We all know that teams have an advantage when they play in their home arena. The fans are on your side, the home players don’t have to travel while the opposing players do, and the PA guys get excited about your goals and their penalties but not the other way around. The numbers back this up – in the 30-year history of the NLL (in all its forms), the home team is 973-796 (.550) in the regular season and 92-58 (.613) in the playoffs. Over 1769 games, the home team has won almost exactly 10% (actually 10.006%) more games than they’ve lost. The difference isn’t huge but it’s there, and it’s even more pronounced in the playoffs.

But there’s one home floor advantage that is, in my opinion, too much of an advantage and should be removed. But I’ll get to that.

Much of the advantage is the fans. I’ve heard a number of players say that they tune out the crowd while playing but if the fans are really loud, they do get heard. Having the fans on your side gives you a little mental boost, while having loud fans cheering against you can be deflating. Conversely, we’ve all heard visiting teams try to grab a lead early to “take the fans out of it” since playing in your home arena to silent fans is pretty deflating too.

The travel thing I mentioned is not really an advantage in the NLL. The majority of NLL players come from either southern Ontario or southern BC so for most teams, playing in Toronto or Vancouver means the least amount of travel regardless of where the team is based. When Georgia visits Colorado, most of both teams have to travel but when they play in Toronto, it’s almost a home game for both.

But as I said above, there’s one difference that’s too much. It sometimes gets overlooked as an advantage but can really have a huge impact. When the visiting team scores a goal, the video replay guy shows the replay of the goal on the video screen as soon as he can, so that the home team’s coaching staff can watch for crease violations and such and know whether to throw the challenge flag. This also happens when the home team scores a goal that is waved off by the refs because of such violations. Depending on the arena’s camera placement and video system, you may get multiple angles and slow motion to make it easier for the coaches.

But the visiting team doesn’t get that courtesy. When their goals are waved off or the home team scores a goal that’s even remotely close to being questionable, you will not see a replay, or at least not until the time window for issuing a challenge has elapsed. The visiting coaches have to decide whether to throw the challenge flag from what they saw in real time, and this is much more difficult.

And it’s wrong.

The intention of the coach’s challenge is to make sure that the refs get the calls right. Clearly we want as many calls to be correct as possible, so that a team that legally scores ten goals is credited with scoring ten goals, not nine or eleven. But to get that right as often as possible means either the refs replay every single goal, or the coaches have as many challenges as they want. Coaches challenges can take a fair bit of time which disrupts any flow the game has and kills any momentum for either team. It’s also boring for fans, particularly those on TV who might leave to watch something else. We have to balance “getting all the calls right” with “don’t disrupt the flow of the game”, and so we limit the number of challenges.

Refs are human and so they’re going to make mistakes from time to time and we accept that. That’s why the challenges exist. But for a team to be able to handcuff the opposing coach and not their own is too much of an advantage, in my opinion. Suppose we said that the home team should get four challenges and the visiting team only two. Or that the visiting team is allowed one fewer coach on the bench. Nobody would accept those changes. But somehow it’s OK if the home team gets better insight through technology as to when to use their challenges?

The home team already gets a number of advantages, as I listed above, though most are “intangible”. But this one is not and in my opinion gives the home team too much of an advantage. The goal should be to get calls correct, as many as possible, so that the players decide the outcome, not honest mistakes made by the referees (who also have to make goal/no-goal calls in real time). To make this process more fair, replays for all goals should be put up on the video screen as soon as possible, and we should tweak the rules for challenges so that all coaches have a chance to see the replay before deciding whether or not to challenge.

Yesterday I began a list of changes I’d like to see in the NLL next season. There were only two but they got kind of long so I broke the rest out into today’s article. Did I miss any? Leave a comment with your 2017 wish list!

Better schedule – Some teams had a great schedule in 2016. The Stealth had a bye in week one and then played exactly one game per week until week 18. The Bandits played twice in weeks 8 and 16 and only missed weeks 1 and 12.

But the Black Wolves played twice in one weekend four times and had four bye weekends. Between March 25 and April 9 (16 days), they played five games. Rochester played their fifth game on Feb 13, the same night the Mammoth played their eighth. The Rock and Rush played in Toronto one night and Saskatoon the next. Creating a schedule when many of the teams in your league are the second- or third-highest ranking tenant in their building is challenging but it’d be nice if it was a little more balanced. And since this is a wish list, let’s hope for all Friday and Saturday games.

And like every other year, it’d be nice if Eastern teams played more games out west and Western teams played more games in the east. Of course, that increases travel costs quite a bit and so I suppose it’s not likely to happen.

The Rock won’t suck – It sounds like Josh Sanderson is done as an NLL player, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Colin Doyle retires before next season as well. That puts the Rock down two strong lefty forwards. While I’m sure guys like Dan Lintner (though he’s a righty) and Turner Evans are looking forward to more floor time, I imagine the Rock may be looking for other solutions. But barring a trade for Shawn Evans or Adam Jones (and I know Evans is a righty but I imagine they could still make it work), the Rock may be in for some offensive struggles for a season or two.

Then again, you may remember back in the summer of 2010 when the Calgary Roughnecks lost two of their biggest offensive threats in the same offseason – Tracey Kelusky and, coincidentally, Josh Sanderson. We all thought that the Roughies were in for a rough (see what I did there?) 2011 season but they ended up 11-5 and won the West. Why? Well, some of it was a rookie named Curtis Dickson, some of it was Kaleb Toth and MVP Jeff Shattler each increasing their offensive output by 50% from 2010, and some of it was the addition of Cory Conway and Daryl Veltman. They didn’t replace two superstars with other superstars (though Dickson eventually became a superstar), but the changes they made were more than enough.

