Today I’m not going to rank the rosters themselves, just the announcements of the rosters. Every team announced their rosters on Monday, but most of them just threw a list out there while others went a little further and made it fun. Other than Calgary’s video game thing, the announcements were pretty tame this year. Nobody eating hot wings or anything; in fact, only Calgary and Toronto had videos at all.
Albany: A-
The tweet contained all the names, split into positions, and included the practice roster. I have to assume that the FireWolves have nobody on the PUP, IR, holdout, or other lists, since they are not listed at all.
Buffalo: B-
The tweet just had last names, so “Robinson” wasn’t helpful since they had three of them last season. The article it linked to had more, though they listed “Physically Unable to Perform/IR” as a single list.
Calgary: A+
They showed the team like it was a video game where you choose the player you want to play as, and it cycled through the list. They had mini videos of the players that they had altered a bit to make them look like video game graphics. There was no video for Nathaniel Kozevnikov so they put a player silhouette with a lock icon, like you had to unlock that player. The whole thing was awesome. The article on the web site contained all the information you’d need, including where the player is from and what team they played for last season.
Colorado: B
The tweet contained the players including the practice roster players, though they were clearly marked as such. There is an article as well that included the IR players.
Georgia: D
There’s a tweet with the players, but no article. Also there are too many players listed; probably the practice roster guys are included but we don’t know who they are. No IR, PUP, or other lists.
Halifax: B-
There are a few tweets with pictures of the players and their last names, but last names don’t help for rookies as well as the guy named Robinson – there were four different Robinsons in the league last year, none of which was this one. The article on their website, however, had all the information and a detailed writeup of the players, including some quotes, stats, and who did what over the summer.
Las Vegas: C
All the players are listed but no practice roster, IR, PUP, etc.
Ottawa: C
A tweet with the players and no article. At least they’re sorted by position. Oddly, the defence and transition lists are sorted by last name, but the offense and goalies are not. Kiel Matisz’s name is spelled wrong.
Philadelphia: B+
All the information is in the tweet including the practice roster. No information on the IR, PIP, etc. lists. I was going to give them a B but they arranged the four images in the tweet in a really cool way. The top two images have half a player each but when they are put next to each other, you see a full image of Mitch Jones. Similarly, the bottom two have half a player but when put side-by-side, it’s a picture of Brennan O’Neill. It’s not mind-blowing but it impressed me enough to bump them up a notch.
Rochester: B
The tweet has the active roster, the article it links to has the practice squad and “Inactive players” though it doesn’t specify PUP or IR.
San Diego: F
They listed 32 players instead of a 21-man roster. It must include the practice squad, IR, PUP, holdout, and everything, but there’s no indication of any of that. There’s no roster announcement article on their web site at all.
Saskatchewan: A
They split the players up into positions (forward, transition, defence, goaltenders), as well as lefty/righty, and separately listed everyone on the IR, PUP, practice roster, holdout list, and even the draft list.
Toronto: A
They released a video with each of the players saying their name and where they played Junior lacrosse (or what university they went to for the Americans). This was a big pain because I had to keep pausing and resuming the video while I recorded the names. I was going to give them a lower score because of this, and because of the fact that practice roster players were included in the video with no indication of that. But then I found that I had missed a tweet an hour earlier that did include the practice roster and IR lists, so I bumped them back up.
Vancouver: C+
The tweet contained no information at all, but the blog article listed the players sorted by position, and included their height, weight, and hometown. The IR list is there too, but no mention of the practice roster.
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