It’s hard to believe we’re talking playoff positioning already. It seems like the season just started a few weeks ago but we’re at week 15 now. Nobody has clinched a playoff spot or has been eliminated, but we’re getting close. Lots of awesome stuff happened this week, and there was a few things that were not, so let’s get into it.

Awesome

Maki joins Teddy in the booth

Maki became the first woman to do colour on an NLL TV broadcast in December, and on Friday night she was given the opportunity to work with her uncle, Teddy Jenner, in the booth in Halifax. Teddy has been doing NLL broadcasts for more than a decade and has been described by Pat Gregoire as “the voice of the league”. Maki is obviously newer to the profession but she knows the game as well as anyone and she fit right in on the broadcast. Maki works for the Thunderbirds and talks to the players and coaches all the time, which gives her a lot of insight into what they are thinking and feeling. Obviously she’s known Teddy her whole life and they have a great chemistry.

One thing I think she was particularly good at was breaking in during play, telling a short story or giving her opinion on something quickly, and getting back to the play-by-play. She didn’t talk for 30–45 seconds causing the play-by-play to miss an entire possession or force Teddy to interrupt her to talk about a goal or an amazing save or something.

Toronto

After the big trades of the week before last, the Rock had a bye so this is the first game of the post-Rose/Corbeil/de Snoo era. And what happened? They faced one of the hottest teams in the league and shut them down. Troy Holowchuk has been Rose’s backup in Toronto for 3½ years but Rose is such a workhorse that Holowchuk has picked up about two games worth of minutes in that time. Friday was his first career start and he made the most of it, picking up his first career win. He faced 52 shots and saved about 77% of them – not incredible but certainly good enough, and I thought he got better as the game went on. As someone on twitter pointed out, he allowed no goals in the last nine minutes of the second, third, and fourth quarters. Teddy and Maki mentioned his confidence level a few times, and I think confidence is a huge component to being a successful goaltender. This game will certainly help that.

Corey Small and Tom Schreiber both had excellent games, and Brad Kri and Latrell Harris were solid on the back end. Schreiber had an incredible “around the world” pinpoint-accuracy assist on a goal by Nathon Grenon; lacrosse twitter has invented the word “Schreiberian” to mean something, usually a pass or shot, that’s incredible and unbelievable, and this was certainly a Schreiberian pass.

This was a whole team effort, as TD Ierlan, Phil Mazzuca, Robert Hudson, and Elijah Gash were the only Rock players without points. Even Holowchuk had an assist. The odds of the Rock making the playoffs are still pretty low but if they really want to get there, this is the type of game they need to play every week.

Calgary

Speaking of playing the perfect team game, the Roughnecks got some serious offense from Dickson, King, Page, Mayea, and Cook, a bunch of faceoff wins from Justin Inacio, and Nick Rose got the better of Matt Vinc for the first time in almost two years. Even without Dane Dobbie, the Calgary offense was shooting the lights out. Buffalo didn’t have a great game defensively and I wouldn’t say that Matt Vinc struggled but he had a very non-Vinc-like game.

For a while earlier this season, we wondered whether the Bandits could be beaten at all. The Seals proved that they could by squeaking out an OT win. On Saturday, the Roughnecks proved that they could be… well, not exactly dominated, but in the second half, even when Buffalo tied it again late in the third, it was clear that Calgary could definitely compete and would be, at worst, taking Buffalo right down to the wire. But “dominated” might be the right word for the second half of the fourth quarter. Calgary was playing with a lot of confidence (there’s that word again) and by the end of the game, you could almost call it swagger.

The Roughnecks were already having a better-than-expected season, and Jesse King said it in an interview, the addition of Rose gives them even more confidence. They could be a very dangerous team down the stretch.

Cody Jamieson

Back in the teens, Cody Jamieson was one of the top offensive players in the league. He had 80+ points in seven consecutive seasons (excluding 2017 which he missed almost entirely), and was named league MVP once and Championship MVP twice. Once the Knighthawks moved to Halifax to become the Thunderbirds, his role on the team changed. He was no longer “the guy”, but he was one of the players who helped “the guy” be “the guy”, whoever “the guy” happened to be – Petterson, Benesch, or Staats. In recent years, he hasn’t been really thought of when you list the top current offensive players, but he proved on Friday night that at 37, he can still be an impact player. A couple of his goals were classic Jamieson fire-an-overhead-bullet-top-corner which we’ve all seen a million times in the past – even if the goalie knows it’s coming, they can’t do anything about it.

It’s only his second game of the season with more than two points, but it’s good to see that Jamieson has still got it.

Pools

In Week 8, I listed under Not Awesome that I was in 50th place in Preston’s Picks and 101st in Who Ya Gott. I don’t know what the heck happened since then, but I’m now tied for 7th overall in Preston’s Picks and 34th in Who Ya Gott. However, I have never won a week in either one.

Not Awesome

Jake Withers

Withers played well on Friday night, with one goal, one assist, 11 loose balls to lead the game, and a 64.3% face-off percentage against one of the best in TD Ierlan. But the not awesome here is that he took four penalties, three of which were for unsportsmanlike conduct. Some penalties are unavoidable, and some can be smart plays, but in my opinion, unsportsmanlike conduct is the most avoidable penalty there is. It’s never necessary and it’s never a smart play.

Desert Dogs

For the first year or two, you can expect an expansion team to not be very good. San Diego was an exception, but that’s how it usually works. The Desert Dogs are starting their third season so people are starting to expect some level of success. They’ve gotten a few wins this season, including a seven-goal victory over the Colorado Mammoth, but in general they haven’t been any better than last season.

On Friday night, they started off strong, with four goals in under five minutes before Rochester scored any, but then the Knighthawks scored an amazing 13 straight goals to put the game away before we were even four minutes into the second half.

They have an exciting young team with guys like Hannah, Poitras, and Donville, as well as vets like Cattoni, Killen, and Casey Jackson, but they need a bit more consistency from the back end. This season is basically done for them in terms of a playoff run, but I expect a busy off-season for Shawn Williams. Another well-below .500 season next year and it might be a busy off-season for Joe, Wayne, Steve, and the boys looking for a new GM and head coach.

Zed Williams out for the season

Nobody likes injuries, and season-ending ones are even worse. Zed Williams is a former PLL MVP and while he’s never been quite that dominant indoors, he’s still a force. When he’s having a good night, he can be as strong an offensive presence as you will see in the NLL. But he’s done for the season, and probably at least some of the PLL season as well, due to an achilles injury suffered during the Mammoth’s loss to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago.

The only remotely good thing about this injury is that it happened just before the trade deadline, instead of after. The Mammoth may or may not want to make moves to shore up their offense before their playoff run, but at least they have the option.

Fun fact: In my NLL database, which I use for both nllstats.com and @NLLFactOfTheDay, I somehow had Zed Williams listed as something like 5’11“ and 180 pounds. That’s not much bigger than me, and I am not a big guy, so I always thought he was just an average sized dude. Then I saw him up close at a pre-season game at the TRAC and knew right away my database was very wrong. Turns out he’s actually 6’2” and 235 pounds. There are bigger guys in the league, but he is in no way an average sized dude.