Another exciting weekend in the NLL, and we’re a little closer to knowing the final playoff positions. We now know that Buffalo has clinched first overall, Saskatchewan is second, third and fourth will go to two of Halifax, Rochester, Vancouver, and Calgary (though Calgary can’t finish third and hasn’t actually clinched a playoff spot), and only Toronto and Las Vegas have been eliminated.

There’s a lot to talk about this week so let’s get right to it.

Awesome

NLL+ Multi-view

The NLL “soft-launched” a new feature on NLL+ this past weekend. It’s called Multi-view, and it allows you to watch all concurrent games all at the same time, while listening to one of them. Switching which one you’re listening to is easy, and I had no trouble at all with the audio or video quality, streaming, lag, or anything else. This feature is for all of those people who routinely watch multiple games on a TV, laptop, tablet, and phone at once. Now the NLL+ folks do the hard work for you.

Usually a “soft-launch” is done so they can hear about any last-minute bugs or problems that they can fix before the “real” announcement and launch but like I said, I ran into no problems at all so perhaps they have very little work to do. Of course, all that means is that they did the tons of hard work already and their quality assurance group (i.e. the testing team) did an excellent job.

The major advantage is that you can pay attention to one game but keep an eye on the others. The little windows for each game were big enough (on my monitor, anyway) that I could see the score and time remaining in each window. If the game I’m watching game has five minutes left but another one is close with only two minutes left, I could switch to that one. Or if I see a goal scored in one window but not in the game I’m listening to, I can switch to that game, go back 10 or 20 seconds, and watch the goal happen again.

Three games going, one just about to start

There are a couple of minor drawbacks:

• You end up seeing the same ads more often then usual (“why are you doing this to us?”). Also the league produces a couple of half-time segments each week and so you’ll see them multiple times too. For example, this past weekend there was one with a few players shooting at a net with a radar gun measuring their shot speed, and another with Dyson Williams wired up.
• There were times where I was sort of forgot what game I was listening to, then I wondered why the announcers weren’t talking about the goal that was just scored. Other times I was switching focus so much that when they did announce a goal, I had to search around for which window it happened in.
• It may mean that once the games are all over, you find that you have a decent overview of all the games in general, but you may not have as good a feel for any one of the games. Sometimes after watching a game, I feel that maybe the score didn’t reflect how well the losing team played, or some player played really well off-ball and that won’t show up in the scoresheet, or a defender made a lot of great plays, or things like that. If you’re switching around to different games all the time, you may find that you may not have watched enough of any one of them to notice those types of things.

At one point, goals were scored in three different games within about five seconds of each other. This is not a good or a bad thing, just interesting, and you’d be unlikely to know about it were it not for this feature.

I really liked the Multi-view and will likely be using it whenever possible.

Yacht Rock night in Toronto

Don’t get me wrong, if I’m listening to music while working from home, I’m not likely to pick The Pina Colada Song or anything by Christopher Cross. But I definitely could pick Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, Don Henley, or Steve Winwood – and I hadn’t heard the awesome Lowdown by Boz Scaggs in a very long time. A lot of those so-called “yacht rock” songs that we heard were songs I grew up listening to on the radio so even if I’d prefer to listen to Tool, Alice in Chains, or Metallica these days, those songs still hold a special place in my musical heart.

Vancouver

The Warriors are now 5–0 since Christian Del Bianco was acquired. I talked about them last week so I won’t go into it again, but suffice it to say that they are going into the playoffs on the highest of highs that we’ve seen from any Vancouver NLL team. In Friday night’s game against the Rock, Del Bianco was typically great, allowing two goals in the first six minutes of the game and then only one in the next 34 minutes. The defense in front of him was strong, and I noticed Owen Grant a lot, generally preventing people from, well, doing anything.

Adam Charalambides was a one-man wrecking crew, and Keegan Bal lived up to his billing in the arena’s pre-game “guys to watch out for” list. Unfortunately, the Rock’s entry in that list was Brian Cameron, who ended being a last-minute healthy scratch.

