This has been a very busy off-season in the NLL. I wrote back in August about a whole bunch of changes, and now only a month later, there are a whole bunch more. And that’s not even considering the 2023 entry draft which just happened. Let’s have a look at the big deals and changes across the league, and one thing that’s not part of the NLL but affects a lot of NLL people: the Mann Cup.

We still have a couple of months until training camps start, so don’t be surprised if there’s an Off-season report, Part III.

Calgary hires Shooter

It didn’t take the Calgary Roughnecks that long to announce their new Head Coach after Curt Malawsky signed with Vancouver: former Roughneck player Josh Sanderson has been given the job. Sanderson will also be the assistant GM, and comes from San Diego where he was formerly an assistant coach under Patrick Merrill. Sanderson is also an NLL Hall of Famer, having been inducted in 2016 along with other NLL coaches Tracey Kelusky and John Tavares.

Brodie Merrill retires

The second sure-fire no-question-about-it future Hall-of-Famer to retire this offseason, after Dan Dawson, was Brodie Merrill. Brodie came storming into the league in 2006 as the first-overall draft pick (as his brother Patrick was three years earlier). He was both Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year that season – think about that: the best defensive player in the league was a rookie. A Rookie of the Year winner also winning another major award that year had only ever happened once before, as Taylor Wray won both Defensive Player and Rookie in 2004, and hasn’t happened since.

Merrill then won Transition Player of the Year (which didn’t exist in his rookie season) in 2009, 2010, and 2017. He could run, he could play defense, he could fight, he could score, he could probably quarterback your offense if you asked him to, he was big, he was smart, and he was a leader. He played for five teams in his career; he was captain of four of them and alternate captain of the fifth (in his third season in the league).

Merrill is one of the most accomplished lacrosse players in history, but one thing that eluded him was an NLL Championship. He went to the finals twice, in 2008 with the LumberJax and in 2015 with the Rock, but never managed to win a title. Does anyone care, other than Brodie? No. He’s one of the best examples of why, in any team sport, the number of Championships you won has nothing to do with how good a player you were.

And in my opinion, his most amazing play wasn’t even in the NLL. It was a goal scored in the MLL in 2016, shot from the entire length of a lacrosse field away from the goal – as PLL stats guy Joe Keegan pointed out, the PLL field is no longer big enough to make that shot possible. Not only did that buzzer-beater tie the game, but Merrill’s Cannons won it in OT.

Congratulations on an outstanding career, Brodie.

Free agent signings

A few more pretty big names are changing teams:

• Former Knighthawks captain Paul Dawson and former Panther City defender Nate Wade have both signed with the Mammoth. Dawson is 6’5″ and Wade is 6’2″ so the Mammoth D just got bigger and tougher.
• Tyler Digby signs with PCLC. Digby is also a very large man but will have more of an impact on the Panther City offense than their defense. Digby has bounced around a bit recently. He played one season in New England in 2019, then split the shortened 2020 season between New York and Colorado. In 2022, he also played in New York and Colorado but in the other order, and then played a full season with the Riptide in 2023. He played with Callum Crawford in both New England and New York, so you gotta know Bob Hamley asked Crawford about Digby before signing him, and wouldn’t have if Crawford gave the thumbs down.
• Shortly after hiring former Vancouver coach Troy Cordingley as their new assistant coach, Calgary signed former Vancouver forward Logan Schuss. I doubt those two events were unrelated. Schuss missed more than half of last year with an injury but assuming he’s fully healed, he could have a big impact on the Calgary offense.

Trades

No blockbusters here but one was pretty impactful on draft day.

• The Rush, Bandits and Riptide made a three-way trade: the Rush get Nathaniel Kozevnikov from Buffalo, the Bandits get Steve Orleman and two 2nd round draft picks, and the Riptide get Austin Madronic and a 3rd round pick. The Riptide must have a lot of confidence in Cam Dunkerley to give up their starting goalie from last year, while Orleman’s opinions are probably split – he goes from being a starter to being a backup again, but for a 24-year-old goalie to be able to learn from the legendary Matt Vinc is likely a dream come true.
• Speaking of legendary goalies, the Seals managed to convince Mike Poulin to come out of retirement. Seals President Steve Govett confirmed that Poulin is going to play for the Seals, not coach. I doubt Poulin will be the everyday goalie but he will be an excellent mentor and backup for Chris Origlieri.
• For the second straight year, the Albany Firewolves traded away their leading scorer from the previous season. Last year it was Joe Resetarits (as well as their next top four scorers), and this year they sent Connor Kelly to the Mammoth for the 14th overall draft pick. With that pick, they chose Nicholas Volkov, a defender. Of course, they also drafted Dyson Williams, who could possibly be their leading scorer next year.
• The draft day trade I mentioned was the Desert Dogs sending Jackson Suboch and both the 4th overall and 9th overall picks to Vancouver in exchange for Jonathan Gagliardi and the 2nd overall pick. Three top ten draft picks in the same draft exchanged in one trade? That’s a big deal. With the second pick, Las Vegas chose lefty forward Adam Poitras, who GM Shawn Williams was apparently very excited about. The Warriors are rebuilding so getting two first round picks is good for them. They got forward Payton Cormier and Vancouver-born defender Brayden Laity with those picks.

Saskatchewan Rush rebrand

No name change like the Vancouver Stealth / Warriors a few years ago, but the Rush unveiled a new logo. The colours are the same (can you imagine the Rush abandoning Rider green?) but now they have a bison head (also in the shape of a lacrosse head) as part of the logo. The new font design is not all that exciting but the bison head has quickly grown on me, and the jerseys look sharp.

Shawn and Dyson Williams

How awesome is it that Shawn Williams was inducted into the NLL Hall of Fame on Friday and the very next day, his son was drafted first overall? The only thing that might have made that better would be if Shawn were the GM that was able to draft Dyson, but it didn’t happen. Regardless, it was an incredible weekend for the Williams family, and I am really looking forward to watching what Dyson does with the FireWolves. #BraverThanBrave

Mann Cup

First off, congratulations to the Six Nations Chiefs on their Mann Cup victory, and also to the New Westminster Salmonbellies for not only making it to the Mann Cup in the first place, but for putting up a solid fight against an excellent team. Yes, the series ended 4-1 but each game was close and there was never a moment until the very end of the series where you thought “the Bellies can’t come back from this”.

While the series was very entertaining, there was a lot of talk about the options for watching the games. There was only one streaming option for the Mann Cup, and that was $20 per game or four games for $70. If the series went seven games, it would have cost you at least $130 to watch them all. Tickets to see the game live at the arena were cheaper.

Yes, I know it costs good money to provide a quality broadcast, and the quality of the broadcast was excellent, but $20 to watch a single game is expensive. Before the NLL games were on TSN+, it cost about $45 to watch every game for an entire season. This was the exact opposite of “Grow the game”, as there was absolutely no hope of getting new lacrosse fans to watch any of the games. Even hard-core lacrosse fans were put off by the cost. I did pay for it and watched all five games, but there weren’t as many conversations on Twitter as there usually are, because there just weren’t a lot of people who ponied up the bucks to watch.

Obviously Lacrosse Canada (or the CLA or whoever runs the Mann Cup now – I’ve lost track) didn’t get enough sponsors to reduce the cost. That said, there were lots of ads on the boards and even ads that popped up on the screen during play (grrrrr) saying “this game sponsored by <company>”. Does that mean that without all of those sponsors, the games might have been more expensive? That’s a scary thought.