So many games! There were seven games in week 5, and every team except Panther City was active. When there are this many games going on, there’s bound to be a lot of awesomeness around the league, and some not-awesomeness as well. As I’ve said before, I try to stay mostly positive, so here are a few examples of each but more awesome than not.

Awesome

Ryan Benesch

In what might be his final season in the NLL (I have seen nothing official but I did read that somewhere), Benesch is showing no signs of slowing down. On Friday night, he scored six goals on eight shots and added a couple of assists. It’s interesting when you see a player that’s having a great night – his teammates will notice and try to take advantage of it. A couple of times a Thunderbird forward had a half-decent shot available but elected to pass to Benesch instead, likely figuring “He’s hot, so let him take the shot”. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t but the logic seems solid. Regardless, Beni, who will turn 39 at the end of January, is leading the Thunderbirds in goals and tied for second in points. Benesch has never won an NLL Championship so if this is his last season, I’d love to see the Thunderbirds win it all so he can finally hoist that trophy and go out on the highest of high notes.

Cody Jamieson

Another guy closer to the end of his career than the beginning, Cody Jamieson is also still a force on the floor. For years with the old Knighthawks, Jamieson was the guy on the floor. Many if not most plays went through him but as he’s gotten older, his role has changed. He can still score plenty of goals, but he’s happy to let Staats, Benesch, Shanks, and Petterson do as much of the scoring as he does. He may not get the spotlight as much as he used to, but he’s still a scoring threat and that team-first attitude is part of why he’s been one of the most respected players in the game for over a decade.

Joey Res

In 2018, Joe Resetarits became the first American-born player to score 100 points in a season, and then he did it again in 2022 (still the only American to do it) and 2023 (joined by Tom Schreiber). Only 10 other players in the history of the league have scored 100+ points in three different seasons. On Friday night, Resetarits hit another significant milestone, passing NLL Hall-of-Famer Casey Powell to become the highest-scoring American-born player in NLL History with 675 career points. Resetarits is only 34 so assuming he stays healthy, he has lots of time to bump that number even further. There seem to be more and more American-born players coming into the league each year, and the success of guys like Resetarits and Schreiber shows them that Americans can be just as impactful in the box game as the Canadian-born Jeff Teats and Dhane Smiths and Mitch Joneses of the league. Congratulations to Joey Res on this remarkable accomplishment.

Zach Higgins

It’s not often that a goalie who allowed 15 goals is talked about as giving one of the best goalie performances of the week, especially when there was a 9-8 game on the same night. But Higgins was outstanding on Friday night, facing a whopping 68 shots and making 53 saves (including two in overtime). Yes, that’s a lot of goals to give up, but if Higgins hadn’t played as well as he did, the Wings would have been out of this game long before regulation ended, and certainly would not have won it.

Carmen Massel

Massel made history this past weekend as the shot-clock operator in San Diego, making her the first female official in NLL history. NLL ref Todd Labranche said in an interview a few months ago that all new officials start as a shot-clock operator, and I have no idea if Massel has aspirations of being an on-floor ref, but it doesn’t really matter. She’s already broken a major gender barrier and that’s fantastic. If she eventually becomes the first female on-floor ref in NLL history, even better. I hope she can be an inspiration to other female officials (as well as players) and a few years from now, we’ll have a bunch of women running NLL games. This weekend’s event is a big deal, but we need to remember that the end goal is to make it not a big deal. Congratulations to Carmen and I hope to see her either on the floor or in the scorekeeper’s box in many future games.

Tyler Carlson

Backup goalies have a very tough job. Either you sit on the bench and feel like your biggest contribution is handling the door, or you have to come in cold when the starting goalie is not playing his best. You’re the Plan B and there is no Plan C. No pressure.

Dillon Ward did not have his greatest game ever, and was pulled less than nine minutes into this one. Carlson went in and played the rest of the game, plus four minutes of overtime, allowing just six goals on 33 shots. 33 shots is not an awful lot, so thanks to the Mammoth D for preventing many of the shots that didn’t happen (or soaking some of the ones that did), but I don’t want to minimize how well Carlson played when it counted. Carlson was simply excellent, including stopping a one-on-one near the end of the fourth to keep it tied. The look on his face when Keegan Bal seemed to score the game-winner in overtime was heartbreaking, but the goal was disallowed, allowing the Mammoth a second chance. The Mammoth were down 5-0 less than five minutes in, and were down 11-5 at the half, but managed to keep the Warriors off the board for the final 34:24 of the game. An amazing defensive performance.

Not Awesome

Injuries, particularly head injuries

Somehow I did not read anything about Rylan Hartley’s injury last week before I published my weekly report, which is strange considering I published it three days after I usually do. Regardless, Hartley is out for what is likely a considerable amount of time thanks to taking a shot to the head. Of course, injuries are part of sports, and everyone involved with the game from the players to the fans knows that. But they still suck.

The Knighthawks have traded for Kevin Orleman to either back up or platoon with Riley Hutchcraft, which tells you that they are not expecting Hartley back in the near future. Luckily for them, the cost was “only” Stephen Keogh. Make no mistake, Keogh is still a great player and one I would be happy to see back on the Rock, but by “luckily” I mean that Keogh hadn’t yet played for the Knighthawks this season and they signed him as a free agent. It really cost them nothing to get him, and they don’t lose anyone from their active roster, so they are sort of adding Orleman for free.

But back to Hartley. Of course I wish him the best and hope for a speedy and complete recovery. But I don’t want him to rush back either; my understanding is that having concussions makes you more prone to future concussions, and coming back to such a physical game (and a physical position) before you are completely healed could be a recipe for disaster.

Vancouver against Colorado

The Vancouver Warriors have played the Colorado Mammoth 11 times in their history (only looking at the Warriors here, not the Stealth). Colorado is 8-3 in those games, but looking closer, it’s even worse than that for the Warriors:

• Jan 4, 2020: Vancouver up by 4 in the second quarter, Mammoth won by 3
• Jan 7, 2022: Vancouver up by 8 in the second quarter, Mammoth won by 3
• Mar 17, 2022: Vancouver up by 7 in the third quarter, Mammoth won in OT
• Mar 25, 2023: Vancouver up by 6 in the fourth quarter, Mammoth scored five in four minutes to get back within one but ended up losing
• Dec 30, 2023: Vancouver up by 6 in the third quarter, Mammoth won in OT

We all know that you should never take your foot off the gas if you’re winning a lacrosse game, but when Vancouver is playing Colorado, the Warriors may need to play “desperate lacrosse” even if they’re up by five.

New York

The Riptide just can’t catch a break. In 2020 they were an expansion team, not expected to do anything, and they didn’t. In 2022 they had rookie phenom Jeff Teat, seasoned veteran Callum Crawford, and Kearnan, McArdle, Sundown, and Fox. Their offense was fine but their defense was terrible. In 2023 many thought “this might be the year the Riptide break out!”. They traded Crawford but Teat performed at an MVP level, but defense was still terrible (though goalie injury trouble certainly didn’t help). This year they added some defenders and have put their dollar down on Cam Dunkerley in net and many thought “this might be the year the Riptide break out! No really this time!”. What happened? Now their offense and defense is terrible. They showed some life in the second half of the Toronto game, but players don’t ever talk about playing a full 30 minutes. It’s to the point where people are talking about what the Riptide could get in a trade for Jeff Teat. You know it’s bad when people are suggesting you start the rebuild when you haven’t finished the first build.