After I scheduled this article but before it got published, we got the worst kind of news about the future of the Philadelphia Wings. Unfortunately, long-time NLL fans are used to it. I’ve added a second entry under Not Awesome.

* Update: No it’s not. It’s still possible for both to miss the playoffs, or for both to make the playoffs, but no matter what happens, Georgia can’t have more than eight losses while Halifax already has nine. Halifax cannot finish ahead of Georgia. My apologies for the confusion.

Awesome

Bandits comeback again

Buffalo scored one goal in the first 20:31 of Saturday’s game against the Rush while Saskatchewan put four behind Matt Vinc in the same timeframe. They only managed three more goals in the next 30 minutes, but they also managed to keep the Rush to only three in that time as well, so with about nine minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Bandits were only down 7–4. But the way Frank Scigliano and the Rush defense were playing, getting back into the game was going to be some serious work. But despite how the game had gone to that point, the Bandits had a lot more confidence from their last few games than earlier in the year. Matt Vinc played like he wasn’t considering retiring after last season and the defense tightened up.

The Bandits didn’t really dominate the fourth quarter but did prevent the Rush from scoring, which aided in the comeback attempt, and got a couple of goals in the middle of the quarter to get them back within one. It took another five minutes before Josh Byrne tied it, and Joe Resetarits scored the game winner with 46 seconds left after an amazing pass by Dhane Smith. I mentioned last week that the league needs to watch out for the Rock, and that’s still true (despite Sunday’s result), but I doubt anyone wants to face the Bandits in the first round either.

One interesting quirk was the Rush asking for a stick check on Paul Dawson with about 30 seconds left in the 4th quarter. After measuring the stick a couple of times, the officials found that it was indeed illegal. Dawson sat but the Rush were unable to tie the game on the resulting power play. A couple of Bandits fans on X were unhappy with the timing of the call (“they waited until NOW to call that?”), as if they were unaware of such gamesmanship which happens all the time. If the Bandits were unhappy with the call, maybe they could try using only legal equipment? Just a thought.

Joe Resetarits

Calgary comeback

This one sounds a bit like the Buffalo one I just described. Calgary had three goals in the first 47 minutes of the game, and was down 7–2 in the middle of the third. They didn’t look terrible, but Las Vegas was really looking good. Their defense was solid, Alexis Buque was playing really well, the offense was clicking, it was just an all-around great performance by the Desert Dogs. Aden Walsh had a pretty good start as well, but of course he can’t do much for the offense if they are struggling. But the offense came alive in the late stages of the fourth quarter. Like the Bandits, they didn’t dominate the fourth quarter, and in fact they waited until even later to start their comeback; they were down 9–5 with only 2½ minutes left, but they scored four goals in under a minute and a half to tie the game with less than a minute left.

Overtime took a lot longer than most overtime periods in the NLL (on average, the OT goal is scored at 3:01 of OT, and 25.4% of OT games are solved in under a minute), and both goaltenders were excellent. But after almost nine minutes, Jonathan Donville fired a shot underneath Aden Walsh and the Desert Dogs won the game they had been expecting to win for most of the night. Meanwhile the Roughnecks had the Thunderbird-like feeling of coming back to tie a game it looked like they were out of, only to lose it anyway. Kudos to the Roughnecks for making a game of it.

Rochester

Rochester has been the most inconsistent team in the NLL this season (though not always!). They have the highest team GAA and lowest team save percentage in the league, and have given up 16+ goals five times this season. But they’re also one of the top offensive teams and have managed to score their way out of trouble a couple of times. Saturday’s game in Oshawa was no exception. The game was tied nine times in the first three quarters before the Knighthawks pulled away, scoring four straight in the third, five straight in four minutes in the fourth, and then the last two of the game once it was out of hand. They turned a 9–7 deficit in the middle of the third into a decisive 18–11 victory. It might look like a dominant performance and it was, but only in the last 20 minutes or so.

Rochester started the season 4–1 and everyone had high expectations. But goaltending inconsistency frequently overpowered their potent offense. They don’t need Matt Vinc-like performances but if they can get some more consistent goaltending, like they had on Saturday, they still have a shot at the playoffs.

Philadelphia on Sunday

This was a recipe for a very disappointing game for the Philly fans. The team was out of the playoffs, on a 3-game losing streak, and was 3–12 on the season. They traded away three of their top offensive players and another was injured. Meanwhile, Toronto had won three straight, including beating the Warriors and Rush, and were ten spots higher in the standings than Philly. But we’ve seen this in the past too – the team with nothing to lose, playing only for their fans and each other, comes up with a great performance and beats the team who likely went into the game expecting to win.

Nick Damude was simply amazing, and the Philly defense in front of him was stifling. The Rock had their good looks here and there, but couldn’t get much momentum and even when they did get through the defense, Damude slammed the door in their faces.

Kudos to Kyle Jackson, who at the end of the game, managed to kill off almost an entire 30-second shot clock basically by himself, despite Latrell Harris and Elijah Gash both pinning him against the boards and trying and failing to get the ball from him. Jackson is listed as 5’9“ and 166 pounds, while former Defender of the Year Harris is 6’0”/215 and Gash is 6’4″/210. Either of them could eat Jackson for lunch and still be hungry. But once that scrum against the boards was over, Jackson still had the ball in his stick.

The Marvel partnership with the NLL continues, and I really liked the Black Panther jerseys that the Wings were wearing. They were a little more subtle than most but had the Black Panther “necklace” sort of design which was very cool.

Toronto PK

The Rock didn’t play badly on Sunday but as I said, Philadelphia played really well. But one highlight of their afternoon was managing to kill off an 5-on–3 that lasted almost two full minutes in the second quarter. The Wings had some very nice ball movement but couldn’t get good looks through the defense and then Holowchuk shut the door. Great penalty kill by the Rock.

Not Awesome

Philadelphia Wings overall in 2026

Note: This entry was written on Sunday, before the news about the Wings was made public. I haven’t changed any of it. The second Not Awesome entry was written after the news came out.

As great as the Wings played on Sunday, let’s face it, they’ve had a terrible season.

• They’re 4–12, out of the playoffs, and currently in dead last.
• They’ve played 16 games and scored 10+ goals in only six of them.
• They had 5,019 fans at the game on Friday night, the third-lowest in team history, and lower than all 190 home games the old Philadelphia Wings played. Their average is 5,982, the lowest in team history and just over half of what they got in 2019, their inaugural season.
• They were sellers at the deadline, losing Joe Resetarits, captain Blaze Riorden, and Phil Caputo, basically decimating their offense.
• Michael Sowers and Brennan O’Neill looked really good when playing together earlier this season, but Sowers got injured and missed half the season. O’Neill is a great player but can’t do it all himself.
• Goaltending was pretty good all season but the D gave up too many shots. They have given up 898 shots on goal, 101 more than any other team. Their 56.3 average shots on goal allowed per game is last in the league and the 10th worst EVER, though the 2025, 2024, and 2023 Wings were worse.

There are rumours that the team will fold or relocate after this season. They might blame it on low attendance, and they might be right, but honestly it’s hard to blame the fans for staying away when the team has played seven seasons, finished above .500 once (the shortened 2020 season), and played one playoff game (in 2022) and lost it.

On the upside,

• They’ve only won four games this season but who have they beaten? The Swarm (#3 overall), the Mammoth (#4), the Bandits (#5), and the Rock (#6). They got demolished by the Rush and don’t play the Warriors until week 21 but worst case, they beat four of the top six teams. That’s something they can build on.
• They got Travis Longboat and Lukas Nielsen back in the deadline trades, as well as two second-round picks and a third.
• As I said, Sowers and O’Neill looked great together, and Kyle Jackson also played well in his limited time with the Wings. A healthy Sowers will be critical for an improved Wings offense next season.

Philadelphia Wings are done

The league and the team both announced early Monday morning that Comcast are trying to sell the Wings franchise. However, the messages have been mixed – the league says that Comcast will no longer own the Wings and they are “engaging with prospective ownership groups”, hoping that “this transition will lead to an exciting new chapter for the franchise and its players”. This is similar to what they said about the Rochester Knighthawks when the Pegulas decided not to run that team anymore. Luckily a new owner (the Seneca Nation) was found quickly and operations continued.

