It’s been over two and a half months since the Bandits took home the NLL Cup. Many teams have been busy making changes they deem necessary to be able to do the same next season. Here are some thoughts on some of the bigger moves made in the off-season so far.

Mark Matthews heads to the Rock

After ten seasons, over 1000 points (regular season + playoffs), three Championships, a Rookie of the Year award, an MVP award, and a Championship MVP award, Mark Matthews has left the Rush organization to play at home. The Oshawa-born Matthews was traded to the Toronto Rock in exchange for Zach Manns, Adam Jay, and a 2023 first-round pick. Matthews was acquired to essentially replace the legendary Dan Dawson who announced his retirement a couple of months ago. It’s not an exact replacement since they play on opposite sides of the floor, but they are both big bodies who have nearly unmatched scoring ability. Both can take over a game by scoring a bunch of goals, but they are both just as likely to have a “quiet” game and still pick up seven assists.

Matthews is one of only four players to have 100+ points in five or more seasons (Shawn Evans and Josh Sanderson both had five, and Dhane Smith has had six), and one of only two (Evans) to do it in five consecutive seasons. His numbers have dropped a little since his last 100+ point season in 2019 but honestly, 92 in 2022 and 98 in 2023 is barely a drop at all. At 33, Matthews still has a lot of good years left in him and now that he’s feeding (and getting fed by) guys like Tom Schreiber and Corey Small, I wouldn’t expect his numbers to drop any further.

As an aside: is there a more respected player in lacrosse than Dan Dawson? Not just for his playing ability, but also for his leadership, the way he gives back to the fans, his community, and the lacrosse community in general, and just for being a good down-to-earth and humble dude. I’ve never heard a bad word said about him.

Curt Malawsky goes home to Vancouver

You don’t often use the term “blockbuster” in a deal that involves a coach and no players, but you could be forgiven for using it here. In a huge coup, the Warriors managed to sign Curt Malawsky away from the Roughnecks where he’d been the head coach for more than a decade, winning a Championship in 2019 and the Les Bartley award last year. Malawsky is from Coquitlam, BC, and is still active in the BC lacrosse scene, so it appears that he decided the time had come in his career to move home. He’s got his work cut out for him – the Warriors/Stealth have won more than 6 games in a season only once since they moved to Vancouver in 2014 – but despite only having the job for a month, he’s also signed some significant free agents already. Could we see a significant turnaround in Vancouver this season? Time will tell but Malawsky’s not sitting still so far.

One interesting thing about this move is that legendary NLL coach Troy Cordingley, who’s seen success everywhere he’s been (he’s one of a very few NLL coaches to win Championships with two different teams), was given the keys to the Warriors kingdom. The team had some highs and lows in 2023 but missed the playoffs and had a worse record than 2022. To see Cordingley not succeed in Vancouver is a bit surprising. That said, he was only in charge for one season. If he had three or four years, perhaps he could have turned the Warriors into a contender in the West. Maybe the Warriors brass disagree, or they feel that Malawsky can get it done faster. Or maybe both could but they’d prefer a local boy do it rather than a dreaded Ontario guy.

Free agents

A number of players seem optimistic about the Warriors’ hiring of Curt Malawsky, and a few big-name free agents have signed there. Free agency has only been open for a few weeks but they’ve already signed defenders Ryan Dilks, John Lintz, and Matt Beers, and also convinced another BC boy, Kevin Crowley, to return home. Much-hyped rookie defender Owen Grant will be making his debut with the Warriors this season, so Grant along with Reid Bowering, Dilks, Lintz, and Beers make the Vancouver defense very solid. The addition of a quarterback like Crowley could add a few points to everyone’s stat lines up front. The offense might still need a boost but if Evans returns and Logan Schuss is healthy, they should still be improved over last year’s squad, who had the third-fewest goals scored in the league.

The Riptide improved their defense with a couple of veteran signings, adding Mitch Wilde and John LaFontaine to the mix. They did lose Dan MacRae to retirement, but the addition of Kiel Matisz through a trade (more details below) can also help their back end if that’s where they decide to play him.

The NLL Hall of Fame returns

Back in June of 2021, the NLL announced the newest members of the NLL Hall of Fame. Obviously, this was deep in the heart of the pandemic, so no ceremony was held or scheduled. In early August, the induction ceremony for the class of 2021 was finally announced, but enough time had passed since the announcement that I forgot it even happened. Being elected to any Hall of Fame is a huge deal, so I apologize to the inductees for having forgotten. The inductees are John Grant Jr., Colin Doyle, Steve Toll, Shawn Williams, Casey Powell, Regy Thorpe, Kevin Finneran, and Pat McCready, as well as long-time referees Roy Condon and Bill Fox. Anytime you get people inducted into the Hall of Fame, it’s an amazing group of players – that’s the whole point. But because there are so many going in at one time, this looks like it might be the best HOF class ever.

Big trades

With the possible exception of the Matthews trade I already mentioned, the biggest trade of the off-season so far featured three teams. In addition to some draft picks changing hands (nothing higher than second round), the Riptide end up with Kiel Matisz and Matt Anderson, the Wings get Scott Dominey and Mike McCannell, and the Seals get Trevor Baptiste and the rights to Kyle Jackson. Matt Anderson has zero NLL games to his credit so I can’t comment on him, but Kiel Matisz has played ten NLL seasons, was the captain of the Wings, has championship experience, was nominated for Transition Player of the Year in 2019, and can play anywhere on the floor. In the one season where the Time on Floor statistic was kept (2020), Matisz led the league by a fairly wide margin. Very few teams would turn down the chance to have Matisz in their lineup.

Baptiste gives the Seals a proven face-off guy, something they didn’t have last season at all – their two FO guys last year were Danny Logan and Eli Gobrecht, who combined to win 40% of their face-offs. We can argue again and again about whether face-offs are meaningful but regardless of that, Baptiste is a great all-around athlete and has turned himself from a pure FOGO into a very good defender. If the Seals get the Kyle Jackson who excelled with the Knighthawks, that will be a big boost to their offense. Jackson was less productive with the Thunderbirds in 2020 and 2022 and was traded to the Wings but didn’t play last season. I think there were job commitments involved in why he didn’t play, but I have no idea if that is still an issue.

What I don’t exactly get is why the Wings made this move. Baptiste has reportedly relocated out west and asked the Wings to do this, so kudos to them for making it happen, but they seemed to end up on the short end of the stick here. Don’t get me wrong, I think Scott Dominey is a great player, and maybe Paul Day has high expectations of Mike McCannell. Dominey and McCannell for Baptiste or Matisz is reasonable to me, but losing both seems like a high price to pay.

The other big trade was the Rush sending the rights to UFA Kyle Rubisch and a couple of draft picks to the Seals for goaltender Frank Scigliano. Rubisch’s last of his four Defender of the Year awards was eight years ago but he’s been a finalist in that category four times since then. Make no mistake, Rubisch is still one of the top defenders in the league and makes an already stingy Seals defense that much better. Derek Keenan nailed it (as you would expect) in the trade announcement: goaltending in Saskatchewan has been inconsistent over the last few years. Scigliano will bring a consistency and stability to the Rush net that they haven’t seen in a while.

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There are other changes not covered here, and I’m sure there will be more coming, but I’m going to break here for now. I will continue with Part II later, nearer the beginning of training camps.