The Nanaimo Timbermen feel like they’re close, and this week’s draft will help bring them even closer.
The senior A T-men have three top-10 picks, including the No. 2- and No. 3-overall choices in the Western Lacrosse Association Draft on Thursday (Feb. 16).
“It’s exciting. It allows us to get some of the top players in the province again,” said Chris Bowman, Timbermen president.
The club had a strategy meeting Monday and Bowman said the Timbermen haven’t decided exactly on the picks they will make. There are going to be a lot of good options, he said, including prolific goal scorers.
“I don’t think you can go wrong with those top picks. They’re all going to make an impact at this level,” Bowman said.
He said adding offensive players is the focus for the T-men, especially at the top of the draft. He thinks the team is at the point where it can look at trying to pinpoint certain needs.
“You’re really looking to say, OK, where do we need help? … We can be very picky [with] who we take now, a specific spot we can address, where before we were taking the best player available because we needed help everywhere.”
Bowman said the Timbermen have reached out to every potential draft pick and virtually all of them are willing to play in Nanaimo.
“The whole culture’s changed. They’ve seen how close we were last year,” he said. “Last year [early in the draft] we picked three mainland kids that all reported and played and they know all the kids that we’re talking to this year and those kids all gave us glowing reviews for how well we treated them, what a fun team it is, what a great group of guys it is. So they’re helping us … recruit that next group of kids.”
LACROSSE TALK … In other senior A lacrosse news, the Timbermen traded a second-round pick in this week’s draft to the New Westminster Salmonbellies in exchange for Dane Sorenson, a 22-year-old right-hander who scored 20 goals in his rookie season in the WLA last summer. He is from Victoria and played part of his junior career in Nanaimo.
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