But the Wings posted that they will “cease operations of the Philadelphia Wings franchise” and will “root for our players as they pursue new opportunities throughout the league”. This strongly implies that the franchise is just done and we’ll soon have a dispersal draft. If there’s new ownership taking over the franchise, whether they move it or not, the players wouldn’t have to pursue new opportunities. It’s unfortunate that we’re getting conflicting messaging from the league and the team.

The article you’re reading was published at 12:30pm EDT on Monday, so only a couple of hours after this announcement. It will likely be out-of-date quickly, as clarifications and updates are announced. Keep watching social media for updates.

Awesome

Halifax comeback

After 2½ quarters of getting manhandled by the Georgia Swarm, the Halifax Thunderbirds decided enough was enough. Warren Hill locked things down in the net, their defense stepped up and their offense found another gear and dominated the rest of the game. After being down 14–4, they outscored Georgia 12–2 over the next 22 minutes or so, including ten goals in the fourth quarter (tied for the second-most ever; two teams scored 11 in a quarter). Georgia dominated the first half but sometime in the third quarter, everything was reversed. The Georgia announcers noticed it too – Drew Petkoff said something like “The second half has been all Halifax” and when he said that, the Thunderbirds were still down by about four goals. Georgia’s offense just stopped working; perhaps they took their foot off the gas once they were up by ten, and then by the time they realized they needed to slam it down again, it was too late. Brett Dobson was taken out to give Devlin Shanahan some playing time with about seven minutes left, but it was just at the time that Halifax started to pour it on. It was very weird to see a team winning by three or four with a couple of minutes left and they are the ones who are nervous about how the game is going to end.

Warren Hill and the Halifax defense were very good in the second half. I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it again – when your goalie makes all the stops he needs to and a few he isn’t expected to, that gives your team confidence and that confidence can drive everyone else to step up their game just a little bit.

It was an absolutely amazing comeback, and literally the biggest on record. Nobody other than Halifax, since 2005 anyway, has come back to tie a game after being down by nine goals, let alone ten. And Halifax has done it twice. In a game in 2020, they were down 12–3 to the Saskatchewan Rush before coming back to tie the game at 14:35 of the fourth, only to lose in overtime.

Unfortunately for the Thunderbirds, this game had a similar ending. Once they completed the comeback and tied the game at 14:10 of the fourth, Jordan MacIntosh scored 32 seconds later to give the Swarm the lead once again, and there was no time for Halifax to recover. I’m not sure what’s more difficult for Halifax – not coming back and losing by a dozen or having the comeback and losing anyway. Hopefully they can take it as a bit of a confidence booster – they know they can come back in a game that seems out of hand. Of course, they’d need to start that comeback just a few minutes earlier. But ideally, they don’t let the game get out of hand in the first place.

Jordan MacIntosh

This season, Georgia had an NLL record streak of eleven straight games allowing fewer than ten goals. But in the other three games they’ve played this season, they averaged 15 goals against. There’s a lot more good than bad there, but the bad is… pretty bad.

Rochester comeback

In Las Vegas, the numbers weren’t quite as big, but the outcome was the same. After Vegas took a commanding 8–1 lead in the first quarter, Rochester started chipping away immediately. They pulled Rylan Hartley for Riley Hutchcraft, who gave them an outstanding effort the rest of the way. Vegas only scored twice in the second and twice in the third while Rochester scored nine over the same timespan, and completed the comeback with two more goals in the first minute and a half of the fourth. The Knighthawks even took the lead a minute later, though that only lasted a minute before Adam Poitras scored his fifth of the game. But this was the second big comeback of the weekend that did not result in a win for the comeback team. Vegas scored five over the last eleven minutes or so and Landon Kells prevented Rochester’s attempts at coming back again.

It was a great game for the backup goaltenders. As I said Rylan Hartley had a terrible start but Hutchcraft came in and played great for Rochester, giving them the stops they needed to build confidence (and I’ll say it again), and that confidence was what they needed to mount the comeback in the first place. No, it wasn’t quite enough and Vegas had a mini-comeback of their own at the end of the fourth.

At the other end, Alex Buque played a pretty decent game overall but once Rochester completed their comeback and took a lead, Kells came in and shut the door on them, stopping all 11 shots he faced over almost twelve minutes.

I don’t know if it’s physical or mental or some combination, but Rylan Hartley just hasn’t been the same since his controversial hit on Steph Charbonneau at the end of January. Before that game, he was 4–1 and had a save percentage of 78% or higher in each of the four wins – four great games and one not-so-good (plus one that he lost but played the full game and wasn’t bad). Since the hit, he’s had one great game (the February 28 overtime win over Saskatchewan where he allowed just ten goals in 62 minutes) and four not-so-good, where he was pulled in every game. In the four games where he was pulled, he only had a save percentage of 60% or higher once. 60% is a really low bar for save percentages. Given how Hutchcraft played on Saturday, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s now Hutchcraft’s net.

Buffalo comeback

The numbers were much lower in this game than the Rochester or Halifax games, but yes, it happened again. Buffalo only managed two goals until more than ten minutes into the third quarter, but they could have been in much worse shape than that – they were only down 6–2 at that point. Chris Origlieri was sensational and the Seals defense was excellent as well, limiting the Bandits’ chances and keeping this powerful offense to just one goal per quarter until the fourth. Buffalo’s defense was very good as well but the Seals offense managed to get just a few more by Matt Vinc.

A four-goal comeback isn’t nearly as big a deal as a seven-goal or ten-goal comeback, but the Bandits were still down by four with less than six minutes left in the fourth quarter. The way Chris Origlieri and the Seals defense was playing, it seemed that a third comeback on the weekend would be unlikely. But the first two comebacks were unlikely anyway, so why not do it again?

Over the next five minutes, Joey Res scored an almost-empty-net quickstick off of a beautiful pass by Dhane Smith (remember that name, it will come up again), Clay Scanlan shook off his defender and scored from the doorstep, and Tehoka Nanticoke cut inside and scored on a weird play where the ball hit the metal bottom of the net and bounced out immediately, forcing a review. Then with 44 seconds left, Dhane Smith shot a bouncer underneath Origlieri to tie the game. But Smith wasn’t done – four minutes into the overtime period, he took an innocent-looking shot from the area he loves to take shots from and it just beat Origlieri for the game winner.

Three huge comebacks on the weekend but the Bandits were the only team to capitalize on theirs.

Kyle Killen

Killen has been solid as a secondary scorer for the Desert Dogs this season and for the Warriors over the previous couple. He’s good for a point or two per game, with a couple of 4- or 5-point games scattered throughout the season. But he’s scored 14 points over the last three games including ten points (5+5) over the two Rochester games, and was looking really confident in those games. He missed three games so he won’t get back to the 59 point range like 2022, at least not this year, but it’s good to see a bit of a resurgence from Killen in Vegas.

Acting like a goalie

Earlier in the season it seemed there was a “zero tolerance” policy with respect to this new “Acting like a goalie” rule. If you were standing in the crease or had your foot on the line, and the ball hit you, you’d get this penalty. It got to the point where I wondered why offensive players weren’t shooting at defenders standing in the crease just to get a penalty call. In recent weeks, the number of such calls has dropped significantly, so it appears that the officials have decided (or have been instructed) to call this penalty only if the defender is actually trying to block shots while standing in the crease. If a defender is in the crease and the ball hits him incidentally, the penalty is no longer called. I fully agree with this decision.

I saw this happen during Friday’s Halifax/Georgia game. This particular penalty was called at least twice during that game. In another case, a Georgia defender was hit by a shot while standing in the crease. But he was focused on the offensive player he was guarding, who didn’t have the ball, and didn’t even know the shot was coming. No penalty was called – the ball did hit him but he wasn’t “acting like a goalie” so there was no reason to give him a penalty for it.

Quickies

• Toronto Rock – The top five teams in the standings right now are Saskatchewan, Vancouver, Colorado, Georgia, and Toronto. The Rock have beaten three of them in their last five games, and lost to the fourth, Georgia, by only one back in January. Nick Rose has played very well in his three games since returning from injury, and the team is gelling at the right time. Watch out for these guys.
• Calgary Cooks – There were three Cooks in the Calgary/Colorado game on Saturday – Tanner and Carter for Calgary and Conner for Colorado. Carter and Conner are brothers, and I believe Tanner is unrelated. Conner had one CTO to his name in that game but nothing else, while Tanner scored two and added three assists and Carter scored his first career goal and added a helper too.
• Andrew Kew – I don’t think I’ve said much about Kew even though he has been awesome all season. He’s the top scorer on his team and top ten in the league despite missing three games. He’s on pace to tie his personal best of 106 points in 16 games in the 2023 season, but he’ll only have played 15 games.
• Keegan Bal – It’s funny that on X, everybody is talking about how nobody is talking about Keegan Bal and what a great season he’s having. I assure you, nobody is sleeping on this guy.

