It was like watching The Usual Suspects or No Way Out for the first time – what an ending! Many of the questions we all had about playoff positioning were answered on Friday and Saturday, but the final playoff decision came down to the very last game of the season. You can’t ask for better drama and excitement than that.
2024 NLL Week 20
There is only one week left in the 2024 regular season, and every team has exactly one game left except Rochester, who has two. There are still two playoff spots up for grabs, and five teams (Panther City, Vancouver, Saskatchewan, New York, and Rochester, in descending order of likelihood) trying to get one of them. There are eight games next weekend, and even the very last one (Philly at Rochester, Sunday at 3pm EDT) could have playoff implications; there are scenarios where Rochester gets the last playoff spot if they win that game, and Vancouver gets it otherwise. Talk about down to the wire.
The Grant for Vinc blockbuster: a retrospective
In October 2010, one of the greatest players in the game and a box lacrosse legend was traded for another one. After ten seasons, one missed season, a Rookie of the Year award, an NLL Championship, and an MVP award, John Grant, Jr. was traded from the Rochester Knighthawks to the Colorado Mammoth for reigning goaltender of the year Matt Vinc. Three other players as well as a few draft picks were also involved in this blockbuster, which transformed both teams. Some of those draft picks wouldn’t be made for almost three years, and the full extent of the trade wasn’t felt for quite a while.
Here is an article from a newspaper in Everett, Washington, home of the Washington Stealth, describing the trade. It’s interesting to hear what the writer thought of the trade at the time, like “The Cody Jamieson era officially [begins] in Rochester” (correct), “The K’Hawks also seem to have solved their goal-tending woes with the addition of Vinc” (correct), and “It’s tough to think John Grant Jr. will stay with the Mammoth” (incorrect).
With the benefit of hindsight, let’s look over this trade and see what impacts it had on the two teams involved and a few others. Continue reading
2024 NLL Week 19
There were nine games this past weekend and every game had playoff implications for one or both teams playing and in some cases, a couple of other teams as well. That, by itself, is the first Awesome of the week. But there’s more!
He played where? Players and their forgotten teams
Every now and again, I see a stat or an old NLL boxscore that surprises me, because it shows a player playing for a team that I’d forgotten he ever played for. What, Jimmy Quinlan wasn’t always with the Rush? Mark Steenhuis wasn’t a Bandit his whole career? Callum Crawford has played in lots of places but… Calgary?
Then recently, someone on an NLL podcast (I think it was Pat Gregoire but if it wasn’t, my apologies to whoever it was) said something about this very thing. He even called me out by name, suggesting that I write about it. All right then. Challenge accepted.
Here are a bunch of players who had long stints for one or two teams (or many, if you’re Callum Crawford or Ryan Benesch), and potentially forgotten shorter stints for other teams. We’ll start with active players and while there are dozens of inactive players I could list, I’ll only list the inactive ones that surprised me the most.
2024 NLL Week 18
Only three weeks to go before playoffs begin! Of course, the three weeks have 9, 6, and 8 games, so there’s still a lotta lacrosse left, and tons of playoff scenarios. Unless you’re a Las Vegas fan, your team still has a shot of making the playoffs, and if you’re a Toronto, Albany, or San Diego fan, your team is already in! There were only four games last week but a few awesome things happened, so let’s have a look.
2024 NLL Week 17 report
What a week! Entirely home team wins except in Philly, four OT games, a few big comebacks, a last-place team almost beating a second-place team, a player tying a legend for a goals record, and another player almost tying another one. Let’s get to it!
Game report: Thunderbirds @ Rock
What a crazy game. This was one of those weird games where the Rock never led in the game at all, but still won. The shots on net numbers were wacky and there were a lot of penalties on both sides until the fourth quarter, when there were none.
2024 NLL Week 16 report
We’re getting close to the end of the season now. The Rock have clinched a playoff spot, though the other teams are still a week or two away from either clinching or being eliminated. The NLL Stats playoff scenario calculator (aka “Could Happen…”) is live on nllstats.com now, so feel free to go play around with that to see what scenarios are possible. For example, it’s possible for there to be a nine-way tie for first place, which means that one of the teams tied for first will miss the playoffs.
2024 NLL Week 15 report
I didn’t get a chance to do a week 14 report but it would have been minimal since I only saw the Rock/Desert Dogs game. I did watch the Rock/Seals game later on but that’s it. This week however, there were eight games and I watched a good chunk of them. I even had multiple games on at the same time for a while – Rush/Bandits on one screen and Roughnecks/Swarm on the other, since both games were tied in the final minutes of the fourth quarter. I muted Buffalo while Georgia was in OT, and as soon as the Swarm scored the game-winner, I killed that feed and went back to Buffalo and managed to see the game-winner there as well.
NLL Chatter 