Orangeville Northmen’s rare 9-0 start, plus Junior A’s all-time regular season undefeated runs

Chris Origlieri, Orangeville Northmen (Photo: OLA)

Last night’s narrow 7-6 overtime victory over the Oakville Buzz got the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League’s Orangeville Northmen their ninth regular season win of the 2023 season.

Easily leading the provincial standings no matter how you slice it – points (18) or winning percentage (1.00) – the Northmen were our first team to be named #1 in The Lax Mag’s National Junior Rankings, and spoiler alert, not playing again until Wednesday evening, they will again in our mid-week rankings release.

Liam Matthews, Orangeville Northmen (Photo: OLA)

Where does their strong start rank amongst other red-hot-out-of-the-gate teams? Well, right near the top.

With last night’s win, the Northmen become just the twelfth team in Ontario Junior A history to start a season 9-0. Using a combination of GameSheet, PointStreak and WampsBibleofLacrosse.com (RIP Larry), and including only seasons with complete results (before the 60s full seasons scores & stats are sometimes hard to come by), we went as far back as 1933 to confirm that upper-echelon claim.

As rare as starting a season 9-0 is, it actually happened last year, when the Mimico Mountaineers won nine and then dropped their tenth.

Finlay Thomson, Mimico Mountaineers (Photo: OLA)

Below are those documented twelve nine Ws or better starts to a OJLL season, which also includes three even rarer undefeated runs, which we’ll get more into in a sec:

2002 St. Catharines Athletics (20)
2010 Orangeville Northmen (15)
2014 Six Nations Arrows (14)
2007 Six Nations Arrows (13)
1946 Mimico Mountaineers (11)
2008 Orangeville Northmen (11)
2006 Whitby Warriors (10)
2011 Six Nations Arrows (10)
1997 Whitby Warriors (9)
2008 Six Nations Arrows (9)
2022 Mimico Mountaineers (9)
2023 Orangeville Northmen (9)…

Update: Brandon Sanderson, who played for the 1995 Orangeville Northmen, confirms that the team won their first 19 games, losing their final game of the regular season to finish 19-1. Scores, standings and stats are not available for that or many other seasons from the early 60s to mid 90s.

Although we were unable to confirm with no available standings or scores from the 1995 season, Brandon Sanderson, who played for theOrangeville Northmen that year, confirmed the team went 19-0 before losing the last game of the regular season.

Teams like the 1999 Whitby Warriors (19-1) or 2017 Six Nations Arrows (18-2) had incredible regular seasons and would even go on to win the Minto Cup, but took their first L of the year within the first nine. Sure they’re fine with that.

St. Catharines Athletics (Photo: OLA)

Three of the above teams had perfect or near perfect regular seasons. Below are the only undefeated OJLL teams in league history – again, for season’s where scores & standings could be mostly confirmed (at least for the team in question):

1939 Orillia Terriers (14-0-0)
1946 Mimico Mountaineers (11-0-0)
1948 St. Catharines Athletics (10-0-0)
1968 Oshawa Green Gaels (24-0-0)
1972 Peterborough PCOs (28-0-0)
1974 Peterborough PCOs (28-0-0)
1981 Peterborough James Gang (20-0-0)
1986 Peterborough Maulers (20-0-0)
1987 Peterborough Maulers (25-0-0)
2002 St. Catharines Athletics (20-0-0)
2007 Six Nations Arrows (17-0-1)

The last absolutely perfect regular season came from the 2002 Athletics, however, that team was beaten in the Minto Cup by the Burnaby Lakers four games to two. How good were the Lakers of the late 90s & early 00s? Extremely.

Tyler Pace, Coquitlam Adanacs (Photo: Dan Brodie)

Check out the only undefeated regular seasons in the British Columbia Junior A Lacrosse League going back to as far as we could confirm: 1959 – again, thanks Wamper:

1959 New Westminster Salmombellies (17-0-1)
1998 Burnaby Lakers (25-0-0)
1999 Burnaby Lakers (25-0-0)
2006 Burnaby Lakers (21-0-0)
2011 Coquitlam Adanacs (21-0-0)
2016 Coquitlam Adanacs (21-0-0)

For Canada’s third & final Junior A league, the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League (Alberta & Saskatchewan), although the league officially came to be in 2003; available scores, stats and standings seemingly only go back to 2009 on the league’s website (and 2009 & 2010 appear, well, wrong), and we’re unsure of any sneaky secondary sources with accurate data either.

Mathieu Gauthier, Edmonton Miners (Photo: Dave Fryer)

Last year we were able to count up the league’s Minto Cup results going back to 2003 (Wamper!), and then in the weeks following covered the Edmonton Miners’s historic showing at 2022’s national championship.

Anyways, outside of an uneven COVID exhibition season in 2021 when the Miners went 14-0 (some teams only played 12 times), there has never been an undefeated season in the RMLL (unless it happened before 2009, or maybe even 2009 or 2010 since we can’t really figure our what’s happening there).

Honestly, we’re just hoping their recent Friday & Saturday scores get confirmed (still not finals as of publishing this post) & calculated (missing from the standings) before the second edition of this year’s National Junior Rankings get published later this week.