Not Awesome

Georgia collapse

See above.

Las Vegas collapse

See above.

San Diego collapse

This was far less of a “collapse” than the others but still, losing a four goal lead in less than six minutes isn’t great.

Broadcast resolution in San Diego

This has been an issue in the past, and I’ve been told it’s actually a lighting problem rather than a camera problem. I don’t know what causes it, but games broadcast from San Diego are always hard to watch. The video quality was just terrible compared to all the other streams. I was watching that game and the CAL/COL game on NLL+ Multi-View, but I had to switch to watching each game individually because I just couldn’t see anything in the smaller window. Normally if you take a video with bad resolution and make it bigger, it gets even less watchable but somehow not in this case. Watching games from Rochester used to be like this – there was no HD technology in the arena. That’s been upgraded so it’s fine now, so it’s time to do the same to Pechanga by fixing the cameras or lighting or whatever.

Bets

I don’t bet much on sports, but every now and again I’ll see some odds that look better than I think they should be, and throw down a few bucks. I was excited about Georgia being up by so many, since I bet on them, and about Buffalo’s comeback since I bet on them as well. Unfortunately, they were both –1.5 bets, so the teams had to win by two or more. Georgia had it in the bag and let it slip away, and the Buffalo comeback was great and all but an OT win was insufficient.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the site that runs the Who Ya Gott and Preston’s Picks pools didn’t send out the weekly reminder emails, and without the reminder I forgot to make my picks for either one. I was in the top ten overall in one of them and the top 15 in the other. Who Ya Gott doesn’t lock your pick for each game until the game begins, and I realized the problem part-way through the Rush/Rock game, so I was able to get my picks in for four of the six games. I got all of them right. But Preston’s Picks locks ALL the games for the weekend at 6pm or so on Friday, so I was 0–6 in that one.

I would have picked Georgia over Halifax, and I probably would have picked Toronto over Saskatchewan (though I’m not 100% sure) so I would have gotten at least five out of six right. Instead, I dropped 5 spots to 19th in Who Ya Gott and I dropped 25 spots to 34th in Preston’s Picks.

Not a great gambling weekend.

Then there were the seven games on the weekend. We began with an OT thriller on Friday night and ended with two games decided by seven goals.

Awesome

Trade deadline

We’ve had trade deadlines in the past (most of the time, actually) where almost nothing happened but the last two have been pretty eventful. Last year saw Christian Del Bianco head to Vancouver and Ottawa, Vancouver, Buffalo, and Albany involved in a four-way trade. This year had even more movement. I won’t go over all of the deals since that’s been done in multiple places by people with more in-depth knowledge than me (one of whom is Adam Levi on IL Indoor), but Joe Resetarits playing with the Bandits and Tyson Bell with Las Vegas will both make significant impacts, Marshal King gets to play with his brother Jesse in Vancouver, and Rochester native Blaze Riorden heads home.

It wasn’t a trade but Buffalo releasing Ryan Benesch (pictured at right, two or three years ago) was also big news, and Oshawa was happy to sign him just a few hours later. Benesch rewarded them with a six-point night on Friday, passing Colin Doyle for fourth place on the all-time scoring list. Benesch has been on many people’s list of “players I want to see win a Championship before they retire”, including mine, but I’m not sure this move will help that happen, at least this season. But it’s great for the FireWolves, who are stacked with offensive players under the age of 30. Bringing in a vet like Benesch basically gives them another offensive coach. It’s like the Rock bringing in Dan Dawson, but I’ve checked the rules and Dawson is not allowed to score goals during games. Benesch is, and will.

There was one other big move made on trade deadline day, and it also wasn’t a trade. See the first Not Awesome entry for that.

Close game in Halifax

The Rock and Thunderbirds always seem to play entertaining and sometimes chippy games. Friday’s game was definitely the former but not so much the latter. There were only six penalties in the whole game, but it was tied ten times. Partway through the fourth, it looked like we might need overtime but then Halifax scored twice and they grabbed some momentum, so no overtime. Then the Rock tied it, so we’ll need overtime. Challen Rogers scored his second straight to give Toronto the lead with under two minutes left, and Toronto had a bit of momentum, so no overtime. Then Brendan Bomberry tied it yet again with under twenty seconds left, and guess what? We headed to overtime.

OT lasted far longer than most overtime periods in the NLL, and both goalies made some incredible saves. It was almost six minutes before Josh Dawick was able to get one past Warren Hill. Toronto now owns the tiebreaker over Halifax though they’re also three full games ahead of Halifax in the standings, so that may not matter.

NLL+ Multi-View is back

I think it actually debuted last week but there weren’t any games that happened at the same time. I have two very minor complaints about it but the fact that it’s there at all outweighs both so I’m still listing this under Awesome. The first is that the background outside of the two game displays is constantly moving. Not only is this a waste of bandwidth but it’s distracting. The background needs to be a solid colour or a static non-moving image. The other complaint is that on Saturday night there were three games live at the same time, and Multi-View showed only two of them, so I kept having to switch tabs a lot which is the problem that Multi-View is supposed to solve.

Calgary Roughnecks

The Roughnecks are having a pretty tough season. They’re 4–9, in 12th place, and are likely to miss the playoffs. They had seven straight games of 10 or fewer goals, giving up 11 or more in all but one of them. But last week they beat the Knighthawks, and convincingly. They scored 14 and gave up only 7, and that was in the Knighthawks barn. Then this week they came home and broke the Ottawa Black Bears’ four-game winning streak with another convincing win. Aden Walsh looked really good in both games, and the Calgary offense was well-balanced with Dickson, Cook, Pace, and particularly Brayden Mayea scoring some beautiful goals.

Could Calgary pull a Vancouver and run the table after the trade deadline? Could they make the playoffs? Honestly, I think we need to pump the brakes a bit here. Both of those are possible but unlikely. It is only a two-game streak, and they play 3rd place Colorado next weekend. But their strong play in these two games against teams much higher in the standings does show that the Roughnecks are pulling things together. Next season could be a lot better than this one. But for now, Calgary fans, you have an exciting young team – only Tyler Pace and Riley Loewen are over 30 – so enjoy watching these guys play.

Not Awesome

Rochester coaching change

The most surprising move at the trade deadline wasn’t even a trade. The Rochester Knighthawks fired head coach Mike Hasen and assistant coach Pat O’Toole, which nobody saw coming. No, the Knighthawks season hasn’t gone the way many thought it would, but honestly, they’re 5–6 and half a game out of a playoff spot, which isn’t that bad. They did have a four-game streak where they lost to Toronto, Vancouver twice, and Ottawa – all teams ahead of them in the standings – but they’ve also beaten the Bandits and the Rush. I guess losing by seven to the 2–9 Calgary Roughnecks was the breaking point. But given Hasen’s coaching tenure in Rochester – five+ seasons with these Knighthawks plus nine more with the original Knighthawks, including Championships in 2012, 2013, and 2014 and a Championship appearance in 2018, I’m surprised it only took a bit of a slump and one bad game to turf Mike Hasen. So that was Not Awesome, and then the team responded by getting beaten handily by Las Vegas, a team with whom they are fighting for a playoff spot. That’s two Not Awesomes for Rochester, and we’re not done yet.

Rochester ignores Tucker Out Lymphoma night

It seems that the Knighthawks decided not to participate in the Tucker Out Lymphoma event in Las Vegas on Sunday. They did not have custom jerseys or stickers on their helmets or anything. This is disappointing considering Shawn Williams played the majority of his career in Rochester, even though it was for a different franchise. The Bandits still have it every year, and Williams played far more games for Rochester than for Buffalo.

Brett Dobson on Saturday

Of course Brett Dobson is still awesome overall so I had to qualify the title here. He didn’t have a great outing this past weekend, but as most “bad goalie outings” tend to be, it was the defense as a whole that didn’t have a great game. No, Dobson didn’t make all the incredible saves we’ve seen him make this season, but he also saw a few more one-on-ones and clear-lane shots from guys like Keegan Bal than he usually does. He was pulled, put back in, and then pulled again, and Devlin Shanahan played more minutes in that game than any other in his career apart from one start with the Bandits two years ago.

