Another weekend of exciting games, including all the teams that didn’t play in week one, so every team has played now. The two teams that met in the Championship last season both lost to teams that were a combined 11-25 last season, the Knighthawks and FireWolves continue their hot start, the Desert Dogs grab victory from the jaws of defeat, and the Rock, Swarm, and Seals begin their seasons with wins.

Awesome

Nick Rose

Rosey had an outstanding game on Saturday night, allowing 7 goals on 45 shots and looking like the Nick Rose that should have won Goaltender of the Year last year (or the year before) and has been a contender for the last several. Maybe it’s the fact that Rose has never won an NLL Championship, but it seems that a lot of people think of him as pretty good but not elite. Rose is the only starting goaltender in the NLL who has had a sub-10.00 GAA and an over-80% save percentage in each of the last three seasons. Neither Matt Vinc nor Christian Del Bianco has ever done that. In fact, Rose has done it four times (2015, 2020, 2022, 2023) and is the only goalie to have done it more than twice. Sorry, this is the second article in a row where I go on and on about why Nick Rose should get more respect around the league. I’ll try and tone it down in future. Actually nah, I probably won’t.

Four first-ever goals in Wings/Rock game

For the Rock, rookies Tyler Hendryks and Justin Martin (not the Justin Martin that plays for the Bandits, a different one) both scored their first career goals in their first career games. For the Wings, Taggart Clark did the same and Mitchell Armstrong scored his first in his second career game. I love seeing a player get that milestone first career goal. Whether they score 500 more over a Hall of Fame career or never score again, it’s always awesome to see a player’s excitement when they get that first one. It’s even more awesome to see his teammates’ excitement as they congratulate him.

Albany

The FireWolves took down the defending champion Bandits after their first week win over Las Vegas. Doug Jamieson didn’t have a great game, with 13 goals against and a save percentage under 72%, but it was good enough. Rookie Alex Simmons scored five, Marshall Powless picked up a hat-trick, and six other players recorded one or two goals as the new-look FireWolves (we say that every year) laid a beating on Matt Vinc. Lemme tell ya, you have to be playing pretty well to be able to use that phrase.

Remember that Albany beat the Bandits early last season as well, and ended up with all of three wins on the season. Let’s not get too crazy, they’re not in the playoffs yet, but they’re 2-0 to start the season and they did defeat the reigning Champs so let’s not dismiss their hot start either.

Georgia

The Swarm had a pretty crappy 2023 season. They started 0-7 but then went 8-3 the rest of the way and almost made the playoffs, which sounds pretty good on paper. But if you look again, only one of those eight wins was against a team that made the playoffs (Halifax, who ended up 10-8). The other wins were against Philly (9-9), Saskatchewan (8-10), the Riptide twice (5-13) and Albany three times (3-15). In a weird scheduling quirk, only 4 of the Swarm’s final 11 games were against playoff teams, and they went 1-3 in those games. So the fact that they turned their season around is great, but it’s not as if they were taking out powerhouse teams.

It’s only been one game, but 2024 is starting a lot better than 2023. Yes, the Mammoth were hurting a bit, without Dillon Ward and Joey Cupido (and Ryan Lee out for the season) but they’re still a team that went to the Championship in each of the last two seasons. But Brett Dobson showed no sign of a sophomore slump in the net, while the offense spread things out nicely with Lyle Thompson leading the way. That’s been a pretty good formula for Swarm wins for a few years now. Similar to Albany, let’s keep our excitement in check for the moment but Georgia fans can be optimistic – this time, they did take out a powerhouse team.

The ending of the Las Vegas / Panther City game

This was a very even game all the way through, with nobody dominating. Every time you thought one team might be grabbing some momentum, the other team would take it right back. Goaltending was solid, defenses were good, and Las Vegas was looking like they’ve taken some big steps from their debut season last year. Panther City took a lead with 1:43 to go, but you knew this was coming down to the wire. Then just when it looked like the Desert Dogs weren’t going to be able to pull this one out of the fire, Sean Westley scores the quintessential buzzer-beater with 0.8 seconds left. It was so close that when they went to review, I had no idea whether it was going to count or not. Clearly the ball went in but there was no clock on the screen at the time so we couldn’t tell whether it had crossed the line in time. It had.

Then less than three minutes into overtime, Zack Greer scored to finish it for the Desert Dogs, giving them their first win of the season.

Panther City thought they had the game won until there was less than a second left. You can’t blame PCLC for taking their foot off the gas near the end, because they didn’t. Both teams played a full 60 minutes, and then a bit more.

Not Awesome

Panther City attendance

Continuing from last year, it looked from the broadcast like the Panther City attendance was in the triple digits. I have heard a lot of great things about the arena, they have a young, exciting, and successful team, their social media presence is strong, and yet they get nobody out to the games. Something’s gotta change in Fort Worth pretty soon; with attendance this low, I just don’t see this franchise surviving after this season.