The 2025 Presidents Cup will come down to the Snake Island Muskies and the Brooklin Merchants.
That comes after an incredible day of competition yesterday in the semi-finals, which set up a great matchup in the finals. Let’s get you caught up on how each semi-final game went and who will be in the championship game.
Snake Island Muskies 8 – Six Nations Rivermen 7
The first contest pitted the TNSLL champions against the RMLL champions.
For the Muskies, they’ve been in the Presidents Cup for several years but haven’t found much success in the early years. However, in the past few years, Snake Island has reached the bronze medal game but failed to walk away with a medal, losing in 2023 and 2024. So for the Muskies, who added Joey Spallina, Ryan Lanchbury, Landon Sinfield, and other names to their roster this year, they have hopes of coming home with at least a medal, preferably the gold.
Meanwhile, the Miners have won this event several times and are two-time defending silver medalists, so they are no stranger to this stage of the tournament.
In the early stages of the first period, Edmonton could not be stopped. They were winning loose ball battles, making smarter passes and shot selections, and were able to shake Muskies Nick Damude a bit by scoring five minutes in and registering almost ten shots through the first six minutes of game time. Miners scored their first goal from Marcus Needham to get the Albertans out to an early lead.
Less than 30 seconds later, Snake Island responded when Jake Rice ripped a shot past the Miners’ starting goaltender, Cam MacLeod, to knot the game up at one apiece.
From the 14:34 mark to the 3:53 mark is when we saw some stellar saves from both goaltenders and two teams that are both capable of winning this tournament.
At the 3:53 mark, Richard Lachlan tallied his fifth goal 17th point of the tournament to put Edmonton back up by one, but Snake Island didn’t go away that easily. They were hungry to get that goal back, too hungry that they committed a penalty to allow the Miners’ power play unit to score and go up by two courtesy of Colin Berglof. Former NLL-er Stephen Keogh, who wore five different jerseys in the league, showed that he can still play with these young players and notched his third goal in five games played this week to see his team by one after one.
The middle frame was a monster of a period. Like most games in the second, physicality ramps up, tempers start to boil, and the players start to get under their opponent’s skin in hopes of rattling them. As such, the Muskies were able to make the Miners go down shorthanded, and it was Rochester Knighthawks and Snake Island points leader, Ryan Lanchbury, who cashed in on the power play to make it a three-all game.
But Peterborough native Cam Milligan answered back for the Miners to take the lead back. Keogh was then able to score his second goal of the game, but that’s when the scoring stopped for a bit and the big hits started.
Both teams were whacking their sticks more in the middle, setting harder picks on the hips and defences were doing a good job preventing transition opportunities. The final goal of the period came from Tyler Sonnichsen after Lachlan found him coming off the bench and sent a shot past Damude.
With Edmonton clinging to two one-goal leads after each of the first two periods, they knew that Snake Island would not go away quietly, and they were hungry to make their first President’s Cup Championship appearance; and they did just that.
Cue Landon Sinfield.
Sinfield is one of the youngest players on this Muskies roster, and after being drafted by the Toronto Rock in the fourth round of the 2024 NLL draft out of Akwesasne Thunder junior ‘B’, he was eager to prove that he could play senior ‘B’ lacrosse and compete with the nation’s best; and he showed it.
Before Sinfield found the score sheet, John Lintz added to Edmonton’s lead just five minutes into the third. After being down two, Sinfield went to work.
Sinfield took a pass from Lanchbury, spun underneath his defender, and faked out MacLeod to pull Snake Island to within one.
Edmonton’s final goal was from Dean Fairall–who scored the game-winner to send the Miners to the semi-finals–as he shot a ball that got blocked, picked up his rebound and picked the corner on Damude for a 7-5 Edmonton lead with 13 and a half minutes remaining.
The Miners seemed poised to run away with it.
But Sinfield was itching for more than just one goal on the evening, and he needed to provide on that left side after Rice went knee-on-knee with a teammate, which saw him leave the game visibly in pain.
Sinfield’s second goal came similarly to his first. He outwaited his defender and slipped underneath him, and just used patience to send a ball across the line.
And to cap off his hat-trick, what better way than who assisted on his first goal, Lanchbury? Lanchbury was cutting in on a net, and Sinfield found him, but as he ran out of real estate and went behind the net with the ball, Sinfield cut back-door and went far side on MacLeod to tie the game up at seven and erase a three-goal deficit.
With 100 seconds remaining in regulation time, it was the two dominant righties of Lanchbury and Keogh who were able to use a classic two-man game to score.