Dobson’s GAA for that game was 22.35, the highest in any game in his career, and his save percentage was 63.6%, fifth lowest of his career and lowest in two years. But even with that bad outing, his GAA is still 7.70, best in the league and a full point better than the best season in NLL history. His save percentage is 84.5%, best in the league and 3.6 percentage points better than the best season in NLL history. Don’t take that Goaltender of the Year award away quite yet.

Just to be clear, we’re talking about franchises here, not necessarily teams. I’m not going to penalize players who have played for a team that relocated.

I wrote a similar article way back in 2013, but there have been a few changes to the list in the intervening eleven seasons.

Longest careers with one franchise – non-active players

As of March 15, 2026, there are 50 non-active players in the league who played at least 50 games and spent their entire career with a single franchise.

For each player, I’m showing the number of games played with that franchise, both regular season and playoffs.

1. John Tavares, Buffalo Bandits, 344 games
2. Andrew McBride, Calgary Roughnecks, 227
3. Curtis Hodgson, San Jose / Washington / Vancouver Stealth, 226
4. Rich Kilgour, Buffalo Bandits, 225
5. Regy Thorpe, Rochester Knighthawks, 217
6. John Gallant, Washington Power / Colorado Mammoth, 209
7. Blaine Manning, Toronto Rock, 199
8. Curtis Manning, Calgary Roughnecks, 197
9. Rob Marshall, Toronto Rock, 176
10. Tom Marechek, Philadelphia Wings, 161

Longest careers with one franchise – active players

As of March 15, 2026, there are 90 active players in the league who have played at least 50 games and spent their entire career with a single franchise.

1. Steve Priolo, Buffalo Bandits, 287 games
2. Cody Jamieson, Rochester Knighthawks / Halifax Thunderbirds, 256
3. Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits, 246
4. Jordan MacIntosh, Minnesota / Georgia Swarm, 242
5. Shayne Jackson, Minnesota / Georgia Swarm, 231
6. Robert Church, Edmonton / Saskatchewan Rush, 223
7. Dillon Ward, Colorado Mammoth, 221
8. Robert Hope, Colorado Mammoth, 206
9. Jordan Gilles, Colorado Mammoth, 187
10. Eli McLaughlin, Colorado Mammoth, 183

Amazing: every one of the active players on the second list (plus four more: Graeme Hossack, Lyle Thompson, Mike Messenger, and Ryan Keenan) would be in the top ten of the first list if they retired today.

Awesome

Toronto

The Rock offense was clicking on Friday night in Vancouver. CJ Kirst’s incredible rookie season continues, with his second five-goal and third six-point performance of the season. Challen Rogers and Mark Matthews had great nights as well but the points were spread out all over the place, with Sam English, Hugh Kelleher, and even Nick Rowlett getting in on the scoring. Ball movement was crisp and anytime you can put 13 behind Christian Del Bianco, you’re doing something right.

But it wasn’t all rosy, no pun intended. The Rock went 15+ minutes without scoring over the second and third, and then after scoring three times in a little over a minute, didn’t score for the final seventeen minutes of the game. Josh Dawick has scored once in his past four games and Dan Craig has scored four times all season, so there is still some room for improvement.

CJ Kirst

Speaking of things being rosy, Nick Rose returned to the team after seven weeks and didn’t look like he missed any time at all. He was making all the stops you expected him to, and he didn’t look tentative. I know the team has a ton of confidence in Troy Holowchuk, and I’ve talked positively about him here as well. But Nick Rose is the guy for the Rock and having him back in the lineup, playing well, and beating a great team like the Warriors fills the team with confidence. When a team that good is also really confident, look out.

Goaltending and defense in Colorado

The first three quarters were very close – the biggest lead was a two-goal lead for Colorado, which only lasted three minutes. The third quarter ended with a 5–5 tie, but it turned out that Colorado’s offense was already done for the night. Dillon Ward and Zach Higgins both played really well, and it was another one of those “one of these goalies is going to lose tonight, and that sucks” games. I wondered if it was overtime that was going to solve this one, until Jeff Teat scored three goals in under two minutes in the middle of the fourth quarter. Kudos to both goaltenders and both defenses for their performances.

Another Mayea diving backhand

One awesome goal I missed last week was from Brayden Mayea, an incredible leaping over the shoulder shot that beat Warren Hill. Well, he did it again. Not exactly a carbon copy (kids, ask your parents what that means) of the previous one, but it was another leaping over the shoulder shot that completely fooled the goalie, in this case Rylan Hartley. Mayea is having an amazing sophomore season, and is becoming one of the most exciting young players on a team full of exciting young players.

Not Awesome

Colorado offense

I don’t want to take anything away from Zach Higgins, who made some amazing stops (see above), but there were many Mammoth possessions where their offensive players didn’t seem to be on the same page and ended up turning the ball over before taking a shot. Andrew Kew scored four, Dylan MacIntosh scored one, and that was it. They were shut out for the last 26+ minutes of the game. For a while during this game I wondered why Will Malcom wasn’t playing, whether he was scratched or injured. It turned out he was playing, I just hadn’t heard his name on the broadcast. That’s fine if you’re a defender, but if you’re one of the top offensive players on a team, you want your name mentioned a lot. Thomas Vela was added to the IR earlier in the day, and Vela might be the Thomas Hoggarth of the Mammoth – not the top scorer but they really feel his absence when he’s not there.

Rochester offense

Similar to the Colorado entry above, I don’t want to dismiss Aden Walsh’s performance but Rochester just didn’t play very well. They were missing the net a lot, hitting Walsh right in the chest, or as one of the Rochester commentators mentioned, repeatedly trying to score five-hole which wasn’t working. McConvey and Fields took a combined 26 shots on net and scored on two of them. There were certainly times where Calgary’s defense prevented good looks so they had no choice but to throw something in the general direction of the net and hope for the best, but sometimes it seemed that the Knighthawks were doing that anyway.

Philadelphia Wings

The Wings are an enigma. In the present, they are having a weird season. They’re 3–10 and almost certainly out of the playoff picture, but look at the teams they’ve beaten: the Mammoth, the Bandits, and the Swarm. Those are teams almost certainly in the playoff picture. Meanwhile they’ve lost to the 3–10 FireWolves and the 3–9 Roughnecks. They’ve reached double digits in scoring only twice in their last nine games.

In the past, they’ve led the league in shots faced in each of the last four seasons and are leading again this year. The fact that they haven’t led the league in goals allowed in each of those seasons (only 2024 and this year) is a credit to their goaltenders but doesn’t say much for their defense.

Meanwhile, the GM of the Wings is Paul Day, who has seen a ton of success in the NLL as well as MSL. The guy knows how to put successful teams together, for example the four-Mann-Cups-in-a-row Peterborough Lakers. And yet the Wings have played in one playoff game in seven seasons. They will finish under .500 for the third straight season and out of the playoffs for the fourth. I don’t get it.

Awesome

Brett Swenson

In Friday night’s Buffalo/Saskatchewan game, Ashley Docking did a short story on Brett Swenson, son of Bandits PA announcer Chris Swenson, and how he’s as much a part of the Bandits family as any of the players. They showed Brett in the crowd with the title “Brett Swenson – Director of Ball Boy Operations”, which is awesome. Over the years, I’ve seen dozens of pictures and videos of Brett out on the floor with the players, talking to them, getting high fives and hugs after wins, and being included in the obligatory picture taken of the team after a Championship win. The Bandits just wouldn’t be the Bandits without Chris or Brett.

They were both in Hamilton for the game against the Rock, and I took this picture of them on the Bandits bench before the game:

Tehoka Nanticoke goal

For the third straight week, an amazing goal by Nanticoke makes the Awesome list. About halfway through the first quarter, Nanticoke was right on the crease and took a pass from Dhane Smith, spun 360° while ducking under a check from Robert Hudson, and then shot far corner while falling. As I said to my son at the time, he does not score ugly goals.

The Bandits

It’s no secret that Matt Vinc is not having the best season of his life. Even after the two wins this past weekend, his GAA, Save percentage, and GSAA are all in the lower half of the league’s starters. Many have asked the classic question of whether his time as a dominant or even decent goalie in the NLL is over – it’s a valid question considering he’ll be 44 in June. But this past weekend, Vinc looked a lot more like the Matt Vinc of the previous fifteen years than the Matt Vinc of early 2026. The “oh, he should have had that one” comments were mostly gone, and the “how on earth did he stop that?” comments were back with a vengeance.

