Earlier this summer, I wrote about the best Jr. A lacrosse teams of all time. Today, we turn our focus to Sr. A.
Like last time, this article is possible thanks to the incredible work of Larry “Wamp” Power, who meticulously kept statistics in a consistent format from the 1930s to the mid 2010s. Larry lost his life a few years ago, but it’s hard to overstate his impact. Canadian lacrosse has an incredibly long and valuable history, and almost all of it would have been lost if not for Wamper. Check out his full statistics database here.
While the stats are broken out by year, I spent some time compiling them all, which is the first time we have had a statistics databases across generations (Pointstreak, Gamesheet, Wamp’s Bible, etc.).
The full database is available below, or can be found in a sortable Google Sheet here.
Wamp’s database gives us a few pieces of information about each team: Wins, Losses, Ties, Goals For, Goals Against, and who won the Mann Cup that season. Our criteria for deciphering between teams will be based on those statistics.
It is important to note that this list is not fully comprehensive. The Mann Cup has a long (and somewhat complicated) history. Originally awarded in 1910, the Cup was given out for field lacrosse for the first two decades of its competition. The first box lacrosse competition was played at Maple Leaf Gardens between the Mimico Mountaineers and Winnipeg Argonauts.
In fact, the Gardens hosted the Mann Cup several more times over the subsequent years, last hosting the event in 1956.
Wamp’s database picks up that year for the Ontario teams, and in 1934 for the BC based teams. Unfortunately, we are missing a few random years from the data as well. In Ontario, the 1968, 1984, and 1998 seasons are not available in the data. In BC, the 1940, 1964 and 1987 seasons are not available. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do here.
It’s incredible to think how much of Canadian (and world) history is encompassed within these statistics. Unlike the Minto Cup, the Mann never missed seasons for global conflicts. There is no better example of this than the 1944 Inter-City Box lacrosse league in BC. That year, the Vancouver HMCS Discovery Navy team went 14-10, while the Vancouver Army team went 14-9-1.
But that’s enough background information. Let’s get into the analysis.
Dynasties
Like last time, let’s start with the dynasties and look at the teams that won three or more championships in a row. We will keep this to the Mann itself and not provincial titles.
In the data available, there were five teams that matched this description, beginning with the 1934-36 Orillia Terriers and finishing with the Six Nations Chiefs, who wrapped up their second three-peat just two weeks ago.
**Again, this is in the box lacrosse era since 1932. There were several three-peats in the field era.
| Team | Years |
| Orillia Terriers | 1934-36 |
| Peterborough Timbermen | 1951-54 (four-peat) |
| Six Nations Chiefs | 1994-96 |
| Peterborough Lakers | 2017-2019, 2022 (four-peat, did not play in between for COVID) |
| Six Nations Chiefs | 2023-2025. |
There were also a few near misses, with many teams winning three of four titles. This includes the St. Catharines Athletics, who won in 1938, 1940 and 1941, as well as the Vancouver Carlings (1961, 1963, 1964), the Brooklin Redmen (1985, 1987, 1988), and the Peterborough Lakers (2004, 2006, 2007).
But dynasty status has been incredibly difficult to achieve, especially historically.
Best Individual Teams
We will start with the same assumptions we made of the Minto Cup teams. The first is that the team had to win the Mann Cup. Then, let’s look at regular season records, then if needed, playoff records.
With those assumptions in place, there are two teams that stick out amongst all the others. In my opinion, it might be a tie.
Let’s start with the 1988 Brooklin Redmen, who went 28-2 in the summer of 1988. They went undefeated through Ontario, playoffs included, and their only losses came at the hands of the Coquitlam Adanacs in the Mann Cup itself. They also have the best per-game goal differential of any team in the history of Sr. A lacrosse, out-scoring their opponents by a remarkable 12.8 goals PER GAME! In 20 regular season games, they scored 363 goals and allowed just 107.
They were led in scoring that year by Derek Keenan who had 122 points in 20 games, second best in the league, and Gil Nieuwendyk. Keenan finished six points behind Owen Sound’s Chuck Martin, who played four additional games.
The other team in contention was the 1992 Brampton Excelsiors, who went 28-1, with their single loss coming in the Mann Cup. As far as I can tell, this is the best single season record in the history of Sr. A lacrosse, but they defeated their opponents by a margin of 5.63 goals per contest, significantly less than that 1998 Brooklin team.
The Excelsiors were led by arguably the best big four of all-time, with John Tavares, Jim Veltman, Troy Cordingley and Darris Kilgour, and also included legends such as Pat Coyle and Randy Mearns. Tavares led the team in regular season, playoff, and Mann Cup scoring, with 13 goals and 10 assists in just five games.
