It was a clean sweep of the individual awards for the Prince Albert Predators.
The Predators took home all three individual Prairie Gold Lacrosse League (PGLL) awards at the league’s awards presentation in Regina last weekend.
Goaltender Mason Hawkes took home the Most Valuable Player award after posting a perfect record with a 3.71 Goals Against Average and a .882 save percentage in PGLL play.
Predator head coach Lucas Wells says Hawkes has been the best at his position for several years.
“I don’t think that there is a goalie in the league or even in the province that has been able to touch what he’s done in the last couple of years. He’s more than deserving. He works so hard on his mental game and his angles and his actual game of lacrosse that it’s nice to see him be recognized.”
A pair of players who are currently playing south of the border rounded out the awards for the Predators. Captain Davin Ikert took home the Defensive Player of the Year Award and Brayden Rieger was named Offensive Player of the Year.
Both are currently playing for the University of Mount Olive Trojans, an NCAA Division II program located in Mount Olive, North Carolina.
When asked about the play of Ikert, Wells says he was reliable no matter who he was matched up against.
“He was the best defender in the league by far. It didn’t really matter who we went against, even when we went down to the MacDonald Cup in Brooks, he locked up against the best players at that tournament and he shut them down as well. I think it just speaks to Davin’s work ethic and his leadership as well on the back end.”
Rieger was the top scorer in the PGLL this season registering 49 goals and 49 assists in just 14 games played, averaging about seven points per game.
According to Wells, Rieger has posted 213 points in his PGLL career. The all-time record holder for points in a PGLL career is 285 by Kenny Stewart who played for Moose Jaw from 2002-2005.
Wells says Rieger is an incredibly talented offensive player and has the confidence to try plays.
“I think the numbers speak for themself. He’s an absolute force on offense. Some of the goals he scored this year were just gross. Things that a lot of people in this province wouldn’t even think to try to do, to put the ball in the back of the net or to get the ball to his teammates. He’s a well-rounded athlete. When he decides he wants to score, he’s gonna score, it doesn’t matter if you have your best guy on him or not. I know watching Brayden and Davin go against each other in practice, sometimes Davin would win and then sometimes Brayden would just do something absolutely ridiculous.”
The Predators were dominant in PGLL play posting a perfect 14-0 record and a goal differential of +175 on route to their second straight league title.
Prince Albert also attempted to qualify for the Founder’s Cup for the first time in program history and made strides defeating the Saskatchewan SWAT 15-6 at the Kinsmen Arena on May 24.
The Queen City Kings would win the following two games to eliminate the Predators from Founders’ Cup contention.
Prince Albert would instead attend the MacDonald Cup in Brooks, Alberta and went undefeated winning the title and becoming the first Saskatchewan team to win a Western Canadian championship since the Biggar Roadrunners in 1979.
Wells says the Founders’ play-in and MacDonald Cup shows that PA is one of the strongest lacrosse programs in the province.
“I would classify this year as a bumper year, where you have your older guys who are your best players. You try and make a run where things haven’t necessarily been done before and that’s what we did. As far as MacDonald Cup, that was a success winning that and going undefeated and quite frankly dominating. You look at the Founder’s Cup run and we might not have won those games, but I do think it was still a success for our organization as well as PA Lacrosse to show that we can play at those high levels that everyone seems to not think we can play at.”
