Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In a higher-scoring game than you might have expected, the Bandits got by the Mammoth by a single goal in game one of the NLL Championship Finals in Buffalo. In game two, the Bandits took a lead in the first half, but the hometown Mammoth came back and won by a few goals. Buffalo took far more penalties than Colorado in that game. Game three will be in Banditland to decide it all.

So, am I talking about the 2022 or 2023 Finals? Yup.

If game three goes the same way this year as it did last year, then the Mammoth will be hoisting their second straight NLL Cup. Of course, the comparisons to last year’s Finals are interesting but have no real predictive value. The Bandits will have learned from last year’s loss and won’t make the same mistakes twice. Then again, the Mammoth also learned a lot about the Bandits in the last two games and might be able to force the Bandits to make all new mistakes. The Bandits are essentially the same team as last year (though they may or may not be without Josh Byrne), while this year’s Mammoth has both Eli McLaughlin and Ryan Lee but is missing Joey Cupido.

Game 1

Game 1 started off looking like it was going to be a Bandits blowout. They went up 4-0, including a Dhane Smith hat-trick in the first eight minutes of the game, and kept Colorado off the board for over ten minutes. Smith would score another later in the first quarter, but Colorado managed to solve Matt Vinc to some extent, and the quarter ended with Buffalo having the slimmest of leads. The second quarter was the reverse of the first, with Colorado outscoring Buffalo 4-2 and going into halftime with a one-goal lead.

The swap continued in the second half as Buffalo scored five of the six goals scored in the third quarter to take a 12-9 lead and then Colorado took over in the fourth, scoring three of the four goals in that quarter. The last five minutes of the game were played with the Mammoth down by one. Nobody would have been surprised to see overtime, but the Bandits defense and Matt Vinc decided against that course of action and managed to prevent that game-tying goal.

This was a classic NLL playoff game where both teams looked dominant at different times, both teams held leads, and the game went right down to the wire. Buffalo held the lead for over 46 minutes while the Mammoth only led for less than four minutes, but the game was much closer than that makes it sound.

Game 2

Game 2 started like game 1, with Buffalo taking the lead and not allowing Colorado to score for over ten minutes. But the comparisons basically end there as Ryan Lee scored a couple at the beginning of the second quarter to give the Mammoth a lead they would never give up. Buffalo just couldn’t get by the Mammoth defense, who did a great job of blocking shots and knocking down passes. When they did manage to get a good look at the net, they couldn’t solve Dillon Ward. The Bandits also soaked their share of shots – the stats say there were 10 blocked shots in each of the two games, but it certainly seemed like more than that.

Waaaay back in the early 2000’s, I was active on the Wingszone forums, an online community dedicated to the NLL. It was eventually bought by Inside Lacrosse and is still running today. I’ve since lost interest and haven’t been there in years – I find twitter much more interesting. But back in the early days there was a Bandits fan (I forget who) who would post his “Keys to the game” before every Bandits game – three things he figured the team should focus on to assure a Bandits victory. The first two were usually dependent on their opponents: shut down the other team’s transition, focus on preventing player X from being dominant, take lots of outside shots on goalie Y, that kind of thing. For every single game, the third key was always “NO DUMB PENALTIES”, always in caps. It’s been a Bandits thing for a very long time. People used to talk about “Banditball” as being the style of lacrosse that the Bandits played – nobody ever really defined it, but it was basically high-scoring and tough but not always disciplined lacrosse. Game two saw the return of Banditball, except for the high-scoring part.

Nothing that happened in this game was specific to the Bandits, of course. Many teams get frustrated and emotional when they can’t score or are getting dominated. Sometimes they can keep their emotions in check, but other times emotions get the better of them and discipline starts to waver. The Bandits took 38 minutes in penalties while the Mammoth only took 16. I saw Bandits fans saying that Colorado got away with a lot while the Bandits didn’t; I didn’t notice that and fans of a team are always going to say the other team got away with stuff while they didn’t. But if that was true (or if the Bandits believed it was true), that’s even more reason for the Bandits to get frustrated. There were no crazy brawls or anything – we had a single misconduct and no major penalties at all – but it did seem like there was at least one Bandit in the penalty box for most of the second half. The Mammoth scored five power play goals while the Bandits scored four so the actual power play goals weren’t a huge issue, but it’s hard to try and mount a comeback when you are continually trying to kill penalties.

Game three, the final game of the 2023 season, goes this Saturday in Buffalo. No word on whether Josh Byrne will return for the Bandits, but that would be a huge confidence booster for them. Game two was the confidence booster that the Mammoth needed, so this game will feature two confident and well-coached teams with two of the best goaltenders in the game, excellent defense, and deep offenses with the potential to be explosive, all in front of the loudest fans in the league. This will be a hell of a game.