Quick game report today, done in the format of the Addicted to Lacrosse podcast: Here are some awesome things about the game and some not-so-awesome things.

Awesome

• Nick Rose. Was strong the whole game, but particularly in the last couple of minutes. Nick doesn’t always look like he’s having a great game because he always sets up well, so shots tend to hit him even if he doesn’t move. You might say “that’s just because he’s a big guy standing in front of a relatively small net”, but if that was all it took, every NLL team would be signing sumo wrestlers as goalies. I’ve heard a lot of fans, particularly Rock fans strangely enough, talk about Rose like he’s some hack that gets lucky a lot because the ball hits him. Listen to players being interviewed and asked about Rose, particularly opposing players. They respect him and none think he’s just lucky.
• Big night from the Dans. Dan Lintner is the new Sandy Chapman, in that he’s always working his tail off, and he got a couple of nice goals to show for it. Dan Craig had his second hat-trick of the year including a Dan Lintner-esque dunk. The Seals’ Dan Dawson didn’t score but had four assists.
• Rock secondary offense – no goals from Adam Jones, and only one each from Hellyer and Schreiber, but still ended up with 12.
• Challen Rogers was hustling all night as well. Seemed that on 75% of the turnovers, it was Rogers who headed up the floor with the ball, and he had two or three transition chances in the first quarter alone.
• Cam Holding was everywhere. If they tracked playing time in the NLL, Holding and Rogers would likely have led their teams.

Not Awesome

• Tom Schreiber went 36 straight games without a penalty to start his NLL career. He’s had one in every game since. Goon. (In case you missed the joke, his penalty in this game was his first ever.)
• Adam Jones’s penalty near the end of the fourth was surprising. Jones has never struck me as a violent and hard-hitting kind of guy, though he takes more than his share of hits. But it looked like he made no attempt at all to avoid hitting Scigliano. That was Jones’s first penalty of the year.

Other game notes:

• If you’re attending a game and someone else you know is attending the game as well, God forbid you don’t stand up and wave at them. Can you imagine going to a game and you know someone else at the game and you don’t wave? Monster. Anyway, when you do this, do it at halftime. Or between quarters. But for crying out loud, don’t stand up DURING PLAY and wave at your friend. I’m amazed that I have to actually say that.
• A Seals goal was scored in the third (don’t remember whose) that was waved off initially but the Seals challenged the call. After watching the replay, we couldn’t really figure out why it was waved off in the first place. If it was a crease violation, the ref would have pointed down to the crease, but he didn’t; he made what looked like a sort of cross-checking motion, but I didn’t recognize it as a standard signal. After the review, the ref said that the shooter released the ball before making contact, so we have a good goal. But contact with what? If it’s the ground he’s talking about, it doesn’t matter when the shooter releases the ball, it’s whether the ball crosses the goal line before the shooter touches the ground. I don’t think the shooter touched the goalie at all, so that’s not an issue, nor did he touch the goal itself. As far as I could tell, it was a good goal from the beginning. I didn’t see why it was waved off, nor did I understand the ref’s description of why it was overturned.