It might be a tall order for the Rock to win the East next year without Sanderson and Doyle but if one of Lintner and Evans turns into Curtis Dickson, Hellyer and Leblanc score 171 and 105 points respectively, and the Rock bring in two other 50-point scorers, they could be fine. Of course I’m kidding here, but the point is that while it will be tough, the Rock could still have a successful season despite losing Josh and Colin. It’s far too early to make a prediction either way, but again, this is my wish list, not a prediction list.

Gains in Swarm, Black Wolves attendance – Another wish that is not a prediction, unfortunately. Perhaps the fact that both teams made the playoffs in 2016 will help to increase attendance, but there have been too many teams whose on-floor success was not correlated with butts in seats to really believe that. In fact, you can look at the Black Wolves themselves: In 2015 when they were 4-14, they averaged 3915 per game. In 2016 when they were 10-8 and made the playoffs, their attendance actually went down by about 160. Their two lowest attended games of the year were their third-last and last games, meaning that they had already cemented themselves as a playoff-bound team. Didn’t matter.

The Swarm averaged 4668 per game, almost a thousand more than New England but about half of the 2015 Minnesota Swarm. The off-season build-up seemed to work – they had over 9000 out to the first home game. But the very next game it dropped to 4850 and pretty much dropped steadily after that to a low of 2957 in the second-last game, and then jumped again to about 5300 in their last game.

Part of the problem in both cases was the schedule. The Swarm went from January 18 to March 17 – TWO FULL MONTHS – with a single home game. Each team also had three Sunday games, which are rarely good for attendance. In contrast, the Bandits, Knighthawks, Mammoth, Rush, and Stealth had NO Sunday home games. The Rock and Roughnecks had one each. If we can get rid of the Sunday (and Monday and Thursday) games, surely that will help with attendance as well.

Both the Black Wolves and Swarm are young, talented, and exciting teams to watch. The Wolves have one of the best players in the league – last year’s MVP and possibly this year’s as well. The Swarm have a crop of young players who have the potential of turning into one of the best offenses the league has seen in many years. If each team can beef up their local and social media presence, community involvement, etc. maybe they can get those attendance numbers up to the 6000-7000 range, ironically where the Philadelphia Wings and Minnesota Swarm were in their final years.

At the end of the 2015 season, I posted a list (Part 1 and Part 2) of my wishes for this past season. As expected, some of my wishes came true while others didn’t. In fact, one of them didn’t (the Edmonton Rush did not stay in Edmonton) but I think things actually turned out better overall than if it had.

So let’s do this again. Some of the wishes that didn’t come true last year will carry over – I’m still hoping for a new hi-def camera setup for Rochester – but I’m not going to list all the wishes again. Again, remember that this is a wish list, not things I think will happen.

Just like last year, it got kinda long so I’m splitting it into two articles.

NLLTV for all games – The league experimented with this new video streaming service in the playoffs this year and I have to say, I was impressed. The feeds were solid, the picture and sound were great, and the games were (mostly) easy to find. The ability to rewind and fast forward the stream, go back 10 seconds with a single button click, play in slow-motion, and then rejoin the game live are invaluable. Best of all, you can watch games after the fact: the next day, a week later, or whatever. This replay ability alone is worth the switch, but given all the other advantages, it’s a no-brainer.

Ideally, this will be available for all games next season for free, but I suspect this will be a pay service. Maybe they’ll give you 3 free games and then you have to start paying, which would help to get new fans interested (or at least it wouldn’t immediately turn them away). Maybe there will be a “season ticket” package for each team, and a “golden ticket” package for those of us who will watch any and all games. I can’t speak for anyone else but as long as it’s not going to cost me $100 for the season and the quality stays high, I’ll pay it.

Expansion – I did mention this last year, but I’m going to list it again. Given the number of NLL-calibre players that did not play in 2016, spent the season on the practice roster, or were cut mid-season, I think the league could definitely support two more teams.

The league has a new commissioner who has been talking about expansion a lot, so I’d be very surprised if we don’t have at least a couple of new teams by 2018, and possibly 2017. Oddly, I haven’t heard any significant rumours of where the league might expand, so Mr. Sakiewicz is playing it pretty close to the vest.

But where to put them…? How about Edmonton and Minnesota, for starters? Both the Rush and Swarm had decent (though not great) crowds but finances were their downfalls. I wrote last year about NHL ownership, and I think an Edmonton team owned by the Oilers and a Minnesota team owned by the Wild would be pretty successful. It might be tough for Edmonton fans to go from the Championship Rush to an expansion team that will probably be terrible for the first couple of years – they’ve already had more than their share of “sucky expansion team” years. Lucky Minnesota fans won’t have to worry about that – the Swarm were never that good anyway. If you want to call that “lucky”.

Other possibilities: the Portland LumberJax failed but not due to low attendance, so with the right ownership, Portland could work. I might consider giving Philadelphia another shot. Boston too, with the right arena deal.

As for new NLL cities, I have no idea. But then again, nobody else does either without having done a ton of market research. Looking solely at population hasn’t worked (right New York? Chicago? Anaheim?), and lacrosse popularity hasn’t worked either (right Baltimore? Albany? Syracuse? Vancouver?). On the other hand, few expected Saskatoon to be successful because it had neither population nor lacrosse popularity. Denver is a big city but I’m not sure the popularity there was expected either. To find the next NLL success story, we need a lot of market research and a little bit of luck.