Midseason Q&A: Dan MacRae talks debuts, big wins, and the Black Bears’ playoff push

Photo: David Pickering/Pick’s Pics/NLL

Midseason Q&A: Dan MacRae talks debuts, big wins, and the Black Bears’ playoff push

The Ottawa Black Bears ended a stretch of 10 straight weekends with a game with a win over the Rochester Knighthawks on Feb. 14. Last week, the team enjoyed their first bye week since early December before they welcome the Oshawa FireWolves to Canadian Tire Centre for a rematch with their provincial rival.

Ahead of their return to action, Black Bears head coach and general manager Dan MacRae took some time to reflect on their first 11 games on the season, after which they hold a 6-5 record.

OBB: The final game before the break was another gutsy win, but it was also important because you are battling with Rochester for playoff position and now hold the tiebreaker. Did it feel as big to the team as it did looking in from the outside?

DM: Yeah, it was huge. We talked about it at practice that week that the game was — unfortunately, or fortunately — going to have to be a playoff mindset game for us, just with the way the standings were, and the position we were in, and like you just mentioned, the tiebreaker scenarios.

We don’t have [a tiebreaker] against Vegas, or San Diego, or Toronto, but we have Buffalo and Rochester now. So I felt like that would really help put us in a good spot. It’s tough to see how it’s going to play out, just with us being a couple games ahead of some other teams, but yeah, the guys really came together, followed a great game plan. The offence obviously took a little while to get going, but another great fourth quarter there. Higgy played phenomenal. So yeah, really happy with the effort the guys put in.

OBB: The team’s top draft pick from September, Liam Aston, debuted in that game and was a big part of the win, scoring his first career goal. What went into getting him his debut and how have you seen him progress this year?

DM: We’ve been excited about him since we thought we stole him at the draft. We had him labelled in our pre-draft meetings as a top-five righty that was going to be available. So when he fell to us, we were super excited. Obviously, Reilly [O’Connor] knows him quite well. He just coached him this past summer. I coached against him for a couple of years.

He’s a huge body, a great stick, really athletic, and he can create space for our other guys. It’s kind of the one thing we don’t have on our offence, is a big body, so we’ve been excited to try to get him in, but we didn’t want to rush it. Since training camp, Liam’s just been putting in the work and it’s been showing. Some really quality shifts in our practice.

He’s been playing in the ALL as well, for the [Toronto] Monarchs, and he’s been putting up some great points there. A few of our staff members are involved with that team. So it’s been great. He’s kind of checked every box and he really earned the opportunity. It was great to see him get out there, play well, and get rewarded with his first goal.

OBB: You mentioned Reilly O’Connor coaching Liam with the Toronto Beaches. Jeff Teat and Rob Hellyer are about on pace with some of the better seasons of their career statistically, but O’Connor is on pace to surpass his previous bests by a fair margin. Have you seen anything different from him this year, or what’s been working so well for him?

DM: Dad strength. That’s what we’ll attribute it to, [laughs]. But no, Reilly is a great lacrosse mind. He sees the floor so well. You watch our games, you’ll see him on the power plays, pointing with his glove, and it looks like he’s almost orchestrating some things. Him and Jeff have some great chemistry.

I think that there’s a lot of guys, maybe Reilly’s one of them, that’s a beneficiary of having a guy like Rob Hellyer out there, just creating more space, because, who are you going to take away? Jeff Teat, Rob Hellyer, then Reilly O’Connor’s going to get left open, and a few of the other guys. He’s been capitalizing on a lot of his chances, but he sees the floor so well, so I think it’s the assists that are really racking up for him, and that’s just because of his lacrosse IQ and vision.

OBB: Having played with some of these guys and having been a part of this franchise at one point as a player, you’re familiar with some people in the organization. We talked about it before the season, but now, halfway into the season, how has that perspective helped you?

DM: Yeah, it’s been good, man. In every game and in points of every season, you go through adversity. So whether it’s been in games — or the points in the season where, I think we’ve had two different stretches where we’ve lost two in a row — we really bounced back really well and really fast.

And maybe that’s because of some of those relationships, you’re able to just get into those meaningful conversations and make the right adjustments, relatively quickly. So yeah, maybe [you can attribute some of that] to it. But, you know, when guys might have been struggling for a game, it’s a quick correction. They know that we really care about them and want what’s best for them, and best for the team, and that’s all that really matters. So, the guys have been really receptive to any conversations from myself and the entire coaching staff.

OBB: You played in Calgary for nine seasons and won a championship there. How special was it to defeat them here in Ottawa as a coach?

DM: Yeah, the Calgary game, that was special. A few guys left on that team from the 2019 championship team. Eli Salama, he’s now their captain, he was a rookie on the team that year [we won the championship]. Riley Loewen, and a few others [left from that team].

Shared a couple of, you know, words with those guys after the game. Just told Eli, it’s great to see him wearing the ‘C’, he’s doing a great job and making me proud of that. But that’s a great franchise, right? They’re always do so well with their attendance. It’s a testament to how good that team’s been over the years. And they always treated me well. We’ve got one more against them in Calgary, so that one might bring back some good memories being in that old barn.

OBB: The Black Bears beat Saskatchewan in home floor during Week 3. That was the second game of the team’s season. Looking back at it now, Saskatchewan has still only lost that one game. Did it feel as big at the time as it did when you look back now?

DM: It felt big at the time, I don’t want to diminish that. That was our first win. It was my first, it was [offensive coordinator] Dylan Evans’ first. It was a lot of guys first. It felt like we kind of got the monkey off the back.

But you knew they were a good team, right? They were in the finals last year, the team pretty much doesn’t change. They’re really young, really fast, but yeah, to see the amount of difficulty that they’re giving other teams, and the record they have, it’s not a shocker, I don’t think for anyone.

But, yeah, it’s a great little tidbit you can say, right, to hang your hat — that, yeah, we are the only team to beat them. But, for me, that just tells us how high our ceiling is, and how good we can be playing. There’s times that we don’t come out focused or ready to go on time, and there’s been occasions where we can play down to, to other levels. So that’s a great reminder just how good our team can be when everything’s going our way and we’re doing everything right.

OBB: Last one. Just in general, what are you keying in on here, with seven games left, three home games, another bye week left — what are you keying in on as the biggest room for improvement this team has in the final stretch?

DM: If you’re looking at it analytically, you’d say our defence has the biggest room for improvement, specifically our penalty kill. That was our focus going into Rochester, and I was really happy with the adjustments we made on the penalty kill. [We killed] three of those, and we held a high-powered offence to under nine goals, so that’s going to continue to be a focus.

The more tape that comes out on any team, the more other defences learn your offence. I’ll be interested to see — you know, we’re making our adjustments — how we can adapt to those, but I’m really happy with the way Higgy’s been playing the last couple of games. I know last season he was one of the league leaders in all the goalie categories.

So if we can get him staying the way he’s playing the last couple of games and get our defence trending in the right direction, we’re going to be a really dangerous team down the stretch, but we’re just focused on taking it one game at a time right now.