We are through the first round of 2025 playoff games. Home fans in all four cities were sent home happy as the higher seeds prevailed in each quarterfinal game, and the semifinal matchups are set. The defending champion Buffalo Bandits will take on the unbeaten-in-seven Vancouver Warriors, and the Halifax Thunderbirds, fresh off their first-ever playoff win, will meet the Saskatchewan Rush, fresh off their first playoff win in six years. These series are going to be amazing.

SD @ BUF

How better to get the playoffs started than with the best goaltending battle in league history? This game featured the oldest starting goaltender in the league (Matt Vinc) in his 51st playoff start against the youngest (Chris Origlieri) in his fourth. But both looked like veterans in their prime. Both had GAAs of 5 or less and both had save percentages over 88%. Vinc had a shutout first quarter while Origlieri had a shutout second half. Records broken:

• Lowest-scoring game in NLL history (9 goals)
• Fewest goals scored by the winning team
• Highest save percentage by losing goalie (in a playoff game)
• Only playoff game where the winning team was shut out in a half

I’ve said this a number of times in the past: you have to feel bad for the losing goalie in a game like this. Allowing only five goals to anyone is amazing but to keep this Bandits team (with two 130-point forwards) to five goals is incredible, and to do that in a playoff game is even more incredible. And to have that type of performance end your season early seems terribly unfair. But hey, that’s sports.

And that ending. San Diego did everything possible to get those last two goals to tie it up, but the Bandits defense and Matt Vinc were locked in. Zach Currier did manage to sneak one in with a second left, but they needed another goal after that and there was just no time left to get it.

Also awesome: There was some kind of technical problem in the third quarter, so on-floor reporter Dave Buchanan was forced to take over the play-by-play – from between the benches – for about five minutes. In addition to lacrosse, Dave has been broadcasting stock car racing for decades so it’s not surprising that he did an excellent job.

CAL @ HFX

I missed the first half of this game, but I have to say I wasn’t expecting it to be as one-sided as it appeared to be. Once I started watching, Calgary scored a couple and looked like they were starting to mount a comeback, but then for the rest of the game, Halifax were able to match just about every goal that Calgary scored. This was not just Drew Hutchison’s first career playoff start, it was his first career playoff game, and he played really well.

One of the great things about Halifax’s offense is that you can look at the game sheet and it’s always a surprise who’s going to be at the top of the points list. It’s usually Petterson or Staats but seeing Jamieson, Theede, Robinson, or even Terefenko up there wouldn’t be that surprising. Graeme Hossack made it up there once this year. In this game, it was Thomas Hoggarth, but they had five different players with at least five points and three different guys with hat-tricks. Their balanced offense, where you can’t focus on one or two guys and shut them down, is one of Halifax’s strengths.

Thomas Hoggarth and Randy Staats

As long as they have existed, Calgary has been one of those teams that never gives up. Whether the game is tied late or the Roughnecks are winning or losing by seven, they play just as hard. All teams do this to some extent but seems to me more consistent with the Roughnecks and has for many years. It didn’t end up with a Calgary win in this case but it has in the past, and whether it does or not, I’m always impressed with that aspect of Roughneck lacrosse.

Just like the end of the San Diego / Buffalo goal, the ending of this one was exciting as well but for a different reason. Instead of the goalies being unbeatable, each of the last seven goals were scored within a minute of the previous one. There were eight goals scored in the last five minutes of the game.

GEO @ SSK

I missed the first half of this game as well (see Not Awesome below), and then I split time between this game and the Rochester / Vancouver game. Thus I don’t have a ton to say about this game. Frank Scigliano continues to prove that the “Scigliano loses steam at the end of the season” thing is NOT going to happen this year, and had an excellent game. Brett Dobson also played really well, certainly well enough to keep his team in the game until the very end. A couple of empty-net goals and one with six seconds left in regulation kind of hides how close this game really was.

