The NLL standings this season look like what you’d get if you hit the “randomize” button on last year’s standings. Of the top six teams, four of them didn’t make the playoffs last year. Of the bottom five, four of them did. And then there’s Buffalo, and then there’s Las Vegas. Nice to have some consistency, I guess.

Awesome

Braver than Brave

On Tuesday, exactly ten years after the passing of Tucker Williams, the Bandits, Desert Dogs, and FireWolves announced that the three teams will not only be playing for the NLL Cup, but will compete for a new title called the Tucker Out Lymphoma Cup. NLL fans will know the story of Tucker Williams, son of Las Vegas GM and head coach Shawn and brother of Albany forward Dyson, who battled Burkitt’s lymphoma but lost his fight at the age of eight.

It’s awesome that these teams have gotten together to create such an event to honour Tucker. I’ve said it before but the fact that the Bandits are still doing this ten years after having the first Tucker Out Lymphoma night is amazing, considering it’s been many years since Shawn was with the Bandits.

Shawn played for four teams besides the Bandits in his career: the Ontario Raiders, the Toronto Rock, the (old) Rochester Knighthawks, and the Edmonton Rush, so it’s time for Toronto, Halifax (current location of the old Knighthawks franchise), and Saskatchewan to step up as well. Maybe they leave the tournament to the original three teams, but have their own Tucker out Lymphoma night when the FireWolves or Desert Dogs are visiting. In fact, if every team had a Tucker Out Lymphoma night when the FireWolves or Desert Dogs were visiting, that would be OK too.

Joe Resetarits

Resetarits and Mitch Jones make up as strong a one-two punch as any team in the league. Last Friday night, Resetarits scored four and added nine assists for 13 points (on the Wings’ 15 goals) to propel the Wings to victory. He is only the ninth player ever to have 10+ points in two consecutive games, and since nobody has ever had 10+ points in three consecutive games, watch this space (the Awesome section) for Joe’s name if he has a strong enough game against the Rush next week. Of course, even if he doesn’t accomplish that unprecedented feat, Resetarits is still Awesome.

Mammoth

Remember last year when the Mammoth were the last place team in the league, just two years after a Championship season? Seems like an awfully long time ago now. The Mammoth are 3–1 (they were 1–3 after four games last season), they’ve scored 56 goals (38 last year), and have given up 44 (54 last year). In those games last year, Dillon Ward missed one game and played only eight minutes in another, but he’s played 57+ minutes in each game so far this year. We could go on comparing last year to this year, but suffice it to say that the Mammoth have turned the ship around and are looking strong. Could they pull a Washington Stealth and go to the Championship game three out of four straight years while missing the playoffs in the fourth? It’s still pretty early to start making that kind of prediction, but the way the Mammoth are playing right now, the possibility of that happening just keeps increasing.

Rochester late comeback

I wrote an article a few years ago (now gone from the internet… RIP Lacrosse Flash) about the “almost comeback” and how I am always impressed when I see a team that’s down by a bunch of goals rally and try to come back. Even if they don’t make it, the effort is impressive. On Saturday night, the Knighthawks were down 12–6 and 13–7 in the fourth, but they scored five straight in about five minutes (and kept the Rush off the board for those five minutes plus almost five more) to get back to 13–12 with five minutes left. That was as close as they got, and then Matt Hossack’s empty-netter with 13 seconds left sealed the Rush win, but kudos to the Knighthawks for not giving up and making a game of it.

Not Awesome

Tyson Bell

You’ve probably heard by now of the incident following the Halifax @ Colorado game last weekend. A couple of fans were standing next to the tunnel where the Thunderbirds were leaving the floor, and at least one of them was yelling at the players. Tyson Bell turned and punched the guy yelling in the face, tried to move a barrier between them out of the way, and then hit another fan in the face with his stick. There are images and a video in IL Indoor’s article on the incident. There was no audio, so I don’t know what was said to him. But it doesn’t really matter what was said, the players just can’t be attacking fans like that.

Now, the fan who got punched is very likely not innocent here. He must have said some pretty nasty stuff for Bell to react like that. Ban him from the arena for life, suspend Bell for 6 games and let’s try and move on before this becomes yet another example of the NLL making far more headlines than usual for all the wrong reasons.