There were three other teams to win the Mann with perfect regular seasons, but all of them suffered more losses than the two teams above.
The 1987 and 1989 Brooklin teams both went undefeated, but both had tough tests in the Mann. The 1987 team needed 7 games to defeat the New Westminster Salmonbellies, while the 1989 team needed 7 games to get by Peterborough and 6 more to beat New Westminster in the Mann. Both these teams beat their opponents by more than 11 goals per game.
The other team is the 2024 Chiefs, who needed 6 games against Peterborough and 5 against Victoria. But the Chiefs played just 11 regular season games due to a shortened MSL schedule, considerably less than the other teams in this list. They defeated teams by 7.27 goals per game, which is below the three Brooklin title teams but above the Excelsiors.
But however you slice it, whether it’s the 1998 Brooklin team, 1992 Excelsiors or one of the other three, these are the elite of the elite in Canadian summer lacrosse.
Honourable Mentions
With those teams in a nearly untouchable sphere, let’s look at some honourable mentions. There has to be one for the 2024 Victoria Shamrocks, one of only two teams in Canadian history to go undefeated and not win the Mann Cup, losing to the aforementioned Chiefs. They are the only WLA team to ever go perfect in the regular season.
The other was the 1933 Orillia Terriers, who went 8-0 but lost in the Ontario semi-finals to eventual Mann Cup champions Hamilton Tigers.
Going beyond the statistics, one team (or perhaps season) that fans might be interested in was the 2003 WLA season, and specifically the final series between the Victoria Shamrocks and Coquitlam Adanacs. That series featured nine of the top 50 all-time NLL leading scorers, and almost half of the current NLL head coaches.
On Coquitlam alone, there were six current NLL head coaches in Shawn Williams, Jim Quinlan, Pat Coyle, Pat Merrill, Curt Malawsky and Glenn Clark. That’s in addition to former (and likely future) Head Coach Tracey Kelusky and a near guaranteed future Head Coach in Brodie Merrill. The three leading scorers on that team, John Grant Jr., Kelusky and Williams are all within the top thirty in scoring in NLL history.
But Victoria won the series and the Mann Cup, led by (guess who) John Tavares. He was joined by Lewis Ratcliff (18th all time in NLL points), Blaine Manning (28th), Kaleb Toth (35th), Derek Malawsky (41st) and Jim Veltman (47th). They defeated the Adanacs in five games and then beat the Excelsiors in 5 games for the Cup. They may not have had the regular season, but the ‘03 Shamrocks will be remembered for a long time.
Statistically speaking however, the best WLA team of all time was the 1989 Salmonbellies, who went 21-3 in the regular season and beat opponents by 3.75 goals per contest. They lost just once in the BC playoffs and were the only team to defeat Brooklin in the Mann Cup during their dominant run in the late 1980’s. Geordie Dean led that team in scoring, followed by Ben Hieltjes and Todd Lorenz.
Digging deeper, four teams won the Mann with a single regular loss, including the 1995 Chiefs, 2017 Lakers, 1993 Excelsiors and the 1934 Orillia Terriers.
To be clear, full season dominance is not always the norm for Mann Cup champions. The best example of this was the 1980 Excelsiors, who improbably went 7-16 in the regular season, before rallying to win the whole thing. In fact, they are one of 5 teams in the data to win the trophy with a record below .500. The cumulative regular season winning percentage of every Mann Cup winner was 73.1%, a dominant but not outrageous number.
In terms of specific units, the best offence of all time was the 1971 Brantford Warriors, who scored an incredible 613 goals in 30 games, good for 20.43 goals per contest. They were paced by the great Gaylord Powless, one of the best players to ever play the sport. He had 171 points in 25 regular season games, good for 6.8 points per game. He added 48 more in the playoffs and 15 points in the Mann Cup to help Brantford defeat the Salmonbellies in 4 games.
Defensively, the three best teams of all time were all technically in 1933, when the Mount Dennis Firemen (official name), the Mimico Mountaineers, and the Native Sons all allowed fewer than 5 goals a game.
But the best modern defence was last year’s Chiefs, allowing just 5 goals a game, followed by the 1987 and 1988 Brooklin teams and the 2025 Chiefs.
The best defence that has not yet been discussed was the 2008 Salmonbellies, who won the WLA and lost just a single game in the regular season. Goaltender Tyler Richards was named the Most Outstanding Goaltender and Co-Rookie of the Year alongside scoring champion Dane Dobbie. They were perfect in the BC playoffs but were eventually swept in 4 games by the Brampton Excelsiors.
Of course, there are far too many teams to go individually one by one. If you think we missed one, let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!