A couple of surprises this week as the Desert Dogs beat the Rock in OT and almost knock them out of the playoffs, the Wings break their losing streak, and the Roughnecks shut down the Rush’s offense, particularly in the second half. The Bandits return to the win column, the Thunderbirds and Knighthawks celebrate their entry into the playoffs with wins, and the Warriors continue their winning ways with their new goaltender.

Awesome

Calgary

Calgary improved their playoff picture with a win over the Rush. I saw the final score of this game and for some reason, assumed that the Roughnecks dominated the game. But then I sat down and actually watched it, and that wasn’t the case at all. Nobody dominated this game at all, but the tied-for–6th-place Roughnecks kept up with the 2nd place Rush throughout the game. Each team had a couple of leads, and the Rush actually led for more of the game than the Roughnecks did. But Nick Rose kept the Rush off the board for the last 19:55 of the game and Calgary scored four in that time, including first-ever goals for both Griffin Hall and Matt Sykes. Rose finished with 57 saves and a 90.5% save percentage, both career highs. The Roughneck offense was almost as balanced as you can get, with Curtis Dickson scoring three and seven other players scoring one each.

Philadelphia

I haven’t had the Wings in the Awesome section of an article in quite some time. In fact, not once this entire season, though I did have Joe Resetarits individually once. The Wings were on an eight-game losing streak, and are only still in the playoff race because of their great start to the season. But on Saturday, the Wings played a strong game against the likely-playoff-bound Swarm. The Wings offense, which has been struggling over the last few weeks, exploded for 15 goals – and that was without Mitch Jones.

Mitch Jones, quite some time ago

Jones was ejected a minute into the game for instigating a fight with Adam Wiedemann after Wiedemann slammed Brennan O’Neill into the boards. Jones is sixth in the league with 102 points, and this is only the third fight in his twelve year career, so this was a bit unexpected. The Wings didn’t exactly use that as a rallying point; they only scored one goal over the next eighteen minutes while giving up five. But in the second they went on a 6–1 run to tie the game, and then after the Swarm scored three straight in the third, the Wings went on a 6–0 run in the fourth to take a lead that they’d never give up.

Joe Resetarits had four goals and seven assists, Blaze Riorden and Brennan O’Neill had 3+4 and 2+5 respectively, and five other Wings had at least three points. On the slightly not awesome side, Nick Damude’s first season with the Wings isn’t going anywhere near as well as expected, and was pulled from the game early in the second quarter, but Deacan Knott played the last 42 minutes, only allowing seven goals. That was the second time in the last three Wings games that Knott didn’t start the game but played at least 40 minutes.

Vancouver

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (dating myself by using that metaphor), Christian Del Bianco and the Warriors played great this past weekend. Del Bianco only allowed 4 goals, saved over 90% of the shots he faced, and even picked up a couple of assists. He is now 4–0 in a Warriors jersey and the Warriors playoff chances just keep going up – they are now almost a lock to make the playoffs.

Before the Del Bianco trade, the Warriors were having an OK season. They were 5–7 and with a strong finish, could still have made the playoffs. But since the trade, the team is unbeaten, overflowing with confidence, and just looks like a different team. If the Warriors win their last two games (against Toronto and Philadelphia, neither of whom is likely to make the playoffs), they will not only make the playoffs but host a home playoff game. Is that kind of turnaround worthy of MVP consideration for Del Bianco? You could make an argument that this turnaround proves he’s more valuable to the Warriors than any other player is to their team. But he will have only played one third of the season; is that enough? Or is that a slap in the face to guys like Connor Fields, Dhane Smith, and Josh Byrne who played the entire season? I honestly don’t know the answer.

Las Vegas

The Desert Dogs are another team I haven’t had in the Awesome section much this year, but they played really well on Sunday. They kept up with the Rock all game long and even held several leads in the first half, but then they seemed to let it get away from them. The Rock went from down 10–7 to up 12–10 early in the fourth quarter, and it looked like they might start to run away with it. But then the tables turned and the Rock let it get away from them. Vegas tied it up with two goals in the last 2:07 of regulation and held on to send it to OT. Then Jack Hannah scored his second of the game, shorthanded, a minute into OT to win it for the Dogs.

