Games were all over the place this past weekend. A couple of one goal games, one in overtime, and also an eight-goal game and a thirteen-goal blowout. One game with 28 goals, two with 25, and one with 14. The first place teams (Toronto and Albany) won and the last place team (Vancouver) lost, but Colorado and Las Vegas also won and Georgia and Buffalo lost. Calgary and Panther City are moving up, while Philadelphia and Rochester are dropping. Man, this season is fun, isn’t it?

Awesome

Riptide relocating to Ottawa

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the league announced this week that the New York Riptide will be moving to Ottawa for the 2025 NLL season, and will rebrand as the Ottawa Black Bears. This is obviously great for the city of Ottawa, where I understand lacrosse has been growing quite steadily over the last number of years. All of those fans in Montreal who were excited about the recent NLL UnBoxed game there (featuring said Riptide and their new provincial rivals the Toronto Rock) now only have a two hour drive to see them. I can’t say I fell in love with the name Black Bears right away but it’s growing on me, and I like the logo.

Ownership of the franchise won’t change but it sounds like the Ottawa Senators will be involved somehow – they have already posted on social media about the Bears. The Canadian Tire Centre, where the Senators play and where the Black Bears will play, have posted as well. One possible downside to the arena choice is that it’s in Kanata, a suburb west of Ottawa. It’s about a 20 minute drive from downtown, according to Google, and I’m sure there’s lots of public transit making it easy to get there, but if you live east of the city, it might be quite a chore to get to games.

Of course, Ottawa had an NLL team twenty years ago, the Ottawa Rebel, which started out strong attendance-wise (12,000+ in their home debut against the Rock), but dropped off quickly (one other game over 8,000 the rest of that season), and just kept dropping (one game over 7,000 the next year and five straight games under 4,000 in 2003) before they folded up shop. The fact that they were 9-37 overall and 4-19 at home probably didn’t help the attendance situation. The Riptide’s historical numbers are better but not by much (17-42 overall, 9-21 at home), but they are a very different team this season than the last few. They may not see Saskatchewan Rush-level support in their first season, but hopefully the Ottawa fans can get behind a strong team featuring arguably the best lacrosse player in the world.

Colorado Mammoth

Speaking of the Riptide, they played in Colorado this past weekend. They started out strong, with a couple of goals in the first couple of minutes, and then both teams pretty much matched each other’s scoring until the end of the first half. New York weren’t blowing the Mammoth out of the water or anything, but were still up by a couple at halftime. Then in the third quarter, the Mammoth offense and defense both kicked into a gear we haven’t seen for a very long time, and certainly not both in the same game. They tied the game early in the third, then after New York took another one-goal lead, the Mammoth scored ten straight over about seventeen minutes to flip the score from being down 9-8 to being up 18-9. Tyson Gibson scored three in about 6½ minutes in the third, then Eli McLaughlin scored three in about 1½ in the fourth (the fastest hat-trick this season). The Mammoth were in complete control for the rest of the game, and Dillon Ward was no exception. Ward looked like the Ward of old, giving up only two goals in the entire second half, almost 26 minutes apart.

One notably smart play: Eli McLaughlin caught a sweet behind-the-back pass right on the edge of the crease and took a shot. Johnston got a piece of it but it trickled into the goal after a second or two. McLaughlin had the presence of mind to make sure he stayed out of the crease until after the ball crossed the line. We’ve seen plenty of goals where the player steps into the crease immediately after shooting the ball. Most of the time it doesn’t matter but now and again, there’s a delay before the ball crosses the line and the goal is waved off. Kudos to McLaughlin for avoiding that.

The Mammoth have not made the Awesome category very much this year, if at all, so congratulations to them for an excellent game. It’s not like we didn’t know they were capable of it, having gone to the last two Championships, but honestly, they haven’t shown it very much this season. Nice to see them put a full 60 together.

Vancouver @ Toronto

This was indeed an awesome game, and I wrote about it here.