One weird thing I noticed: Lyle Thompson had the ball stripped from him at least a couple of times, which is really rare. One of them led directly to a transition goal by Jake Boudreau, who had an outstanding game with four goals.

Georgia lost a close game in the playoffs last season to the eventual Champions. The Rush are now in the final four, and second seed overall, could the same thing happen this year?

ROC @ VAN

There’s a reason Vancouver jumped to the top of various “power rankings” near the end of the season, capturing the #1 spot in a couple of them. They look almost unbeatable. The offense is clicking with unbelievable ball movement, transition is working, defense is strong, and of course Christian Del Bianco is playing as well as he ever has, and that’s saying something.

Rochester put up a good fight, particularly in the fourth quarter, cutting an 11–4 deficit down to 13–10 with 2½ minutes left, but weren’t able to get by the Vancouver defense. A couple of Warrior empty-net goals ended the potential comeback.

Keegan Bal

This was the first playoff win for ANY Vancouver NLL team. Given that the Warriors were 4–14 just two years ago and hadn’t had an above .500 season since 2013 they were the Washington Stealth, Curt Malawsky has got to be a lock for at least one of the GM of the Year and the Les Bartley awards. Maybe both.

It’s also great to see a guy like Keegan Bal, who’s 33 and has been around for eight seasons, finally able to play in his first-ever playoff game. He certainly made the most of it, with 5 goals and 6 assists. That one game puts Bal as the franchise leader in playoff points, even if you include the five Vancouver Stealth seasons.

Not awesome

Yes, the games were all amazing and there were a lot of awesome things to talk about, but there were a few things at the other end of the spectrum as well.

Embellishing

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m not a fan of the Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty since it’s never necessary and is almost always because of a loss of control. Embellishment is even worse – it’s not a loss of control, it’s actively cheating. Cody Jamieson’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in the fourth quarter (actually listed in the game sheet as “Unsportsmanlike Embellishment”) was for embellishing a hit that didn’t even happen. The worst part is that I’ve seen Jamieson do that more than once. For a guy who is the embodiment of leadership in the lacrosse community, that’s not cool.

GEO / SSK not on NLL+

I was able to log into the TSN site through my cable provider, which gives me streaming access to the games playing on TSN linear channels. But the Georgia / Saskatchewan game wasn’t on linear TV, only on TSN+ and NLL+. Except when I went to NLL+, there were no playoff games listed at all. So I had to give up on that and try to subscribe to TSN+ to watch one game. But that didn’t work either; clicking on the “Subscribe to TSN+” button gave me a 404 error. So NLL+ says they are carrying the game but it’s not there. I tried to give TSN money to watch a game there but they won’t let me. Luckily the problem with NLL+ was remedied so the second half was available.

Playing without a helmet

In the first quarter of the game in Vancouver, Keegan Bal lost his helmet, then ran for about three seconds and took at least six or seven steps, then passed it to Dylan MacIntosh, who scored. Somehow the refs decided that this was OK and the goal counted. NLL Rule #91 reads “When a player in possession of the ball loses his helmet he must immediately release the ball by passing or shooting.” The word “immediately” is not really subject to interpretation. This penalty is not particularly common but it’s not that rare either, and I’m very surprised that the goal was allowed. I don’t know if it was his idea, but on the Lacrosse Classified podcast a few months ago, Tino Fera suggested having officials available for media questions after every game. I love that idea, and this is another example of why this would be helpful.

Attendance in SSK

Attendance in the playoffs is frequently lower than the regular season, particularly in the first round. But 5,434 in Saskatoon is just terrible. This is a team that had over 11,000 at their last home playoff game in 2019, and 14,000–15,000 just a couple of years before that.

They have a great team, they had a great season, they were favoured to win, and the temperature in Saskatoon was in the mid-teens so the weather wasn’t even a factor. I really hope Saskatchewan doesn’t turn into one of those teams where the low attendance is not sustainable and we all wonder “how long until they fold or move?” Having the Rush turn from one of the biggest success stories to the next Panther City would suck hard.