Confidence in your goalie has a huge effect on the defense, who can afford to be just a bit more aggressive. And when monsters who are great at blocking shots like Dawson, Priolo, Spanger, de Snoo, Belter, Weiss, and Wyers, all of whom are 6’2″ or bigger, can be more aggressive, a lot of shots will not make it to Vinc at all, and a lot of shots will just not be taken because the shooter can’t see the net at all.

Josh Byrne is having a good season, and is on pace to score 102 points. But 102 is a far cry from the 135/134 he’s scored in the last two seasons. The concern was that he didn’t look like himself – he seemed a bit more tentative and less aggressive near the net. But just like Vinc, this weekend’s Byrne looked more like last season’s Byrne and just like Vinc, I imagine Bandits fans were excited to see him return to form. A fully healthy Josh Byrne combined with Dhane, Buchanan, Benesch, Nanticoke, and MacKay (though MacKay didn’t play in Toronto) makes a potent offense and that combined with that defense and the old Matt Vinc means…

The Bandits are back.

Games

There were so many games this weekend that I didn’t have a chance to watch all or even most of them. On Friday night, I admit I focused mostly on the Rush/Bandits game, though I did see some of the other three. On Saturday, after returning home from the Bandits/Rock game, I was able to watch the second half of Thunderbirds/Roughnecks but the other games were all over. I did watch Warriors/Seals on Sunday as well, but with various other family things going on, I didn’t have time to watch any replays. So I’ll make a few comments based on boxscores and the few highlights I’ve seen; there were probably awesome things (and not awesome things) that I missed.

Friday night

GEO @ PHI

I am enjoying watching the Swarm this season so I’m hoping to find time this week to watch this replay. Brett Dobson continues his amazing season and managed to lower his GAA from an incredible 7.03 to an even more incredible 6.93. We’re running out of ways to describe his season other than MVP-worthy. He did bump his GAA back up over seven after Saturday’s game but 7.02 is still in “incredible” territory.

SSK @ BUF

This was an amazing game to watch. The Bandits kept trying to pull away but the Rush wouldn’t let them, and then Frank Scigliano and the Rush defense kept the Bandits off the board for the last two minutes of the third and all of the fourth while scattering three goals, the last of which came with under a minute left. We headed to overtime, which might have been the most entertaining 6:47 of lacrosse this season before Josh Byrne scored his first of the game (to go along with his 7 assists) to win it for the Bandits and end the Rush 9-game winning streak.

SD @ COL

Dillon Ward had a rare bad game but Nathan Whittom took over and was outstanding. He finished with a save percentage over 86% and a GAA of 6.61, which was good enough to keep the Mammoth in the game and allow the offense to finally get to Chris Origlieri. Despite being down 5–0 halfway through the first quarter, the Mammoth kept chipping away and after a very exciting fourth quarter, they managed to take their first lead of the game with under four minutes left and hold on for the comeback win.

LV @ VAN

Landon Kells didn’t have a great start in this one, allowing eight goals on 21 shots in 27 minutes. Alex Buque was better, with a GAA under 10 and a 77% save percentage, but the damage was done and when you’re facing Christian Del Bianco, the odds of a big late comeback are pretty low. That said, Vegas had a strong fourth quarter, outscoring the Warriors 5–2, and one of those Warriors goals was an empty-netter with 12 seconds left. The Dogs got back within three but once again proved that they are a team that will not give up.

Keegan Bal is a Desert Dog killer. He’s now played the Dogs eight times in his career and the Warriors have a 7–1 record. In every one of those games, Bal has had eight, nine, or ten points.

Keegan Bal

Saturday night

SSK @ ROC

The game was tied at least once in each quarter. The Rush kept retaking the lead (six times!) but the Knighthawks managed to tie it up every time. Then after playing catch-up all night, Rochester finally took the lead at the best possible time – in OT. Rochester’s season began 4–1 but then they lost four straight, and people started to wonder if they were the playoff team many expected before the season. After this win, they’re 5–5 and certainly not out of it yet. The Rush went 0–2 on the weekend, putting them at 10–3. They’re still in first place, but not by as much as last Thursday.

OSH @ OTT

After a close first half, Oshawa scored eight straight goals to build a six-goal lead. But then the Black Bears came storming back, with an 8–3 fourth quarter, tying the game with fourteen seconds left in regulation, and then again to win the game just under two minutes into overtime. I don’t know if this was an epic comeback from the Bears or an epic collapse from the FireWolves but honestly, you can’t really have one without the other.

BUF @ TOR

Before the games started, the Rock fan in me was a bit concerned about playing Buffalo the night after they faced the #1 Rush. If they lost, they’d be really pissed and either beat the Rock or beat the Rock up. But when they won against the Rush, I thought that maybe they wouldn’t be so pissed and therefore less dangerous. They weren’t pissed at all and the game wasn’t nearly as chippy as you’d expect from these two teams. But for the Rock it was just as bad – Buffalo’s win over the Rush gave them confidence and that, not their anger, is what helped them win on Saturday. Again, Matt Vinc looked like the Matt Vinc from a few years ago, Josh Byrne looked great, and the defense as a whole looked really strong (see the Awesome section).

It was a close back-and-forth game until the fourth quarter when Buffalo took over, outscoring the Rock 5–2. They didn’t look borderline untouchable, like they have at many points in the past couple of seasons, but their goaltending, defense, and offense were all strong and the Rock, as well as they played, just couldn’t match it.

And once again, kudos to the awesome Bandits fans who made the trip to Hamilton for this game. If you were listening to the game rather than watching it, it might have been difficult to tell based on crowd noise which team had just scored. And I got a good laugh hearing them chant “You can’t do that” when the Rock took a penalty.

PHI @ GEO

Brett Dobson had a GAA of 8 and a save percentage of 83% – a bit of a down game for him this season but good enough to win, right? Not when Nick Damude has his best game of the season and one of the best of his career, only allowing five and saving 90+% of the 53 shots he faced. But a second story here is that Joe Resetarits, Michael Sowers, and Kyle Jackson were all out of the lineup for the Wings, and Brennan O’Neill picked up no goals and a single assist. Despite missing all of those pieces, the Wings offense managed to score nine goals on one of the top defences, and far and away the best goaltender, in the league. A huge character win for Philadelphia.

HFX @ CAL

What a nail-biter. The first seventeen goals of this game either tied the score or broke a tie. But four minutes into the third quarter, the Thunderbirds began a five-goal streak that effectively put the game away. Calgary was able to score two in the fourth but it wasn’t enough as Halifax broke their five-game losing streak. The Roughnecks fall to 2–9 and will have, at best, a .500 season. Technically, they still have a chance of making the playoffs but realistically, they’d need to run the table and get some help.

Sunday

VAN @ SD

After San Diego scored the first goal of the game, the next ten goals (over 45 minutes) alternated between the two teams. San Diego held the lead the entire time, and had five different two-goal leads. But then the Warriors scored four straight and kept the Seals off the board to take the comeback win 9–7.

San Diego native Marquez White’s first career goal in the second quarter was great but the real awesome was the reaction from both his teammates and his family. The whole San Diego bench emptied to congratulate him and I saw another Seals player grab the ball. Meanwhile, there was nobody in the building, Marquez and his teammates included, who was more excited about that goal than White’s parents. Just an amazing moment.

Not Awesome

Sound system in Hamilton

For the second straight week, the sound system in TD Coliseum was messed up. Last week it was just a volume thing – the music was much louder than the PA announcer for most of the game. This week it was the same again, where the PA volume was just too low but in the later stages of the game, the sound of the PA also got crackly and distorted.

* I don’t know if the TSN/ESPN games are available on NLL+ or another streaming service (is ESPN+ a thing?) in the US but I assume so.

Awesome

Mammoth/Rock game

This was a great game and I summarized it here.

Tehoka Nanticoke goal

I had “Tehoka Nanticoke goal” in the Awesome list last week as well, but it was obviously a different goal. This time, he was cutting to the net with a defender… not exactly “holding” him but effectively preventing him from using his left arm. No big deal though, he just let go of his stick with his left hand and shot with his right. Despite only one hand on the stick, he still managed to get it over the right shoulder of Del Bianco. That takes some serious skill as well as forearm strength so more kudos to Tehoka.