Greg Harnett returns

After 1448 days away from the NLL, Greg Harnett played for the Knighthawks on Saturday night. His last game was March 8, 2020, as a member of the Calgary Roughnecks. Missing almost four years but then being able to return to the highest level of any pro sport is pretty incredible, when you think about it, so congrats to Harnett for making it back to the NLL.

Goalie goal!

Albany goaltender Doug Jamieson scored the second goal of his career on Saturday, much to the chagrin of the Bandits faithful. Jamieson scored his first back in 2019 when Albany was the New England Black Wolves, and becomes just the sixth goalie in NLL history to score more than one goal. The others are Rob Blasdell with an amazing four, Nick Rose and Pat O’Toole with three each (one of O’Toole’s was in a playoff game), and Nick Damude and Brandon Miller have two each.

Las Vegas

I’m going to see a Rock game next weekend, and will likely miss all the rest of the games. This is awesome because the game I’m going to is in Las Vegas. I’m heading there with the family and a whole bunch of friends on Wednesday night, going to see a show at the Sphere on Thursday, the Rock/Desert Dogs game on Friday, and then a tour of a place called the Valley of Fire on Saturday morning, before coming home Saturday night. This will make only the fifth venue at which I’ve seen NLL games, after Toronto, Hamilton, Buffalo and Rochester, and I am very excited.

Not Awesome

Riptide relocation to Ottawa

Not everything about the Riptide relocation is awesome. Obviously, this means more relocation for teams in the NLL, and lord knows we’ve seen enough of that over the last couple of decades. It’s certainly better than it was in that we’re not having multiple teams moving or folding every year, and it’s not that I want teams to stay in places where it’s just not working. It’s just a story that keeps on happening.

The timing of the announcement (i.e. in the middle of the season) is odd from a New York point of view, but makes sense from an Ottawa point of view. It gives the team time to build up fan interest and community involvement and such as soon as possible, so that’s good, but New York fans can’t be happy. The best case scenario for them is that the Riptide have a strong second half and win the Championship… and then move.

It also means promotion, marketing, and social media for the Riptide will be a bit awkward for the rest of the season. They posted something shortly after the announcement using the phrase “Let’s go”, and that phrase really means something different now.

Delay of Game penalties

There were two penalties in the New York/Colorado game where a player tossed the ball away from the other team after a change of possession was indicated. This is the dumbest penalty to take, ever. Some penalties are kind of a necessary evil; if you can stop a good scoring attempt, a two-minute penalty kill may be a reasonable price to pay. This is not one of those. There is no advantage to your team at all, and it’s not something you are ever likely to get away with. It’s not happening behind the play where the refs might miss it, it is the play. It’s either an accident or it’s a purely emotional “screw you I’m not giving you the ball” kind of move. Don’t do it.

End of the Georgia/Panther City game

I missed almost the entire game (out seeing Argylle with the family – fun movie) and when I got home, there were 40 seconds left and it was tied. I saw Callum Crawford’s goal to give Panther City the lead, and then with less than 10 seconds left, Seth Oakes scored for Georgia but the goal was waved off, though it wasn’t clear why. Play continued, the game ended, and then the refs did their review. They announced that the ball never crossed the line (though watching the review now, it did), so the call on the floor is confirmed and the game is over. The announcers still aren’t sure, nor is anyone watching, so we start to go to the slow motion replay again when suddenly I get the “Live coverage has ended” message on TSN+. What a ridiculous time to stop coverage. This was not a linear channel, so there was no pressure to finish the broadcast to get to the next show or anything. Let the coverage continue until it’s actually over.

Note that as Ty Merrow explained, the call was correct – Oakes went through the crease when he didn’t have the ball, which means he can’t be the next person to receive a pass. But Kew passed it directly to him, so the play was dead before he shot it. Why the ref said that the ball didn’t cross the line is a mystery, but it’s not the call I’m complaining about, it’s the sudden end of coverage by TSN+.