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.

VAN @ BUF, game 1

If there was any argument that Matt Vinc is the greatest goaltender in NLL history (and why would there be any argument?), surely Friday night’s game put that to rest. Only four players have ever allowed just three goals in a playoff game, and now Vinc has done it twice. The other three are Bob Watson (who allowed just two in a playoff game in 1999), Aaron Bold, and Vinc’s opponent on Friday, Christian Del Bianco. Vinc allowed one Vancouver goal in the first 26 minutes of the game and one in the last 33 minutes. The defense in front of him had a great night as well, preventing many shots and blocking a bunch as well, but they had full confidence that anything that made it through them was not going to get by Vinc.

This was Vinc’s ninth career playoff game where he allowed six or fewer goals. Only one other player in NLL history has more than one, and that’s Nick Rose with two. Vinc is the only goalie ever to allow 4 or fewer goals in back-to-back games.

Christian Del Bianco had a very good game, with a save percentage over 81% and only allowed nine goals. He’s had four games with the Warriors this year where he gave up more than that and won. It’s not that the Vancouver offense played badly, but as I mentioned, the Buffalo defense was great and Matt Vinc was on another level.

Chase Fraser

Ian MacKay was the offensive star for the Bandits, scoring four goals. MacKay has had an incredible season, almost doubling his previous best in goals, though he played a lot more offense than defense/transition this year. You can argue that there isn’t a better two-way player in the league today, though Zach Currier may disagree. MacKay can do anything you ask of him, and do it well, so having such a valuable player on the same team as Dhane Smith, Josh Byrne, and Matt Vinc seems almost unfair.

SSK @ HFX, game 1

This game was a bit weird, when I look back at it. Halifax scored first, less than a minute in, but then Saskatchewan grabbed the lead about three minutes later and never gave it up. They were leading by four in the first quarter, then by four again shortly into the third and never let it get closer than that, and ended up winning by nine. And yet until the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, I never felt like the Rush were in control of the game, just that they had scored more often.

Frank Scigliano was awesome, and the Rush defense was excellent as well. I particularly noticed the second quarter, when Halifax took a bunch of shots but the vast majority of them were from bad angles, and Scigliano had no trouble with them. Hutchison wasn’t bad and made some great stops but he was just not on the same level as Frank. Warren Hill took over for Hutchison for most of the second half and also played well, making some huge stops in the third quarter to prevent (temporarily) the game from getting out of hand, but again, not as well as Frank.

The game ended like a basketball game – the last two minutes took the same amount of time as the rest of the fourth quarter. Halifax’s frustrations boiled over and Trevor Smyth took a boarding penalty (the cameras missed it so I don’t know exactly what happened), and then Nonkon Thompson went after Ryan Keenan, who seemed to have no interest in fighting. Eventually Thompson and Keenan did fight, though it didn’t last long. But it was enough to get Thompson the 2+5+game trifecta for starting a fight. He also got an extra game misconduct for starting a fight with less than five minutes left in the game.

The two minors meant that the Rush went 5-on–3. But 30 seconds later, Tyson Bell took a slashing penalty and since they were already down two, that gave the Rush a penalty shot. Brock Haley scored.

Six seconds after that, there were more goings-on that resulted in two misconduct penalties per team and a minor for roughing to Jake Withers. Once again, the Rush got a penalty shot. Brock Haley scored.

Fifty seconds after that, Dawson Theede took a slashing penalty. You guessed it, the Rush got yet another penalty shot but this time Mike Triolo missed the net. Had he scored, this game would have been the first in league history to feature three penalty shot goals. As it was, it was only the fifth ever (and first in the playoffs) to feature two.

Austin Shanks scored six for the Rush

So the series shifts to Saskatoon for one or two games next weekend. As I said, the Rush never felt in control of the game until near the end, but it doesn’t matter. Even if they don’t control either of next week’s games, as long as they score more goals than Halifax in one of them, they will be headed back to the finals. The Thunderbirds have their work cut out for them.

BUF @ VAN, game 2

This game wasn’t as historic as game one of this series, but still an exciting game. Both goalies were great as expected, and both defences were great as expected as well. There are other teams in the league who do it well, but it seems that the Bandits have just mastered the art of shot blocking. In both games one and two the Bandits blocked twice as many shots as the Warriors did. I don’t have the stats but I’m sure the Bandits led the league in circular bruises.

