A light but impactful week in the NLL. There were only three games but one of them got rid of one of the two remaining winless teams (Las Vegas, only Toronto remans), another got rid of one of the two remaining undefeated teams (Georgia, only Buffalo remains), and the third set or tied a handful of NLL records.

Awesome

Dyson Williams hat-trick goal

With about two minutes left in game one of the Tucker Out Lymphoma Cup, who else but Dyson Williams scored to tie the game and eventually send it to overtime. Williams received a cross-crease pass and had a half-open net to shoot at, but Landon Kells was moving over to cover it so Williams had very little time to shoot and the area he had to shoot at was rapidly decreasing. Instead, he waited half a second until Kells had moved to his left, and then shot it into the newly open space to Kells’s right. Great shot, and a very smart play.

Dyson Williams: Life. Loss. Lacrosse

If you haven’t watched the short documentary on Dyson, you really should. He’s certainly an exciting young player and the son of an NLL Hall of Famer, but the family tragedy on his journey to the NLL changed his life forever. Obviously other players have had personal tragedies as well, but this one was front and centre of the NLL news when it happened. Thanks mainly to the Buffalo Bandits creating Tucker Out Lymphoma night and keeping it going ever since, the name Tucker Williams is just as ingrained in the NLL consciousness as Shawn or Dyson. And the amount of money raised for fighting childhood cancer over the last ten years is truly awesome.

Jackson Webster’s NLL debut hat-trick

Jackson Webster made his NLL debut on Saturday night and not only did he pick up a hat-trick, but he led the Desert Dogs in scoring with 6 points. Webster became the 31st player since 2005 to score at least three goals in his NLL debut, and he joins such players as Mark Matthews, both Lyle and Miles Thompson, Jeff Teat, Randy Staats, Tehoka Nanticoke, Adam Jones, and Shayne Jackson. Webster was efficient, scoring those three goals on only four shots, and he also assisted on the OT game winner. Not bad, kid.

Rochester

The Knighthawks had their strongest game of the season on Saturday taking down the previously-undefeated Georgia Swarm 16–9. Six different players had multiple goals, they got some transition goals from Taylor Jensen (who had 2) and Brad Gillies, and even Ryland Rees and Riley Hutchcraft had assists. Chasing a goalie as good as Brett Dobson is impressive, and Hutchcraft had one of the best games of his career, allowing only 9 goals and saving almost 83% of the 50+ shots he faced. Rookie Mike Sisselberger had a great NLL debut, winning 69% of the faceoffs he took.

The Knighthawks are now 2–4, so they still have some work to do to get into playoff contention, but their performance on Saturday showed that they have the ability to compete with anyone.

Ottawa @ San Diego

Imagine being an NLL goalie and:

• you played a full 60-minute game
• you held Wes Berg, Rob Hellyer, Ryan Benesch, Ben McIntosh, and Kyle Jackson to four goals
• you allowed only six goals in total (for a 6.00 GAA) and kept your opponent scoreless for the last 28 minutes of the game
• you faced 50+ shots and saved 88.5% of them

That might be a career-best game for most goalies. Now imagine doing all of that and losing the game. That was Zach Higgins’s fate on Saturday night in San Diego. Chris Origlieri faced 36 shots and actually had a lower save percentage than Higgins (“only” 86.1%), but only allowed five goals and kept Jeff Teat to a single goal and no assists. This was one of the greatest goalie battles in NLL history.

Obviously both defences played very well in front of these goalies, but it’s not as though there were no shooting opportunities. Several posts and crossbars were hit and each team had a number of one-on-one shots whether from an offensive play or transition. The goalies were simply up to it. Nathan Grenon got a great opportunity to send the game to overtime with one second left in the fourth quarter, and he beat Origlieri but hit the post.

This game tied a Toronto Rock / Albany Attack game from 2001 (personal note: the second Toronto Rock game I ever attended) for fewest goals with 11, it set a new record for the fewest goals for the winning team, and also set a record for the earliest last goal in a game, since nobody scored after 1:38 of the third quarter. Ottawa never scored after 7:58 of the second quarter.

The game is available on NLL+ and if you didn’t see it live, I’d suggest you watch.

Age gap

I posted this on Twitter / X and BlueSky on Saturday night, but this is crazy enough that I wanted to include it here just in case you don’t follow me there.

Callum Crawford is about 8 1/2 years older than the second-oldest player (Joe Nardella) on the FireWolves, but that’s not the biggest age gap ever. On the 2016 Mammoth, John Grant Jr. was ten years older than the second oldest player. That player was Callum Crawford.

What’s even more wild is that Grant and Crawford share a birthday, so Grant is exactly ten years older than Crawford.

Not Awesome

Cam MacLeod and AI highlights

Last week’s report had no Not Awesome entries, and a couple of people called me out on that. One said that Cam MacLeod is not playing at an NLL level, and my first thought was that replacing Christian Del Bianco is a tall order. But MacLeod’s GAA is over 14 and his save percentage is under 73%, so it’s not a question of not being as good as CDB, these numbers are just not very good. But it’s only three games into the season, and he’s 2–1, so we’ll give him a bit more time. Plus with King, Dickson, and Dobbie playing the way they are, MacLeod doesn’t need to be outstanding, just good enough. That’s less of a hill to climb.

The other comment was that the AI highlights produced by the league have been less than stellar. One highlight video from a Bandits game showed none of Buffalo’s goals. The video from the Colorado/Georgia game last week didn’t include the game-winning goal scored with less than a minute left, in a game that was tied nine times. Yes, these are problematic and a normal human-created highlight reel wouldn’t have these problems. But AI, used in this way, is still in its infancy. Any technology used early enough is terrible. Solar panels in the 80’s were really inefficient. Electric cars have been around for decades but weren’t really viable for the general public until the last 5–10 years. Early self-driving cars were dangerous. But such technology still needs to be used or it won’t get any better – especially things like AI which rely on tons of data to know what to do.

More games, plus small tweaks to the algorithm (which I assume the video companies are making), mean that the videos created in the next season, or the one after that, will likely be amazing. We just have to suffer through the mediocre (or worse) ones before we get there.