I haven’t done this in a number of years, but I used to write an article every year announcing the roster of the “Boston Blazers”, starting the year after they folded. The idea was that this was a team made up entirely of players who were not injured and had not retired, but were not on any NLL team’s roster, practice squad, holdout list, etc. There were some years where this phantom team would have been pretty good.

This year, I named the team after Panther City for obvious reasons. I’m not sure this year’s version would beat the Bandits and they probably wouldn’t have beaten last year’s Panther City team either. They may not even make the postseason but I’m not sure they’re finishing last either. If the 39-year-old Bold falters, Carlson starts and we could pick up Laine Hruska or Joel Watson as a third goalie, but goaltending is generally solid. Defence is pretty good and transition isn’t bad, and there’s even a strong face-off guy there in Hamer-Jackson. Up front, there’s a ton of secondary scoring but unless Greer and Schuss play like they did back in the mid-teens, nobody to really grab the reins as a solid #1 forward.

Goaltender

Aaron Bold
Tyler Carlson
Steve Fryer

Defense/Transition

Mitchell Armstrong On Wings IR list
Matthew Bennett
Adam Bomberry
Tyler Garrison
Tyrell Hamer-Jackson
Corey Highfield
Anthony Kalinich
Evan Messenger
Marcus Minichiello
Brooker Muir
Tor Reinholdt
Adrian Sorichetti

Forward

Taite Cattoni
Josh Currier
Zack Greer
Stephen Keogh
Dan Lintner
Dan Lomas
Brandon Robinson On Rochester’s hold-out list
Logan Schuss
Chris Wardle
Aaron Woods