Once again, Ian MacKay was the offensive star for the Bandits. This isn’t surprising at all if you consider how good of a player MacKay is, but when you consider he has Dhane Smith and Josh Byrne as teammates, it’s a bit surprising that we’re not talking about them. They were not as dominant (numbers-wise, anyway) as they had been during the season, but the Buffalo offense played very well as a unit, with some unbelievable ball movement.

If you didn’t watch this game, you may have already seen this on social media or your favourite sports highlight show. Chase Fraser scored one of the craziest goals you’ll ever see. While running across the front of the crease, he shot through his own legs and underneath Christian Del Bianco, who had basically no chance to even see the shot, let alone stop it. Honestly, I didn’t like it at first. It seemed a bit too showboaty for a close playoff game. But thinking about it some more, I used to think that behind-the-back shots were showboaty. I’ve come to realize that these are good ways to keep the goalie off-balance and do something they are not expecting, thus increasing your chances of scoring. I’m sure goalies want to practice handling behind-the-back shots because players love to shoot them and the goalies want to know how to see them coming. We’ve seen a few of these between-the-legs shots too, so it won’t be long before the goalies are getting their forwards to practice those on them as well.

So Buffalo is heading back to the finals for their 5th straight season, and they have a good chance to win their third straight title. The fact that only one other team has ever done this and that team also had Matt Vinc as their goaltender and it was over ten years ago just blows me away.

The Vancouver Warriors proved to everyone that they are a force and will likely continue to be a force next year. Could we see a drop-off similar to what happened to Albany this year? Sure it’s possible, but Albany is a very young team, while the Warriors have a ton of veterans so I don’t see it happening.

Awesome

Terefenko’s transition goal

In the third quarter of Saturday’s game, Ryan Terefenko grabbed a loose ball in the Halifax end after a shot and absolutely sprinted the entire length of the floor, beating the defender who came off the bench, and scored on Scigliano. Scoring on Scigliano on this night was difficult enough – this was Halifax’s first goal in over 22 minutes, and they didn’t score again for another 11 – but Terefenko’s speed from one end to the other was amazing. We’re talking Steve Toll / Jesse Gamble / Joey Cupido type speed, and that’s saying something.

I’m on TV

The Halifax broadcast featured a photograph of Eric Fannell, Austin Shanks, and Jake Withers from the night they were drafted, as the Ohio State classmates were all chosen by the Thunderbirds. At the top of the photo, to the right of Shanks’s head, you can see what looks like the ghost of a man sitting, looking down. That’s me.

Not Awesome

Homers

Early in game one, the Warriors got a major penalty and on review, the major was upheld. I posted to twitter that we should remember that moment when Bandits fans later complained that the refs were biased against them. I wasn’t saying the penalty wasn’t warranted, it was more that if the refs were biased against the Bandits, they wouldn’t have called a major on Vancouver. Some Bandits fans took issue with that comment, and a few proved my point, basically saying “Oh yeah, what about…”. That said, I’m not sure how many of those commenters were intentionally being ironic.

Maybe I follow more Bandits fans than fans of any other single team, but I do see a lot more homer-type comments from Bandits fans on Twitter, though of course it’s not all Bandits fans, and it’s not all Bandits fans. By “homer-type comments”, I don’t mean that they are supporting their team. I mean:

• Any play where someone on their team hits another player illegally and gets a penalty is unfair and is a “ticky-tack” call and the refs should just let them play
• Any play where an opposing player hits someone on their team, legal or not, and doesn’t get a penalty is unfair and is a blatant violation of the rules and the refs gotta call that
• If their team won it’s because they played better in all facets of the game and are generally a superior team
• If their team lost it’s because the refs were biased against them, so it was unfair

I hear from those people on twitter all the time. I’ve sat near many people like that. In fact, I personally know people like that (who are fans of the same team I am a fan of) and it’s frustrating. You can be a fan of a team and still acknowledge that they sometimes break the rules. You can be a fan of a team and still acknowledge that another team simply played better than your team did on one particular night. You can be a fan of the league and still acknowledge that refs sometimes make mistakes, sometimes have different opinions than you (which doesn’t make them wrong), and sometimes they see things that you don’t. None of this makes you any less of a fan. It just makes you a little more grounded in reality.