Tehoka Nanticoke

Buffalo/Vancouver game

Lacrosse, as it turns out, is a game of runs. (Everybody drink.)

Buffalo scored the first goal of the game, and then it began. Vancouver scored five straight over the next sixteen minutes to take a 5–1 lead. There was no stopping Vancouver, until Buffalo did. Then Buffalo scored six straight over the next 4½ minutes to take a 7–5 lead. There was no stopping Buffalo, until Vancouver did. The Warriors got one back before halftime and then scored four more in the third while holding Buffalo scoreless to take a 10–7 lead. After almost 26 minutes without scoring, Buffalo tried to get back into the pattern but they could only manage two in the fourth before Curtis Dickson put it away with 13 seconds left.

Similar to the Colorado/Toronto game, both teams played really well at times and really sloppy at times. Both goalies made some amazing stops but each allowed one or two they would usually stop. It wasn’t a perfect example of lacrosse at its finest, but it was definitely an exciting game.

Halifax/San Diego game

Another exciting game with lead changes and scoring streaks, but slightly fewer goals than the BUF/VAN game. Chris Origlieri played well throughout the game but was outstanding over the last few minutes as the Thunderbirds tried desperately to tie it up. The Seals went over 14 minutes without scoring, and then scored two within a minute and five in under seven minutes. Halifax also went about 14 minutes without scoring, then scored one but it took another nine minutes to get the next one. Regardless, they tied it up early in the fourth before Dylan Watson scored what turned out to be the final goal of the game. Halifax pushed hard at the end of the fourth but as I said Origlieri was just too good.

Halifax took a bunch of penalties in this one, reversing the trend from their last few games, but many of them were coincident minors as the Seals took a bunch of penalties as well.

Wings + Nick Damude in the first half, Rush in the second

The 9–1 Rush headed into Philadelphia to take on the 2–7 Wings. With all due respect to the Wings, nobody was expecting a close nail-biter. And for the first quarter of the game, it wasn’t, but not in the way anyone expected. The Wings scored three on Frank Scigliano while the Rush offense was off-balance and Nick Damude stopped everything that came his way. At no point in the first half would you have guessed that one of these teams had a .900 winning percentage while the other was at .222.

The Rush finally got on the board in the second and that quarter the Wings had the lead, lost it, were down by one, and then tied it again. The two teams swapped goals again early in the third, and the game was tied once again a minute in.

But then the Rush we’ve been used to all season arrived. The offense started clicking and Scigliano started playing like we know he can, and before we knew it the Rush had taken a two-goal lead that they never gave up. They ended up scoring nine of the last ten goals of the game, making the final score 14–6. That score makes it look like the blowout that many expected given the winning percentages I mentioned. That was true in the second half, but kudos to Damude and the Wings, particularly their defense, for their amazing first-half performance.

Not Awesome

Bad decisions by the Bandits

Make no mistake, Mitch de Snoo is an awesome lacrosse player. As a Rock fan, I was very disappointed when he didn’t return to the Rock after being traded to the Wings last year. But with about 45 seconds left in Friday night’s game against Vancouver, the Bandits were down by a single goal. de Snoo grabbed the ball in his own zone, ran through a whole bunch of defenders into the offensive zone and then, inexplicably, took a low-percentage backhand shot from a bad angle which Del Bianco stopped easily. When you have less than a minute to score one goal and you have Smith, Byrne, Nanticoke, MacKay, and Buchanan on your offense, let them do it. They didn’t have a ton of time but they did have a full shot clock. de Snoo has a pretty good shot but that’s not his specialty. It didn’t cost Buffalo the game but it did take away an opportunity to tie it late.

Then just seconds later, Vancouver scored to go up by two. Connor Farrell won the ensuing faceoff cleanly, ran down to the Vancouver net and took a shot that missed the net by three feet. Once again, let the scorers score. Your job is to win the faceoff and you did that. Now give Dhane Smith the ball and GTFO. That said, this one was a little less “egregious” because they had to score two goals in under fifteen seconds just to tie it, so I guess a desperation shot off the faceoff was all they really had time for.

It was a bit odd though – Colorado was on a seven game win streak and was playing really well throughout, looking like one of the best teams in the league. But even though Toronto was either leading the game or only back by a little, I thought there was a lot of sloppy play. The Rock offense sometimes looked disjointed, like they weren’t on the same page and nobody knew where anyone else was going to be. Sometimes you see almost blind passes, where a player passes to where another player should be and lo and behold, that’s where they are. We didn’t see as much of that on Friday – it looked like there were passes to where a player should be but he wasn’t there. And then at other times, the Rock were able to smoothly move the ball all around the Colorado defenders until someone got a good enough look to put it behind Dillon Ward, and we all know how hard both of those things have been this season.

The Mammoth hit Troy Holowchuk square in the chest a number of times, or took desperation shots with a second left on the shot clock, but I credit most of those to the Rock defense limiting their options. Other times Andrew Kew or Dylan McIntosh were able to get open and take a clean shot. There seemed to be a lot of shot clock violations on both sides, and the Rock in particular were pretty slow getting off the bench on transition. I noticed a few times where by the time the fifth offensive player was out on the floor and ready to go, there were only 10–12 seconds left on the shot clock. However I didn’t notice whether that’s because the offensive players were slow getting on the floor or if the defensive players were slow getting off.

Yours truly in the middle, looking up, with my wife beside me, right after Challen Rogers’ third goal.

Troy Holowchuk had a great game. The Mammoth scored nine against him in 30 minutes last week, and this week he played the whole game and held them to only nine total. There were a couple of goals he probably should have stopped but there were many more stops he made that he had no business making. Just like last year, Holowchuk has proven that he can be a full-time NLL starting goalie. I don’t think he’s in the “elite” class like Ward, Dobson, Del Bianco, or (in my opinion) Nick Rose, but most aren’t, and he’s a lot better than “serviceable”. The aforementioned Dillon Ward also had a good game, though maybe not up to the standard he’s set for himself this season.

Other game notes:

• He’s been doing this forever but I noticed it a lot on Friday night. When Challen Rogers is entering the offensive zone with the ball, obviously a defender or two covers him. Rogers never tries to avoid the hits or pass to teammates so the defenders will leave him alone. He just plows through as many of them as he needs to. Sometimes it works and he gets to the net or eventually does pass it, and sometimes it doesn’t work and he gets stripped of the ball, though I think the former happens a lot more than the latter. But his determination and sheer strength are impressive to watch.
• Isiah Moran-Weekes had a great NLL debut. He’s not the biggest guy on the floor (5’9", 165 lbs) but he worked very hard every shift, tried to clear space in the middle of the floor, hustled to and from the bench, and even got his first NLL goal. I’d love to see him get some more playing time in the next few games.
• Nice to see Latrell Harris get his own bobblehead, and he played an excellent game as well.
• My wife and I made the NLL+ broadcast! See the image above. Yes, I need a haircut.

Lots of Awesomes and only a couple of Not Awesomes this week, so let’s get to it.

Awesome

Maki Jenner… again

A little over a year ago, Maki Jenner became the first woman to do colour commentary on an NLL TV broadcast, and many of us knew she wasn’t going to stop there. On Saturday night, Maki became the first woman to do play-by-play on an NLL broadcast, and it wasn’t even an NLL+ broadcast, which would have been impressive enough. No, Maki made her PxP debut on the TSN game of the week. Obviously this is huge for the league, and great for those of us who enjoy hearing Maki’s enthusiasm, excitement, and knowledge of lacrosse. But I’m sure Maki, like so many other Canadian sports fans, grew up watching games on TSN and so to be able to do a TSN broadcast and say the immortal line “You’re watching the NLL on TSN” a few times must have been incredible for her.

I think I only saw a few negative “I’m not watching because there’s a GIRL talking” comments, but the existence of such comments just confirms the importance of celebrating Maki’s achievements, and the achievements of all women in the lacrosse broadcasting world. I said this last year but it bears repeating:

There are girls and young women out there who aspire to be broadcasters, and watching this broadcast will make them realize that being a lacrosse broadcaster at the pro level is now a possibility for them. Hearing a woman doing colour or play-by-play on an NLL broadcast should not be a big deal, and at some point it won’t be. But for now it is, so congrats to Maki on being a groundbreaker yet again.

