A light week in the NLL with only four games but it was another exciting week with no shortage of stories.

Awesome

Wacky goalie stats

About a third of the way through the 2025 season, Nick Damude, Nick Rose, Brett Dobson, and Chris Origlieri all have save percentages below 78% and are in the bottom half of starting goaltenders in the league. All of these guys were above 78% and in the top half of goalies last year. Meanwhile Aden Walsh was second-last among starters last year, and Riley Hutchcraft was only two spots above him. They both had save percentages around 75.5%. This year, Walsh is third at 79.9% and Hutchcraft is fifth at 79.1%. Kudos to those guys on their fantastic seasons.

Of course, not having Christian Del Bianco in the list at all is the wackiest of all.

The Rock are back

After their first win of the season last week, the Rock continued their uphill climb towards the playoffs against the Roughnecks. The memory of those first two games where everything went wrong is long gone now, and despite the news that Mark Matthews is done for the year, the Rock played with a lot more confidence and looked a lot more like the Rock of last season. They took the lead a minute and a half in and held that lead until the end of the game. Calgary put up a good fight in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Rock 5–1, but it was too late by then and the Rock held on to win 14–9.

Latrell Harris was back in the lineup to help the defence. The offense was strong and balanced, with Schreiber, Dawick, and Small having six points each, Craig and stud rookie Brian Cameron having five each, and Chris Boushy picking up a hat-trick.

Thomas Kiazyk’s first start

After a weird situation where Frank Scigliano wasn’t available and the backup goalie was defender Keegan Bell (who had never even worn goalie gear), 20-year-old Thomas Kiazyk was given the start for the Rush. Kiazyk’s NLL career before Saturday consisted of fourteen games but a total of less than seven minutes of playing time. A couple of years ago, Saskatchewan-born Rush backup goalie Laine Hruska got a win in his first career start, and that was a fantastic story. Kiazyk got his own storybook ending on Saturday as he played a strong game and just like Hruska, picked up his first career win in his first career start.

Kudos to Hruska who wasn’t able to be signed to a contract quickly enough (which is why Bell had to be the backup) but joined the Rush’s equipment staff so that he could run the back door on the bench but more importantly, be on the bench for Kiazyk to talk to if he needed it.

And kudos to Bell for agreeing to do this, knowing that it was possible he’d have to get out there between the pipes and have guys like Alex Simmons, Dyson Williams, and Tye Kurtz shooting at him. Soaking those shots as a defender is one thing but most defenders will block a handful of shots at most in a game, and you know that if the ball gets past you, the goalie is still there. I’m sure it’s different when you’re soaking fifty shots in a game (though with better padding) and you’re the last line of defence. I’m also sure it’s very different when you’ve never done it before.

Oddly, in the third quarter, Albany’s Doug Jamieson was pulled and replaced with Andrew Kidd, whose total NLL playing time prior to this game exceeded Kiazyk’s by seven seconds.

Indigenous team logos

Vancouver hosted a First Nations Celebration on Friday night and had a special jersey and logo designed by Pete Natrall, a local Indigenous artist. The Rock and other teams have done Indigenous nights in the past, and the artistry that goes into the modified team logos is incredible. This one was amazing too, and I love how every piece of the logo was specifically designed and has meaning. By that I mean the artist didn’t just think “I’ll put a red star here and two gold ones up there, that will look good”, the stars have specific meaning; in this case they “symbolize the past, present, and future of the people, highlighting connection across generations.”

The same night, Calgary hosted their own Indigenous Celebration night also with jerseys designed by a local Indigenous artist, Jacob Alexis. These jerseys were spectacular with their red and orange colours (imagine the Roughnecks in red jerseys!), the Roughneck character with a full headdress on the front, and “Every Child Matters” on the front as well. Again, every piece of the design has special meaning.

These jerseys were amazing and I’m glad more and more NLL teams are honouring the Indigenous roots of the game this way.

Defensive battle in Vancouver

In 2001, the Rock beat the Albany Attack 7–4, in the lowest-scoring game in NLL history. That record stood alone for 24 years until three weeks ago, when the Seals and Black Bears tied that record in a 6–5 game. In Vancouver on Friday, we were three minutes away from having another eleven-goal game until Ryan Martel scored the only goal of the fourth quarter to put the Warriors up 8–4. Both Aden Walsh and Zach Higgins were excellent in the nets but Walsh was just that little bit better. But Walsh doesn’t get all the credit – the Vancouver defence was excellent in preventing shots, blocking shots, or forcing them from bad angles. The Ottawa defence should get some love as well since they only gave up eight goals, but again, Vancouver was just that little bit better.

Higgins has got to be frustrated. From 2020–2024, he was at or near the top of the league in saves every year because the Philly defence in front of him gave up a ton of shots. In that time, he played in only one playoff game, where he stopped 85% of the 61 shots he faced and still lost the game. Then he gets moved to Ottawa, and while he’s won four games, he’s lost a game while giving up only six goals, and lost another giving up only eight. If Martel hadn’t scored that goal late in the fourth, Higgins would have been the losing goalie in two of the three eleven-goal games in league history. He’s been doing his job very well for years but just hasn’t been rewarded with the team success I’m sure he’d like.

Not Awesome

Rochester loses late again

For the second time in their last three games, the Knighthawks lost due to a goal scored with under three seconds left in regulation. They are the only team in the NLL since game stats became available in 2005 to do that twice in one season. The fact that both games happened at home makes it that much worse.

The Knighthawks have a –12 goal differential, but an eight-goal loss to the Bandits is skewing that quite a bit. They also had a seven-goal loss to the Bandits but then beat the Swarm by seven goals the next week, so those are a wash. Other than those three games, they’ve played a bunch of close ones. That usually means their 3–6 record could be a 6–3 record with a few better bounces and one or two more saves. I was going to say that they have to make sure that they’re working as hard in the last few minutes as they are in the first few, but they’ve scored 25 goals in the 4th quarter this season, and only 15 in the first. Maybe it’s the other way around – they need to start stronger rather than finish stronger.

Major penalty reduced in Saskatchewan

In the fourth quarter of the Albany/Saskatchewan game, Joe Nardella hit Ryan Keenan in the head with a cross-check and was given an illegal cross-checking major penalty. All major penalties are reviewed this year and after the review, the penalty was reduced to a minor. If the league is serious about cutting down on head shots and trying to reduce player injuries, they cannot let players get away with this kind of hit. I don’t think it was intentional but regardless, he did hit Keenan in the head, and it’s not as if Keenan ducked down at the last second making it unavoidable. A hit to the head like that has to be a major penalty.