to break into the minds of potential casual fans are shared by all sports teams across Canada outside of NHL teams, the MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays, the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, and the CFL’s Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers. There are no easy answers to navigate those challenges.

The Rush salute their fans at the SaskTel Centre.

On the floor, the Rush have been built into a winner and a contender once again. That in theory should help in drawing interest back towards the team.

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

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