Just as it is tradition to look back over the previous year at the end of December, it’s also tradition to look ahead and make predictions for the upcoming year. I don’t have a crystal ball but I do have a frying pan that looks kind of like the Mirror of Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings. After breakfast today I gazed deep into the bacon grease, and here is what I saw:

1. Shortly before the MLL season begins Casey Powell will announce that he will retire from the MLL after this season, confusing people who thought he had already retired. He will call the season his “farewell tour” and play one game as a member of each team.
2. Paul Rabil will fall in love and get engaged. He will then announce that he’s moving his foundation’s headquarters and all of his lacrosse clinics to his fiancée’s home town of Edmonton. Once he does this, his fiancée will laugh maniacally and remove her face mask, revealing that she is actually Bruce Urban.
3. After the Philadelphia Wings finish with a 5-11 record and out of the playoffs, GM Johnny Mouradian will admit that his plan of bringing in American field lacrosse players was a failure. He will announce that next season, they will bring in American soccer players instead. At the entry draft in October, he almost drafts Freddy Adu before being reminded that Adu was born in Ghana.
4. Dane Dobbie will have a breakout year, scoring 57 goals and 55 assists for 112 points. However, he will be given no MVP consideration because he finishes fourth in scoring on the Roughnecks.
5. Mark Matthews will set a league record with 86 goals, and will also pick up four assists. Unfortunately, the Edmonton Rush score 90 goals on the season.
6. The NLL expands to Montreal, but the new franchise is immediately put on hiatus while the government of Quebec argues whether “lacrosse” is still a French word or has been used by English-speakers for long enough that it’s not really French anymore and has to be replaced by something else.
7. Rhys Duch is traded to the Colorado Mammoth in a blockbuster. The Mammoth immediately start looking for a new arena announcer after Willie B’s head explodes.
8. The NLL announces that NLL Chatter is the first-ever winner of the new “National Lacrosse League Blog of the Year” award. At the awards ceremony, commissioner George Daniel starts to hand me the award, but pulls it back. He then turns into my 12th grade English teacher Mrs. Johnson, who says “You use too many commas!” All of the lacrosse players start chasing me with their sticks, and I can’t yell or move my feet. Then I wake up in a cold sweat.