For the second time in this young season, I have no Not Awesomes this week.
Awesome
Albany
The Albany FireWolves had one of the worst seasons in NLL history in 2023. They were 3-15, didn’t win a single game at home, gave up 66 more goals than they scored, and didn’t have any players in the top 35 scorers. In the off-season, they lost two of their top three scorers: Kieran McArdle retired and Connor Kelly was traded to the Mammoth. They did get Joe Nardella back from injury, but those big scorers were replaced by a few guys with a dozen or two NLL games to their name (Firth, Grenon, Longboat), and they added a handful of rookies. Of course this plan didn’t work, right? WRONG.
After five games, they are still undefeated and have beaten some very good teams. Alex Simmons’s rookie season is looking like Jeff Teat’s rookie season, Ethan Walker is more than halfway to his 2023 17-game total in points after only five games, and they have four players on pace to demolish the 68 points their top scorer had last season. The defense has only given up 10.6 goals per game, third in the league, and 48 shots per game, tied for fourth in the league. Doug Jamieson hasn’t been incredible but definitely strong enough to give his team a chance to win every night, and that’s just what they keep doing.
On Saturday they had another tough matchup, the Thunderbirds in Halifax. The game was back and forth with each team having the lead for a while and then losing it. Here’s how even the game was:
- Time where Halifax had the lead: 22:13
- Time where Albany had the lead: 18:19
- Time where the game was tied: 19:28
Alex Simmons and Ethan Walker
The fourth quarter begin with the score tied but the Thunderbirds scored twice within the first 34 seconds. Then Albany managed to keep Halifax off the board for the last 14½ minutes and scored four of their own to complete the comeback and win by a couple. Will they run the table and finish the season undefeated? Will Alex Simmons continue his pace and finish with 115 points? Almost certainly no to both questions. Yes, it’s still early but barring a huge Vancouver-vs-Colorado-level collapse, the FireWolves are already in the playoff hunt.
Miles Thompson returns
After almost two full years, Miles Thompson returned to the Georgia Swarm lineup on Saturday. Thompson played almost every Swarm game from his rookie season in 2015 until the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, averaging 23 goals and 46 points a season, but then due to injuries, only played three games in 2022 and missed 2023 entirely. He didn’t score on Saturday but chipped in with a couple of assists in the Swarm victory over Panther City. When a player misses significant time because of injuries but then puts in the work to get healthy enough to return to playing lacrosse at the highest level (and yes, there’s always some luck involved), that always makes me smile.
New York Riptide
Just a week after I said both their offense and defense were terrible, the Riptide came out and dominated the Wings, winning their first game of the season. Cam Dunkerley, playing with pink eye in both eyes, was excellent including stopping a penalty shot with a minute left. Their defense in general was excellent actually, keeping the strong Wings offense (who had Blaze Riorden and Holden Cattoni back from injuries) under ten goals, they ran the ball well (Ron John and Callum Jones seemed to be everywhere), and the offense was nicely spread out. They were led by Jeff Teat, of course, with five goals, but eight other Riptide players scored goals in this one. I didn’t think the Wings were terrible but the Riptide just played really well and were definitely the better team.
Of course it’s just one game, so nobody’s saying the Riptide have turned the corner and are now a lock for the playoffs. But now that they have that first win and know how well they can play together, that has to be a huge confidence boost.
NLL Chatter 