Lewis Ratcliff, the gifted Victoria, BC, native is on quite a roll. He's leading the Calgary Roughnecks in scoring, furthering his reputation as one of the hottest young stars in the NLL. Being named MVP at the All-Star Game was a nice bonus. Ratcliff talked it all over with PLPA correspondent, Ben Knight immediately after Calgary's recent 11-9 win over the Toronto Rock at the Air Canada Centre.

It's a fun place to play, but it's a tough place to leave with a win. First one I've ever had here in the regular season, so it's nice.

It was always the plans (laughs). I've always got a lot of points in whatever league I've played. I never came into this league hoping to be an average player. I came in with expectations of being one of the better players in the league. I have to keep working hard at it, and keep getting better every year.

He only coached me a little bit in field lacrosse, but I grew up with him for sure. I never had him as a box coach, but it's a close-knit group of lacrosse guys in Victoria.

Actually, when I was drafted, he wasn't even involved. It was kind of a weird situation. I was still at school, and while I was eligible for the draft, I wasn't planning on playing. Calgary drafted me, and I was kind of surprised. I went really late. I took a year off, then tried out - and made the team.

I came straight from junior, and the speed of the NLL game is ten times faster. It took me a few games to adjust. You have to play differently than you do in the summer. You can't just jog around and bang and crash, right?

Well, I think obviously I'm a shoot first kind of guy, but I try to mix up what I'm doing. Goalies in this league will shut you down pretty fast, and so will the defences. I've got great offensive players playing with me. You can't have the ball every time, so I'm working on my two-man game, working on off-ball, making some progress, right?

We're a confident team, but it's tense. You can't take any nights off, and that's what we did when we lost to Edmonton, a team that's 1-11 now. You've got to come to play every night, and we did that today.

Well, I don't think if you'd asked us at the beginning of the year that 7-5 is where we'd want to be. But I think we're happy with how we're playing lately. We dropped a tough one in San Jose after an unbelievably bad travel day, but no excuses. We lost to a good team, but a couple of bounces here or there might have changed that. When we lost to Edmonton, we put one into our own net for the game winner, and then we've lost two games in overtime. A couple of different bounces and we could be 9-3 and laughing.

No sleep, and we played our best game of the year! It's weird how it works. Sometimes you've just got it.