Maki Jenner and Pat Gregoire

Tehoka Nanticoke goal

Late in the first quarter, a Buffalo player takes a shot on net, which was stopped by Warren Hill. With the ball loose in the crease, Nanticoke parked himself on the edge, reached out and picked up the ball with one arm at full extension (while staying out of the crease), then dove to his right and shot it behind Warren Hill, all the while fighting off pressure from Johnny Pearson. There was a review and I wasn’t sure it was going to count but it did. Even if it turned out out that his toes were on the line, I’d have included it here because it was amazing.

Exciting conclusions

It was a great weekend for close games. Four games were won by a single goal, one of those in overtime, and another by only two. San Diego and Colorado didn’t get the memo to keep things close – or perhaps Oshawa and Toronto didn’t. On Sunday, Calgary did a good job of keeping things close for most of the game but Georgia pulled away late in the fourth.

• COL @ LV: On Friday, the Mammoth had a four goal lead with nine minutes left, but the Desert Dogs managed three in the next six minutes before Dillon Ward decided “no more” and that was as close as they got.
• BUF @ HFX: Buffalo led Halifax by as much as five until the Thunderbirds fought back and tied it with just a couple of minutes left. But Dhane Smith scored his first (!!) of the game with 2½ minutes left to give the Bandits the win.
• OTT @ ROC: Rochester led for about half of this game, but only by one or two for most of it. Ottawa tied it in the fourth and finally took the lead but the Knighthawks were never out of it.
• VAN @ SSK: An overtime game is obviously as close as you can get, and best buds Christian Del Bianco and Frank Scigliano almost matched each other exactly. Both played the full game (60:44), both faced 40 shots, but Frank made one more save.
• PHI @ CAL: You can call it the battle of the basement if you want, but if you haven’t watched it, go check out the last minute of this game on NLL+. It featured some amazing saves at both ends and as the announcers said, both teams absolutely left everything on the floor. We saw two evenly matched teams, and despite the season being barely half over, they are both fighting for their playoff lives. The game was tied seven times, and Philly broke the tie in five of those cases. But Calgary was able to do it last, which is all that matters.

Colorado Mammoth

The Mammoth this season have become what the Bandits were in the last two seasons – just an all-around excellent lacrosse team. It starts with Dillon Ward, one of the best goalies in the league and a lock for Goaltender of the Year assuming Brett Dobson falls down a well or something. The defense in front of Ward has been great, they are getting lots of transition with guys like Chaster and Rahn, and their offense has been incredible. Kew, Hannah, and Malcom (imagine thinking at the beginning of the season that Malcom would be ranked third in that list) have been the anchors but they’re also getting great secondary scoring from guys like Vela and Saris. They have a very solid offense that’s put up 15+ goals in four of their last seven games.

Just imagine how good they’d be if they had Ryan Lee and Eli McLaughlin in the lineup.

I know we still have half the season to go, but the Mammoth and the Rush have to be the front-runners for the Championship at this point. They don’t play in the regular season until April 11 – it may or may not mean anything in the standings but it’s a game I’m looking forward to.

Cam Acchione

I didn’t see much of the San Diego / Oshawa game because there were four other games going on at the same time, and when one of them is 9–1 at the half, that’s the one you tune into the least often. But it seemed that whenever I did watch more than ten seconds of that game, the name Acchione came up. He was fighting for a loose ball or running up the floor in transition but I heard his name a lot. It wasn’t until about the third time I heard his name that I thought “wait a minute, Acchione plays for Saskatchewan, not San Diego. Was there a trade I didn’t hear about?” But no, this was Cam Acchione, not his brother Matt, and Cam was making his NLL debut. His stats line was almost all zeroes (4 LB and one turnover) but that’s not always a bad thing for defenders and transition guys. Congrats to Cam on a successful debut.

Kyle Jackson

Kyle Jackson played six games with the FireWolves last year in Albany, and three games for Oshawa at the beginning of this season. He only picked up 2 points in those three games, but that’s when nobody on the FireWolves was scoring. The team averaged five goals per game over their first three. Yes, Jackson was struggling but so was everyone else. He was released by Oshawa anyway, then signed by Philadelphia a few weeks later. Jackson seems to have fit right in to the Wings offense, looking very comfortable and scoring 2+5 in his first game and 3+2 this past Saturday. I’m sure he won’t keep up that six-points-per-game pace for the rest of the season, but even if he drops to his career average of just over three points per game, that would provide some strong secondary scoring for the Wings.

Not Awesome

Gash hit on Edwards

Midway through the first quarter of the Toronto/Colorado game, Tim Edwards was racing up the floor but looking behind him to catch a pass, and then ran into a brick wall named Elijah Gash. This hit looked to me to be the effectively the same as the Hartley hit on Charbonneau a couple of weeks ago. It was at mid-floor, and Gash isn’t a goalie, so a couple of things were different but the idea was the same – Edwards could not possibly have seen the hit coming and thus it was dangerous.

But Hartley was given a match penalty and booted from the game, while Gash’s major penalty was reduced to a minor.

We have to consider the possibility that it was not as blatant as it appeared. Say Gash saw Edwards coming and decided to stop him from proceeding any further. That’s his job, and he’s good at it. (Note that this is not Hartley’s job.) But perhaps Gash misjudged Edwards’s position and speed, as well as his own speed, and thus hitting Edwards before he was ready for it was unavoidable. Is Gash supposed to dive out of the way in order to avoid hitting him, or start running backwards to lessen the impact or allow Edwards time to turn around? No, nobody’s expecting that. I haven’t seen any video of Gash before the hit, so I don’t know if his forward movement was a result of a single step or if he ran several steps to make the hit.

The Mammoth announcers kept talking about where Gash’s shoulder hit Edwards (square in the chest) and the fact that it wasn’t a “head-hunting” hit, which was true. It did look like he made an effort to crouch a bit to avoid head contact – when you’re 6’4" you have to think about that, and Gash did. But in my opinion, where Gash hit him wasn’t really the point, it was the fact that Edwards was blindsided and so this was no less dangerous than Hartley’s hit.

But in the end, I am surprised Gash got off so lightly considering how similar a hit it was to Hartley’s and only a couple of weeks later. I really hope this doesn’t send the message that such blindside hits are acceptable in the NLL because then it’s only a matter of time before another career is ended. Or worse.

NLL+ Multi-View

Multi-view was a great feature on NLL+ last season and I used it all the time. It was a sort of windowing system where you could watch all the games at once. You’d focus on one of them and hear the sound from that one, but you could switch which one you were focusing on any time. It was awesome, and this season it’s gone. I’m amazed it took me this long to realize it wasn’t there because I loved it last year.

Awesome

Stats guys

If you’re reading this, you know I’m a stats guy. I used to write stats articles all the time, but these days any extra time I have after writing my weekly reports tends to get devoted to nllstats.com. Thus I don’t write about stats all that often anymore but if you like that sort of thing, here are a couple of people who do.

Paul Tutka writes about all kinds of lacrosse stuff at The Lax Mag. He has a weekly column called Clutch Kings, which is based on the Money Ballers column that he created at IL Indoor many years ago. He also ranks players and teams and does analysis on various stats. He even talks about other lacrosse leagues like the WLA and MSL, tournaments like the Mann and Minto Cups, and even junior lacrosse. Someone once described me as “the OG of NLL stats writers” but Paul was doing it years before I started.

Ty Merrow writes at TyMer Lacrosse. He’s not that active on Twitter/X anymore but is on BSky. Ty is based in Georgia and writes game reports for Georgia Swarm games including summaries and interviews. In addition to that, every week he picks a team or a stat or a player or some combination thereof, tells you what you probably think about it (more often than not, I think “yeah, that’s about right”), and then he tells you why you’re wrong. Even better, he uses both his strong knowledge of lacrosse along with both basic stats and advanced metrics to prove why you’re wrong. Ty watches every game in great detail and records his own stats, and as a result he has far more detailed stats that I ever had access to. Most of it is not stuff that’s available on NLLStats.com because it requires such time-consuming work. If you want to know how many goals or loose balls or penalty minutes per game your team is getting, NLLStats.com is for you. But if you want to know your team’s shorthanded shot on goal percentage, or how often your team gets a power play opportunity but fails to register a shot, talk to Ty.