Joey Spallina was at the point and sent it to Lanchbury, who wheeled down to the half-boards, and he and Keogh played a good east-west two-man game that saw both Miner’s defenders go to Lanchbury, which left Keogh all alone on top of the crease and buried it for his hat-trick goal and ultimately, the game winner.
However, the head coach for Edmonton, Jordan Cornfield, made a desperate call. He called for a stick measurement on Damude to see if it was illegal. After the officials measured it, it was deemed legal, and the Miners were dinged with a delay of game infraction, which saw the Muskies run out the clock and advance to the finals.
Snake Island scored three unanswered goals to send themselves into the gold medal game and ended Edmonton’s chance at three straight silver medals at this tournament.
Brooklin 12– Six Nations 8
With one finalist already determined and two teams from Ontario in the second semifinal, it was anyone’s game in the second semi-final.
Brooklin and Six Nations had met each other a total of five times entering Friday night’s game, with Brooklin winning four of those and the lone Rivermen win coming in Brooklin in a two-goal win. The Merchants were victorious over Six Nations in the Ontario finals, sweeping them in the best-of-three series, so the Rivermen were out for blood in what would be a battle to make it to the gold medal game.
The first period saw the Merchants–who have been sporting some new orange threads for the tournament–score three straight goals from Alex Marinier, Will MacLeod, and Parker Pipher just ten minutes in to make Nations question just how good Brooklin really is.
The Rivermen’s only goal of the period came off the stick of Thunder Hill, who recorded his seventh goal this week and was able to cut a tad into the Merchants’ lead after 20 minutes of play.
The second was different than the first as Zach Herreweyeres scored two quick goals just 47 seconds apart to make it 4-3. NLL draft-eligible player, MacLeod, then ripped a shot past Rivermen starting goaltender, Tye Belanger, to go back up by two, but with Brooklin going on the penalty kill, David Anderson made them pay by ripping a shot past Deacon Knott, who got the start for Brooklin in a big game with high stakes.
Anderson wasn’t done there, though, as he would score two more goals for a natural hat trick in six and a half minutes to lead by one with a 6-5 advantage. With 90 seconds left in the middle frame, Pipher received a pass from Marinier, who spun underneath his defender, drew a penalty, and managed to keep his feet out of the crease to restore the Brooklin lead heading into the final 20 minutes.
With the hometown team up one and a trip back to the President’s Cup finals on the line for the first time since their inaugural season 25 years ago, it was going to be tough against a Six Nations team that hasn’t been to the gold medal game since 2019.
The Merchants have a roster of notable names, including Devin Pipher, Jacob Hickey, Scott Reed, Alex Marinier, Will MacLeod, Braedon Saris, and more. But one name that has become more prominent and vital to this team is Liam Osbourne, who has had a great week for the blue and orange and has been a dog-on-a-bone type player. Gets into the corner for loose balls, playing in all areas of the floor–offence, defence, power-play, penalty kill–and has been able to play more minutes than he’s used to to help Brooklin win.
Osbourne was sent out the front door and dropped his shoulder into Hill and bodied his way to the front of the net and went far side on Belanger to make it 8-6 for Brooklin. Six Nations responded, though, as Chris Courtney found the back of the net to make it 8-7 with lots of time to tie it. However, hosting the Presidents Cup in their 25th year, and it being 25 years since they made it to the gold medal game, Brooklin wasn’t about to end the storybook tale yet. Osbourne went back to work as he scored his second of the game, and then Marinier followed suit by ripping two straight goals to put the game out of reach–or did it?
With Six Nations currently down by four with under five minutes left, the Rivermen decided to call a helmet check on Deacan Knott as they wanted to check the cat-eyes on his mask, as Knott uses his NLL helmet for the Philadelphia Wings, which are not allowed per Lacrosse Canada rules.
After the examination, the officials deemed that the bars on the cage itself were not legal under the Lacrosse Canada goalie equipment rules, which saw the Merchants get penalized for illegal equipment and down a man, which saw Gregory Elijah-Brown score the Rivermen’s 8th goal on the night, but it wasn’t enough.
Jacob Hickey scored an empty net goal to send Brooklin to the President’s Cup championship game for the first time in a quarter of a century.
Bronze Medal Game– Edmonton vs Six Nations- August 30
Edmonton Miners vs Six Nations Rivermen at 3:00 pm
Gold Medal Game– Snake Island vs Brooklin- August 30
Snake Island Muskies vs Brooklin Merchants at 7:00 pm
All games can be streamed on YouTube at the JVI Sports Network.