Troy Cordingley named interim GM prior to Warriors' first win of the season
Troy Cordingley & Shawn Evans, Vancouver Warriors (Photo: Jeff Vinnick)
Somewhat lost in the excitement of the Toronto Blue Jays spending the day with the Vancouver Warriors and then the BC-based team nailing down their first win later that evening, was Vancouver Head Coach Troy Cordingley being named the franchise’s interim general manager.
Cordingley, at least for the meantime, takes over managerial duties after Dan Richardson stepped down from the role for personal reasons last week. Assistant GM Ken Thomas also parted ways with the club. Richardson, who was named the team’s GM soon after Canucks Sports & Entertainment purchased & relocated the franchise to downtown Vancouver, had suffered a heart attack late last year.
Hours after Cordingley’s added duties were officially announced, the Warriors defeated the expansion Las Vegas Desert Dogs, 19-16, giving them their first W of 2023, and keeping Vegas winless after their first four games in the league.
“We have some very good pieces,” Cordingley told The Vancouver Province leading up to yesterday’s game. “We have to keep at it. They all want to win, but it’s not one guy up front who’s going to help us do that. It’s going to be all seven offensive guys that are playing.”
The Warriors got goals from all seven of their starting offensive players last night: Keegan Bal (5,3), Shawn Evans (3,5), Mitch Jones (2,6), Kyle Killen (4,1), Logan Schuss (2,3), Adam Charalambies (1,4) and Chase Scalan (2,2).
With Cordingley’s interim move as Vancouver’s GM while still maintaining his head coaching responsibilities, he is now the fifth GM/HC in the league right now. San Diego’s Pat Merrill, Albany’s Glenn Clark, Philadelphia’s Paul Day and Las Vegas’ Shawn Williams are the other four.
Prior to stepping down from his role as the team’s bench boss, current Saskatchewan Rush GM Derek Keenan had significant success with his squad while serving both leadership positions. The Rush won three NLL Cups during a recent four-year span (2015-2018) with Keenan juggling both positions.
After last night’s win, Vancouver’s win percentage climbs to .200. While there is still a lot of season to go, teams owning the last available post-season spot this year sit at .500, which is what was required during 2022’s regular season to quality for the playoffs. In order to match that end-of-season record, Vancouver needs to go 8-5 the rest of the way this year for a chance at making the NLL playoffs for the first time since 2017.
The Warriors travel to Las Vegas in Week 7 to take on the Desert Dogs in an extremely important immediate rematch.