The 2025 NLL season is over. Congratulations to the Buffalo Bandits, who became the second team in NLL history to win three straight Championships with an impressive 15–6 victory over the Saskatchewan Rush.
My prediction for game three of the finals was not entirely wrong, but mostly; I said last week that I’d expect it to be “a low-scoring, close, exciting game that’s down to the wire”. Well, it was exciting, anyway.
Only one game left. The Rush refused to be taken out in two games, and the Bandits lost their first playoff game in almost two years (Game 2 of their Championship series against the Mammoth in 2023). The 2025 season is now down to one game, next Saturday afternoon (at an unusual 4:30pm EDT start time) in Buffalo. Both teams have strong defences, incredible goaltending, and powerful offences so it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen, but low-scoring games have been far more common in these playoffs than high-scoring games. I’d expect more of the same – a low-scoring, close, exciting game that’s down to the wire.
There was only one game this past weekend but it was an exciting game, particularly the crazy ending. The finals are now set and will feature the Buffalo Bandits hosting the Saskatchewan Rush in a rematch of the 2016 finals. The Rush won that series in two straight but both teams are very different now. The 2025 Finals will be a great series.
And then there were three.
Christian Del Bianco and the Vancouver Warriors played two strong games, but Matt Vinc and the Bandits were just too much for them and the Bandits swept their semi-final series. Buffalo will now need to wait a week to see who they will host in the 2025 NLL Finals, and then wait another week to actually play again.
The Rush went into Halifax and won, but as I’ll explain below, it was a much closer game than the score would indicate, at least until the last few minutes of the game.
NLL Chatter 