We’re getting close to the end of the season now. The Rock have clinched a playoff spot, though the other teams are still a week or two away from either clinching or being eliminated. The NLL Stats playoff scenario calculator (aka “Could Happen…”) is live on nllstats.com now, so feel free to go play around with that to see what scenarios are possible. For example, it’s possible for there to be a nine-way tie for first place, which means that one of the teams tied for first will miss the playoffs.

Awesome

Trade deadline deals

Most years, the NLL trade deadline is a non-event. There might be one or two trades, mostly involving prospects, practice roster players, or just draft picks. Not that those players aren’t important, but those trades are not the blockbuster deals everyone is waiting for. This year, we had four deals. None of these were blockbusters either, but they were pretty significant:

• John Wagner and a fourth round pick from Las Vegas to Albany for Cam Badour and a first. Wagner is a solid and experienced defender who will help the FireWolves, and Las Vegas gets a prospect and a first round pick. A good trade for both teams.
• Chris Wardle heads from Colorado to San Diego for a conditional 3rd round pick. This is a bit odd since the San Diego offense was very strong already, so it’s arguable whether they need help there. The Mammoth are likely out of the playoffs so it makes some sense that they’re sellers at the deadline, though I’d have thought Wardle would be worth more than a 3rd round pick.
• Speaking of selling, the Mammoth also sent defender Paul Dawson and a 3rd to Buffalo for a 2024 second and a 2025 second. Buffalo’s back-end has been decimated with injuries this season so picking up a bit strong veteran defender can only help them.
• Philly sent rookie forward Taggart Clark and a second to the Riptide for a first round pick in 2024 and a third in 2025. The Riptide aren’t any closer to the playoffs than the Wings are, but this is a deal that will benefit New York for years to come, and of course Philly gets a first-rounder out of it. Taggart Clark was a first round pick two years ago, but he was literally the last player chosen in the first round, 23rd overall. The pick that New York sent to the Wings is actually Colorado’s pick, so that will be significantly higher than 23rd, likely in the top five. A top five pick seems like a pretty steep price for Taggart Clark.

Chris Wardle and Dylan Kinnear

Brodie Merrill is back

One of the best players the NLL has ever seen, Brodie Merrill never won an NLL Championship before his retirement at the end of last season. But when his brother Patrick called to see if he would be interested in coming out of retirement to play for the Seals, Brodie must have decided that the Seals have an excellent shot at the title, and so why not? Coming out of retirement to play again is not all that unusual, even among some of the best players in every sport: guys like Gary Gait, Paul Gait, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Mario Lemieux have all done it.

Most impressive to me: Brodie hasn’t played a lacrosse game since last May, and made the decision to come back around the trade deadline, which was last week. The fact that this 42-year-old was in good enough shape to play in the NLL a week later is awesome.

Huge win for Vancouver

On Friday night, the Desert Dogs played in Vancouver. These are two teams that are unlikely to make the playoffs, but you’d never know it by the intensity of the game. This was a solid game by both teams which went right down to the wire. The game was tied at 9, 10, 11, and 12 in the last 20 minutes or so, and the Vancouver faithful (numbers of which have increased over the years) got to see their team pick up a win. Casey Jackson scored eight while Rob Hellyer had six assists in a losing cause, while Keegan Bal and Adam Charalambides had 9 and 8 points respectively for the Warriors.

The Warriors and Desert Dogs are still tied for last place and like I said, are unlikely to make the playoffs. The second game Vancouver played at home this season drew 4,500 people. The last four games have all been above 9,000, and one was over 10,000. With Curt Malawsky at the helm, the Warriors are likely to get better over the next couple of years, so attendance numbers will likely only keep going up. It’s great to see that happening even before the rebuild is complete.

Toronto vs. Buffalo

Games between these two teams are sometimes chippy, sometimes quite a bit more than chippy, sometimes high-scoring, sometimes low-scoring, but they are always entertaining, particularly in Buffalo. This one was high-scoring (first and fourth quarters), low-scoring (second and third quarters), chippy, and very entertaining. Nick Rose has been the best goalie this season and Matt Vinc is the best of all time, so I certainly wasn’t expecting 11 goals in the first quarter. Rose only made two saves and allowed six goals in the first, but really got into a groove after that and only allowed two Bandits goals over the next thirty minutes. Vinc allowed five in the first and four in the second but then he found his groove, only allowing three Toronto goals in the second half. The Bandits broke out of their scoring drought and scored four in the last seven minutes of the fourth, and Vinc was excellent at the other end as the Rock tried to tie it up and send it to OT.

Early in the game, it looked like things might boil over and get violent at some point. But cooler heads prevailed and in the end, there were no actual fights, or even roughing penalties, but there were a couple of majors called (though one was reduced to a minor upon review). Bandits fans on Facebook were complaining that the refs were biased against them, and Rock fans on Facebook were complaining that the refs were biased against them, but I didn’t see any evidence of that on either side. Are mistakes made here and there? Yes. Are the refs 100% consistent all the time? No. But they’re human and the idea that there’s a conspiracy against any particular team that (a) is so obvious that it’s noticed by the fans and (b) is either ignored or sanctioned by the league is so ludicrous that I don’t even bother looking for evidence.

The attendance in Buffalo was an astounding 18,400+, the highest-attended game in the league this season. If these two teams meet in the playoffs, watch for sellouts.

Goaltending in Calgary

The Seals and Roughnecks both have high-powered offenses, but goaltending and defense ruled this game. The first quarter was the busiest and only had five goals total. San Diego led most of the game but Calgary got back to within one early in the third quarter. The Seals scored one in the dying seconds of the third to extend their lead to two, and only one more goal was scored the rest of the way. San Diego led for 56 minutes in this game while Calgary never had a lead at all but make no mistake, this was a nailbiter. Props to both Christian Del Bianco (7 GA, 88.5% saves) and Chris Origlieri (6 GA, 85.4% saves) and the defenses in front of them for playing incredible games.

Not Awesome

Brodie Merrill is back

I don’t blame Brodie Merrill for making the decision to return, but it’s not awesome for whoever the player was who was released as a result. The Transactions page lists Drew Belgrave as being moved from the active roster to the IR list and three others were released from either the Hold-out or IR lists. Those three may be unrelated but when Belgrave comes back, someone will need to be released or demoted. Yes, it’s part of sport and every athlete has to accept that it may happen to them. Still not awesome.