When the Toronto Rock and the Rochester Knighthawks clash in a crucial pair of National Lacrosse League games this weekend, there will be nothing either head coach can do to surprise the other.
Troy Cordingley and Mike Hasen know each other inside out. They’ve played and coached with and against each other, they’ve celebrated winning the biggest championships in the sport together and they recently became business partners.
“We’re real good friends but when it’s game time we’re enemies,” says Cordingley.
The teams go at it Friday in Toronto and Saturday in Rochester.
“Who the opposing coach is, that’s not really a thought I have because I’ll be focused on what I need to do on our bench,” says Hasen. “But I know my wife likes watching those games because she thinks it’s quite comical.”
Cordingley is 43 and Hasen is 38, so Cordingley was a level or two ahead of Hasen when they played minor lacrosse in Brampton, Ont. They first became teammates when Cordingley, a forward, was playing for the Excelsiors senior team in the OLA summer league and Hasen, a defenceman, moved up in 1994.
Cordingley had started playing NLL winter ball for Buffalo in 1993 and the two became teammates there as well beginning in 1996 when the Bandits won the championship.
Back in the summer league, Cordingley jumped to the Coquitlam Adanacs and lost to Hasen and the Excelsiors in the 1998 Mann Cup final.
To read the rest of the story Neil Stevens wrote for the Canadian Press, click here http://www.thestar.com/sports/lacrosse/article/940077--rock-knighthawks-coaches-know-each-other-s-moves
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