Full disclosure: Paul created and wrote The Money Ballers column at IL Indoor for years. When he left IL in 2012, I took over that column and continued it until the 2018 season. I have never met Paul or Ty though I have conversed with them online.

Rock and FireWolves

I’m going to give an Awesome to both the Rock and the FireWolves for Saturday night’s game. The Rock get theirs for, obviously, winning the game. They also had their offense working very well again, spreading the points around so that nine different players had at least two points. Defense was solid and Troy Holowchuk played an excellent game, keeping Oshawa scoreless for the first 21 minutes of the game, and keeping them to only five goals in the first three quarters. There was a four minute stretch in the fourth quarter where Oshawa scored four goals, but then Holowchuk returned to form and stopped a number of good scoring opportunities in the last few minutes of the game. He even had a chance to fire a shot on the far empty net, and it looked like he was going to do it but thought better of it.

Troy Holowchuk

Oshawa gets their Awesome for stepping up their play in the fourth quarter and making a game of it. They were down by six midway through the third quarter and again early in the fourth, but then Dyson Williams scored, Dawson Theede scored a natural hat-trick in under two minutes, and Tye Kurtz scored two minutes after that to cut the lead to one. Not one Rock fan in that building was comfortable with the one goal lead at that point and after a few more minutes, Challen Rogers gave them some insurance, scoring on the empty net with 44 seconds left.

The FireWolves were never out of that game, despite the six-goal deficits. Three times the Rock scored only to have the FireWolves score within about 30 seconds. Oshawa had one shot which looked like it hit the post, hit Holowchuk’s back, hit the post again, and went out. A lucky bounce here or there for the FireWolves and we were heading to overtime, or they’d have won the game outright.

Wings

A lot of people, myself included, had essentially given up on the Wings this season. Sure, the Bandits were struggling but playing the hapless Philadelphia Wings would certainly be the cure for that, right? Well, the Wings shut us all the hell up.

Newly acquired Kyle Jackson had seven points, Sowers, O’Neill, and Resetarits had five each, and Nick Damude saw 57 shots but saved over 80% of them. And it wasn’t just that they had a great game and dominated Buffalo, they didn’t. They took the lead at the end of the first, then saw it disappear in the second. That happened four more times over the second and third, and Buffalo had a two-goal lead midway through the fourth. But the Wings never gave up and scored the last four of the game while keeping Buffalo scoreless. That’s a textbook “character win”. Struggling or not, the Bandits are the defending Champions and are still a formidable team, so congrats to the Wings on their victory.

Craziness in the standings

• Las Vegas and Toronto were last and second-last respectively in the standings last year, and were a combined 10–26. They are currently both in playoff spots.
• Vegas has already matched their win total from last season and they’re not even halfway through their schedule. One more win will tie the franchise record.
• Buffalo has been 13–5 or better four times in the last six seasons, and have been in six of the last eight Championship series, winning the last three. They are currently 3–5, have lost four straight, and are out of a playoff position.
• The Wings are 2–6 but have beaten both the Bandits and the Mammoth.
• Many thought the Knighthawks would be right up at the top of the standings, but they are 4–4. Their wins have come against teams not currently in the playoff picture, and their losses have all come against teams currently in the top five. You know what they say: “if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best” and the Knighthawks, so far, have not.
• The Mammoth are still without Eli McLaughlin, and have lost Ryan Lee for the season. They are also down Connor Robinson, Connor Kelly, and Zed Williams from last year. But Andrew Kew and Jack Hannah seem to be making up for all of those losses and they’ve gone from 9th to tied for second.

Of course, the season is not even half over (only four teams have played at least nine games) and a lot could change between now and the playoffs. Nine teams are currently on a 3-or-more-game winning or losing streak. Just about any one of those teams having a 3- or 4-game streak in the other direction would dramatically change the playoff picture.

Not Awesome

Gash / Clark fight

Emerson Clark was signed by the FireWolves earlier this week, and everyone knew what that meant. I’m sure he’s a decent lacrosse player (he did score a goal on Saturday) but that’s not what he’s known for. Three minutes into the first quarter, he picked a fight with Elijah Gash, probably the toughest Rock player there is (sorry Billy), and after removing his own helmet and gloves (a clear violation of rule 80.7), he walked to the middle of the floor before turning to start the actual fight. It looked to me like he wanted to make sure he was in clear view of everyone so they could all see that he was willing to fight Gash. The fight itself was no big deal; it lasted about five seconds and it looked to me like Clark missed each of his first four punches. But because Gash lost his footing and fell, Clark claimed victory. Clark and Gash both got fighting majors, and Clark also got a roughing minor. It looked to me like Clark was the instigator, so I’m not sure why he didn’t get the obligatory instigation minor and game misconduct.

On the broadcast, Teddy Jenner said that the two players agreed to do this in the warmups, so maybe that’s why the refs didn’t consider Clark the instigator. And if that is indeed the case, then Gash deserves as much blame as I’m giving Clark here. As I’ve said many times before, I don’t have a big problem with fights that start organically. But staged fights like this serve no purpose. If this is why Oshawa signed Clark then I guess he did his job, but it didn’t exactly get his team fired up at all, since they didn’t score their first goal until more than seventeen minutes later.

Bandits

The Bandits lost Chris Cloutier and Chase Fraser over the off-season, replaced them both with Ryan Benesch, and gave guys like Tehoka Nanticoke and Clay Scanlan more playing time. Benesch’s 2.8 points per game basically replaces Fraser’s 2.94. Buchanan is producing around the same level as last year, and MacKay and Nanticoke are higher than last year – their increases cover about a third of Cloutier’s 2.64. But Dhane Smith and Josh Byrne were each picking up an amazing 7.44 points per game last year, and while Dhane is down to 6.88 (still on pace for 123 points), Byrne is only at 5.38 points per game. He’s on pace for 96 points, a drop of 38 points from last year. I’ve seen a couple of broadcasts this year where it’s mentioned that Byrne just looks… off, like something is slightly wrong. Maybe he’s hurt, maybe something else is going on but that’s too big a drop in production to be “just one of those things”.

I don’t think this is the same game

Matt Vinc has a save percentage of 75.6%, his lowest since the 2012 season (when he won the Championship with the Knighthawks), and a GAA of 11.40, his highest since 2016 (Knighthawks missed the playoffs that year). These aren’t terrible numbers in general, but they’re not very Vinc-like. One is forced to wonder if Father Time has finally caught up with the GOAT.

There isn’t any one single thing you can point to and say “That is the problem with the Bandits”, or Steve Dietrich and John Tavares would have fixed it by now. But I’ve seen Bandits fans online wondering what they could get in trades for Smith or Byrne, and I think that’s a bit premature. They’re not currently in a playoff position, but that could change in a couple of games. And if there’s any team that’s full of players who know what it takes to win in the NLL playoffs, it’s the Bandits.

Pregame fight

Nobody would have been surprised at a fight in this game but a fight in the pregame warmups? That I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. However, if that was the total held-over reaction from the Hartley hit on Steph Charbonneau last week, then I’d have been happy with that. Get that all out of the way and move on, focusing on this game. And that’s basically what happened.

The reason this gets a Not Awesome is because there was a team of very young kids on the floor at the same time. If they were at the other end of the floor, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal, but they were right there when the fight started, close enough that some of the non-fighting players had to push them back to make sure they didn’t get hurt. Adam Levi posted this picture showing how close one of the kids was to getting hit. If you’re going to start throwing punches in a non-game situation, you need to be more aware of what’s going on around you.

Goalies in Vancouver

Two of the top goaltenders in the NLL gave up a total of 31 goals on Saturday night. Hartley had a save percentage under 60%, and Del Bianco’s was 70%. Del Bianco hasn’t had a save percentage of 70% or less in any game since December 30, 2022, when he had save percentage of 66.7% in a 17–14 Calgary loss to San Diego. Hartley didn’t even play half the game and had a GAA over 25. Clearly both offences were firing on all cylinders but it’s pretty rare that you’d see either of these goaltenders have numbers like that, let alone both of them in the same game.

Riley Hutchcraft did a decent job, with a GAA under 9.00 and a save percentage of 73.7%, and he’s the one who got the loss.

As a bit of an aside, why was Hartley allowed to appeal his suspension? He got a match penalty, which comes with an automatic one- or two-game suspension. He was given the minimum. Given that a suspension is mandatory because of the penalty, why appeal? Or was it a tactic so that he could play in the game against Vancouver and miss a different game later?