Toronto Rock Owner and President Jamie Dawick has announced the signing of General Manager Terry Sanderson to a two-year contract extension that will run through the 2016 season.
“I’m really happy and excited to have ‘T’ back on board as General Manager with this 2-year extension,” said Dawick. “I look forward to building on our recent successes as we work our way towards another championship.”
Sanderson took over as GM following the 2009 season. At that time, Dawick had just purchased the Rock and Sanderson was coming off his second NLL Champion’s Cup win on the bench as an assistant coach with the Calgary Roughnecks. His first title came in 2005 with the Rock when he was both the GM and Head Coach.
“I’m pleased that Jamie has confidence in me to carry on with this job,” said Sanderson. “I feel Jamie and I have a great relationship and I’m very pleased that he believes that I can keep us pushing towards another NLL championship here in Toronto.”
In his first season with the Rock, Sanderson’s charges made it the Champion’s Cup final losing to Washington Stealth in 2010 but then just one-year later the Rock returned the favour by defeating those same Stealth in Toronto to win the 2011 Champion’s Cup.
Toronto has made the playoffs in each of Sanderson’s 5-years amidst his second tour of duty with the Rock. In the process, Toronto has also won two regular season NLL East Division titles (2012 and 2013)
But your success in this league is measured by the number of championships you win and your knack for getting it done when it counts, something Sanderson knows just hasn’t been the case over the past couple of seasons.
“It’s unacceptable that we have bowed out in the first round the last two years,” explained Sanderson. “As a staff, we’re not happy, it’s not where we want to be nor where we expect to be.”
The 2014 Toronto Rock had a late season rally in month of April as the team won its final four games of the regular season to finish 9-9 and secure the 2nd seed in the NLL East Division playoffs and a first round home playoff game. Unfortunately, the Rock came up short in the post-season, losing 15-13 to Buffalo at Air Canada Centre.
“I think we have to look at things defensively,” said Sanderson. “When you have games that you allow 15 or more goals, that indicates a problem. I think we need to shore up the defensive end of it and improve our lacrosse IQ. It will be addressed with some of the young guys that got time this year, we have a couple of decent picks and as always we’ll look at free agents and see if something happens there for us.”
During his time as GM, Sanderson hasn’t been blessed with a plethora of first-round picks with the exception of his first NLL Draft with the Rock in 2009 where he was able to select Garrett Billings, Stephan Leblanc and Joel Dalgarno (who was later a key piece in the deal that brought Colin Doyle back to Toronto). He’s been able to bring in some quality young talent via free agency and later round draft selections. Rob Hellyer, Jesse Gamble, Damon Edwards, Scott Johnston, Nick Diachenko, Mike Lum-Walker and Ethan O’Connor are just a few of those younger names with O’Connor being the only first rounder in that group and he was the last pick of the first round in 2013.