I missed the first quarter because of NLL+ problems (see below) so I didn’t see Justin Geddie at all. By the time the NLL+ stream was available, Landon Kells was in the net and he played very well the rest of the way. Adam Poitras was great (is he really still a rookie? Are you sure?) and Jack Hannah just continues to make jaws drop with his skill. The Desert Dogs have had a rough season but with those two plus Donville, Kirst, Cattoni, and Killen, they have a lot of exciting young players with a ton of potential to build on for next year.

Near the end of the fourth quarter, the Desert Dogs were in the process of pulling Kells when the offense turned the ball over and Rock transition player Zack Kearney raced up the floor on what would have been a breakaway on an empty net. He happened to be running by the Las Vegas bench, where Kells happened to be, and Kells nailed him with a cross check to the head. I’ve mentioned in the past that there are penalties that are understandable, most are just mistakes, and some are unnecessary; unsportsmanlike conduct almost always falls into that last category. This was one of the rare times when a penalty was absolutely required. Yes, Kells caused his team to be down a man for the rest of regulation and the early part of overtime, but in a tie game with fifteen seconds left, that was a game-saving penalty. A cross check to the chest might have been a smarter move since it would have been a minor penalty instead of the major he was given, but Kells had very little time to react. The Dogs had to play the next five minutes shorthanded, but they wouldn’t have gotten to overtime at all if Kells hadn’t taken that penalty. As it turned out, they scored the OT goal shorthanded anyway.

Not Awesome

Problematic playoff odds

I ran into some subtle problems with my playoff odds calculator. The “Could Happen” thing on nllstats.com worked fine but my program to run through all the scenarios and show the odds for any team was broken so the odds I reported on twitter were slightly off. The problems have been fixed now, so here are the updated (and hopefully correct) percentages:

• Albany: 8.2% to make the playoffs. They cannot host a first round playoff game.
• Buffalo: Clinched both the playoffs and a first round playoff game.
• Calgary: 69.1% to make the playoffs, 2.4% to host a first round playoff game.
• Colorado: 64.8% to make the playoffs, 11.4% to host a first round playoff game.
• Georgia: 66.7% to make the playoffs, 1.4% to host a first round playoff game.
• Halifax: clinched the playoffs, 86.9% to host a first round playoff game.
• Las Vegas: eliminated from the playoffs.
• Ottawa: 19.9% to make the playoffs. They cannot host a first round playoff game.
• Philadelphia: 1.8% to make the playoffs. They cannot host a first round playoff game.
• Rochester: clinched the playoffs, 54.8% to host a first round playoff game.
• San Diego: 71% to make the playoffs. They cannot host a first round playoff game.
• Saskatchewan: Clinched both the playoffs and a first round playoff game.
• Toronto: 0.07% to make the playoffs. They cannot host a first round playoff game.
• Vancouver: 98.6% to make the playoffs, 43% to host a first round playoff game.

Just to clarify once again, these are the percentages of possible playoff scenarios where the team makes the playoffs. They are not really “odds” since they don’t take the opponents into consideration. If one team has to beat Buffalo and Saskatchewan to make the playoffs and another team has to beat Toronto and Las Vegas, both teams are listed as having the same percentages but one has better “odds”.

Toronto / Las Vegas NLL+ stream

I think this is the first time I’ve seen this problem, but the NLL+ stream for the Toronto / Las Vegas game on Sunday just didn’t start. It finally went live about two minutes into the second quarter when it was 5–4 for Las Vegas. Missing this quarter because of NLL+ technical problems brings the total number of quarters I’ve missed for that reason to… one. This was definitely not awesome but thinking about it now, I can’t think of any other times that I’ve seen people complaining about NLL+ this season. I have had NO problems the entire season, so I’m calling season one of NLL+ an unqualified success. Even this Not Awesome entry is a little bit awesome.