When the Saskatchewan Rush won the NLL championship in 2018, Jeff Shattler was named 2018 NLL Cup MVP, adding a new exclamation mark to his already illustrious professional lacrosse career.
It took three games to decide the winner of the 2018 crown between the Rush and the Rochester Knighthawks. In Game 1, the Rush used a seven-goal run to cruise to a 16-9 victory, but the team found itself in an even series following a 13-8 defeat in Game 2. It all came down to a meeting in Saskatchewan.
Rush veteran Shattler stepped up when his team needed him most.
The forward scored four goals in Game 3, doubling his playoff total to bring it to eight. Seven of those came in the championship series.
His performance earned him 2018 NLL Cup MVP honors, and it was crucial in delivering a 15-10 triumph to secure the title in front of more than 13,000 screaming Saskatchewanians.
“I’ve been waiting for this feeling for a while,” he told Scott Zerr of NLL.com in 2018. “We worked hard all season and we deserve it. We played well in front of this great crowd. I love playing in front of this crowd – the best fans in the league.”
The year before, the Rush had fallen to the Georgia Swarm in the Cup series, 2-0, and it helped ignite the fire for the team to get all the way in 2018. Shattler wasn’t on the squad in 2017, though, and obviously the additional of the eventual 2018 NLL Cup MVP made a big difference the second time around.
It was a second championship in three seasons for the Rush and the second for Shattler in his career (2009, Calgary Roughnecks). Relive Shattler’s heroics from just a few years ago for one of the all-time greatest moments in the all-time great’s career.