At one point in the second half, the Warriors were killing a penalty and Ryan Martel ended up with the ball in the offensive zone by himself. He basically ran around 1-on–5 for a good chunk of a possession while his offensive teammates seemed to abandon him and got the defense set up. Maybe they thought he’d just dump the ball in the corner and follow them off the floor, but he was all alone out there for quite a while, and did a great job of killing as much time as possible.

Vancouver was in control for most of this game, but kudos to the Rock for the “almost-comeback”. From being down 9–3 in the third, they sort of woke up about ten minutes into the third. The Rock outscored Vancouver 7–3 the rest of the way to get within two but Del Bianco just wouldn’t let them get any closer.

As a Rock fan, of course I’m disappointed in the outcome of the game but as an NLL fan, I’m very happy that the Warriors are in the playoffs. It would be great to say “The NLL is better when Vancouver is a good team” but I don’t know if that’s true, since they’ve been terrible (not always, sometimes just bad) since they moved to BC. I’m going to say that I believe that the NLL will be better when Vancouver is a good team.

Nathan Grenon

My wife Gail came to the Warriors / Rock game with me on Friday. She comes out to a handful of games a year but doesn’t really follow lacrosse at all. But Nathan Grenon impressed her (and me too). He’s not a big guy but he works like he is and he doesn’t back down from the monster-size defenders. As Gail said after a typical Grenon shift, “He doesn’t take any shit from anyone, does he?” No, he does not.

Dhane Smith

Last year, Dhane Smith became the first player in league history with 100 assists, finishing with 101. That number is insane, and yet he’s currently two away from tying that record and three away from setting a new one. He’s only had two games this season (and less than ten over the last FIVE seasons) with less than three assists, so odds are he’ll be setting another assists record next weekend. And just like this one, it will be considered completely and forever unbreakable, until he breaks it again next year.

Quickies

• Albany needed to win to keep their fairly low but non-zero playoff hopes alive, and they came up big at home. Tye Kurtz had a sock trick, Williams, Simmons, and Walker had a boatload of assists, and when your D can keep Berg, Hellyer, and Benesch to two goals, you’re doing something right. Talk about a balanced offense: Albany scored exactly three goals in each quarter.
• Ottawa needed to win to keep their fairly low but non-zero playoff hopes alive, and they came up big at home. It’s funny how a month or two ago, everyone was asking “what’s wrong with Jeff Teat? His numbers are way down”, and then last night I saw people asking if he should be in the MVP conversation.
• The Buffalo Bandits clinched first overall with their win over Halifax. The game was back-and-forth all night, tied at 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, and 12 before Buffalo pulled away a bit in the middle of the fourth. Halifax wasn’t out of it by any means but Matt Vinc was amazing in the last couple of minutes to preserve the victory.
• Jack Hannah had an amazing goal where he ran towards the middle, bounced off a few defenders like a pinball, and then as he was being taken down, he sort of shovelled the ball one-handed and got it by Zach Higgins. Just an incredible play.
• The Wings were up by 10 on the Swarm after three quarters, so despite it being on my screen all night, I kind of stopped paying attention to that game for a while. Then suddenly I looked at it again and it was 16–12 with about four minutes left. The Swarm got another to get within three but that was as close as they got. But similar to Toronto’s almost-comeback, kudos to the Swarm for making a game of it.

Not Awesome

Colorado offense

I feel a little bad putting this here, considering the Mammoth are without Zed Williams and Eli McLaughlin for the rest of the season. But to be honest, they knew about both of those things before the trade deadline and did nothing. So if they felt the remaining offensive players were enough to get them to the playoffs and beyond, then I feel less bad about saying… it wasn’t enough, at least on Sunday. Frank Scigliano was amazing, so it’s not entirely on the Mammoth offense, but they could certainly have used Mr. Williams or Mr. McLaughlin, or preferably both. Two goals in the first fifty minutes of the game when you’re fighting for your playoff lives is just insufficient. There was a bit of a comeback attempt near the end of the game, and they scored four goals in the last ten minutes but again… not enough.