Keenan and Manns forming dynamic duo

Jan 9, 2024

After the largest shakeup in franchise history, a new bond is being formed between two lefties. 

Just months after his father traded one of the best forwards to ever play the game, Ryan Keenan is on pace for a career year.

Under the spotlight as the captain and with the expectation to produce more offence, the Whitby product has six goals and 15 assists in four games. 

“I knew my role this season would change, and I needed to step up,” said Keenan. 

July 10th will go down as the day that everything changed. The Rush moved forward Mark Matthews to the Toronto Rock for lefty Zach Manns, defender Adam Jay and a 2023 first-round draft pick, which ended up becoming Levi Anderson, who will join the team next season.

Matthews was Keenan’s offensive injection since he entered the league in 2017. He assisted on 63 of Ryan’s goals since 2017 and Ryan assisted on 37 of Marks. 

The duo of Keenan and Matthews won one NLL championship in 2018. Now, Zach Manns is the new lefty on the block, who is starting to gel nicely in Saskatchewan’s offence. 

“Manns has been unbelievable. We’re building a ton of chemistry on that left side,” commented Ryan Keenan. “Obviously Manns is a tremendous talent, but what’s so impressive is his eagerness to get better and to listen which has been great.”

Through four games, Keenan has assisted on five of Manns goals, while Manns has assisted on two of Keenan’s tallies.

If Ryan Keenan were to keep his current scoring pace up for a full season, he'd finish with 27 goals, 67 assists and 94 points, which would all be career highs.

While the forward duo was born on different sides of the country, are four years apart in age, and went to rival NCAA D1 schools, if you watched them play this season, you’d think they grew up dicing up defences together since they were in paperweights. 

“Obviously Manns has been a tremendous piece of our offence this season. We’re feeling good about our team on the floor. It’s disappointing to lose games, but I still like our progression,” finished Keenan. “Now we got to start finding ways to close out games.”

Next up, the dynamic duo will head to Philadelphia as the Rush take on the Wings on Saturday, January 13^th. The game can be heard on 92.9 The Bull starting with the pregame show at 5:45 pm.