For the second straight year, a serious health problem has hit the Toronto Rock during the preseason.

Last November, forward Kim Squire had a scare with flesh-eating disease. Now, general manager head coach Les Bartley will miss the entire 2004 season to recover from surgery for colon cancer, the team announced today.

Bartley, alert readers will recall, missed the 25 October NLL Entry Draft due to "non-life-threatening medical issues," as it was called.

Those medical issues turned out to be a bowel obstruction, for which Bartley underwent surgery the day after the draft. That's when doctors discovered a malignant tumor, which was removed on Monday.

"Our concern is with Les and his family," Rock president Brad Watters said. "We're all hoping he makes a quick recovery."

When the Rock opens up its season in Rochester (Saturday, 10 January), it will mark the first time ever that the team will be without its founding coach. Bartley joined the team as head coach for the 1998 season, when the club was the (Hamilton) Ontario Raiders.

Bartley led the Raiders to a 6-6 finish that year, missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker, and followed the club north after its move to Toronto. The Rock has made five straight championship game appearances since then, winning the title every year except 2001, and Bartley is 66-26 as its coach.

Bartley was named the Rock's general manager late in the 2001 season.

Prior to his time with the Raiders/Rock, Bartley coached the Buffalo Bandits to three Major Indoor Lacrosse League championships (1992, 1993, and 1996) and appearing in the title round two other times (1994 and 1997).

With the Bandits mired at 0-3 in 1992, their debut season, Bartley moved from technical adviser to head coach. The Bandits responded with an immediate twenty-two-game winning streak that stretched until halfway through the 1994 season. In six seasons there, he compiled a 45-16 record.

Assistant coaches Ed Comeau and Derek Keenan will take over for Bartley. Comeau becomes the acting head coach, while Keenan will handle the general manager duties.

Widely regarded as one of the league's brightest coaches, Comeau will be skippering an NLL team for the first time. However, he coached for nine years in the Ontario Lacrosse Association's Junior A circuit (Burlington 1993-1997, Brampton 1998-2001) and has coached the McMaster University team since 1987.

In addition, Comeau might actually know Bartley's system better than Bartley does, having served as an assistant coach with the Rock since its inception.

Comeau never played in either the MILL or the National Lacrosse League.

Keenan has, however, winning titles in 1992 and 1993 with the Buffalo Bandits and 1999 with the Rock. Those were the only three seasons he played, and ironically, all three were with Bartley as his head coach.

In 22 career regular-season games, Keenan scored 52 goals and dished out 42 assists. He tacked on eleven goals and eighteen assists in five playoff games.

Keenan also shares the record for most points in a game, fourteen. He scored four goals and served up ten assists in a March 1992 game against the Baltimore Thunder, setting a record later tied by Gary Gait. Keenan's ten assists stood as a league record for almost a decade.

Keenan will continue as the Rock's assistant coach, a position he has held since the 2000 season.