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HALIFAX, N.S. —

In a short season like the National Lacrosse League’s, it’s critical to get out of the gate quickly.

Three games into the 2019-20 campaign and the Halifax Thunderbirds are off to a smouldering start at 3-0, one of two teams (the 3-0 New England Black Wolves are the other) without a loss this season.

It’s a reversal of 2018-19, the franchise’s last season in Rochester, N.Y. The Knighthawks won their season opener before losing three straight and 11 of their next 12. Rochester finished at 6-12 and out of the playoff race.

“One hundred per cent it’s crucial to get off to a fast start in this league,” Halifax head coach Mike Accursi said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “You look at last year, we had a slow start and it ended up costing us in the end when we started to get our act together.

“A good start to your season establishes yourself, unites your locker room and gives you those winning lessons. It’s hard to win in this league; it’s a very competitive league. When you get that confidence and you feel confident in your team that they’re going to perform every night, it definitely bodes well. It’s huge for us.”

The Thunderbirds began their inaugural campaign in Halifax with a 12-4 rout of the expansion New York Riptide at home on Dec. 7. They followed two weeks later with a 14-12 victory over Rochester, another expansion franchise, at the Scotiabank Centre.

It was the Thunderbirds’ first road win on Dec. 28 – a 15-10 decision over the 2019 league runner-up Buffalo Bandits – which really impressed the Halifax bench boss.

“The first two games I thought we played really well,” Accursi said. “But I thought our third game against Buffalo was our best game. Buffalo is coming off a championship appearance last year and has a very seasoned team.

“We felt that was a good litmus test for us to see where we’re at. Our defence was spectacular and our offence was on point. So if we continue to play the way we’ve had, we’ll definitely have lots of success moving forward.”

Their success thus far has been a collaborative effort. The Thunderbirds don’t have a player in the league’s top 10 in scoring. Veteran forward Ryan Benesch is tied for 14th with 15 points, 12 back of leading scorer Callum Crawford of New England.

But as a team, they are second in the NLL in goals scored (an average of 13.7 per game) and fourth in goals against (8.7 per game). The Thunderbirds are also second to New England in goal differential and first in allowing a league-low 45.7 shots against.

The team concept was by design. When Accursi – who spent two seasons as an assistant coach with the Knighthawks and was also the team’s lacrosse operations assistant for three years – was named head coach last summer, he and team owner Curt Styres laid out the blueprint for the team’s first season north of the border.

“When Curt and I sat down and talked about how we wanted to build this team moving forward, one of the things was that we wanted an offence by committee,” recalled Accursi, who, from 1998 to 2014, played for Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Hamilton and Edmonton and compiled 391 goals and 436 assists in 237 games. He ranks fifth in league playoff history with 58 goals.

“We didn’t need one guy to score all the goals. I’m not big on how many guys are in the top 10 in scoring. At the end of the day, who wins a championship is who you remember.

“I thought if we had guys who would do the little things and battle for the ball, we would have a great deal of success. We have all-stars on our team; we have guys who will be hall of famers, like Cody Jamieson and Ryan Benesch. They are upper-echelon players. But what they’re doing is they’re distributing the ball well. They’re doing all of the little things just like any other guy on our bench. When you have guys like that who buy in the way that they have, it makes it so much easier. Guys look at them and say if they’re doing it, I have to do it. They’re leading by example.

“And in the back end, we have (two-time NLL defensive player of the year) Graeme Hossack, who’s the best defenceman in the league, no doubt about it. He’s leading by example.

“They're all working hard as a unit and they’re playing together as a unit. The team’s success comes off their hard work.”

The Thunderbirds will put their unblemished record on the line Saturday evening against another three-win team, the Colorado Mammoth.

After dropping their season opener to the Saskatchewan Rush on Nov. 29, Colorado heads into the 7 p.m. tilt at Scotiabank Centre riding a three-game winning streak.

“They’re a good defensive team and they score a lot in transition,” Accursi said of the Mammoth. “They’ve had a lot of success out of the gate so I think this is going to be another one of those big games that will set the tone for the season.

“We’re definitely in for a tough game but it should be exciting and very tight defensively at both ends of the floor. It’ll come down to which offence will break through and that’ll be the team that's going to win.”