After a busy week, all teams have played at least one game now. Halifax is 2–0, Rochester and Philly 1–0, Oshawa 1–2, Calgary 0–2, and Las Vegas 0–1. Everyone else – eight different teams – is 1–1, and four of those also have zero goal differentials. Things will almost certainly open up a bit more as the season progresses, but just as early season stats are fun, early season standings can be fun as well.

Awesome

Ottawa comeback

On Friday night, the first quarter between Saskatchewan’s Frank Scigliano and Ottawa’s Zach Higgins was a defensive battle and Ottawa had a 3–0 lead early in the second. But then the Rush kept the Black Bears off the board for the next 19 minutes while scoring seven of their own. At the end of the third, the Rush were still up by three, so Ottawa had lost their lead but wasn’t out of the game by any stretch. The fourth quarter was all Ottawa though, as they scored six unanswered while Higgins allowed no goals for the last 17+ minutes. Jeff Teat scored a hat-trick in less than four minutes to tie the game, then added another later for his eleventy millionth nine-point game in the NLL.

Toronto comeback

The Rock didn’t score until fourteen minutes into their home opener. They were down 2–0 by then but managed to stay even with the Roughnecks afterwards. They were down by three twice, each time for about a minute and a half, but two goals within eleven seconds early in the fourth tied it up, and then Owen Hiltz scored his second of the game two minutes later to give the Rock their first lead. But Riley Loewen scored twice to tie it with only three and a half minutes left in the fourth before Chris Boushy put the Rock ahead to stay. Nick Rose looked a bit shaky in the first three quarters, though a shaky Nick Rose only allowed eight goals. He seemed to be seeing the ball much better in the fourth. A lot has been said about the Rock’s three rookies, and indeed there were only two Rock goals scored all night that didn’t involve CJ Kirst, Owen Hiltz, or Sam English.

Dominique Hartley

In Georgia on Saturday night, Dominique Hartley became the first female on-floor official in NLL history. This kind of landmark always reminds me of something that Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield once said. He wanted to become an astronaut but at the time, there was no possible way for a Canadian, even a Canadian military pilot, to do so. He kept working at it anyway until such a path became available, and it may have been because of him that it did become available.

I don’t know Dominique personally, but she has clearly been working on becoming an NLL official for a long time, even though it had never been done. But someone has to be first and she decided she wanted it to be her. Kudos to her for having the determination to open up that path – not only to achieve her own goals, but to keep that path open for other women with similar goals.

Rylan Hartley

I don’t know if Rylan is related to Dominique, but he had a pretty amazing weekend as well. Looking at his numbers for Rochester’s big win over San Diego, it’s clear he had a great game. But the numbers just don’t tell the story. The number of saves is amazing, but the type of saves and the athleticism of the saves was just unbelievable. The Seals went 15 minutes without scoring from the first into the second, and then over 25 minutes without scoring from 4:03 of the third to 14:27 of the fourth. They had good looks, they made good shots, but Hartley just saw everything. He isn’t a positional goalie like a Nick Rose, but he has the agility, flexibility, athleticism, and pure speed to be able to react to just about every shot and stop it. On top of all of that, he controlled rebounds and made outlet passes. He was everything you want from a goalie.

A few quickies

A few different teams played well this weekend and I wanted to include them here, but I’ll make ’em quick so this article isn’t 3000 words long.

• Philadelphia – Nick Damude had possibly his best game as a Wing, and their defense was strong, keeping the Mammoth to only 7 goals. Their offense was spread out – they only picked up eight goals but had six different goal scorers. Brennan O’Neill had one goal on eleven shots, so he’ll want to clean that up a bit, but it was their first game in a few years without Mitch Jones running the O, so it’ll take them some time to figure that out.

• Calgary – they had the lead for most of the game but ended up losing to the Rock, so that wasn’t great. But Aden Walsh played very well, Brayden Mayea was everywhere, and both Noah Manning and Riley Loewen scored hat-tricks, so there were certainly some positives. And as I said last week, a lot of people picked the Roughnecks to finish last or close to last. Even though they’re 0–2 right now, they’ve shown that they may not be a powerhouse Buffalo/Sask/Vancouver type of team, but they will put up a good fight and you will have to work hard to beat them.

• Halifax – Facing the three-time defending champs, the Thunderbirds were down by three several times in this game, and there were two different occasions where they went more than sixteen minutes without scoring. But there were also two occasions where they kept Buffalo from scoring for more than seventeen minutes. They allowed a single Buffalo goal in the last 20+ minutes of regulation, and just two in the second half, while scoring four of their own. Then after Clarke Petterson scored what looked like the game-winning goal at the end of the fourth only to see it called back, he scored another goal just 26 seconds into overtime to give the Bandits their first loss of the season.

Not Awesome

TD Coliseum

I was looking forward to checking out the new arena, but I have to say I was disappointed. I wrote about that here.

Attendance in Ottawa

I’m really getting tired of having “Attendance in <city>” in the Not Awesome category every week. Only 3,652 in Ottawa to see the Black Bears beat the Rush. An exciting team featuring the best player in the game playing against last year’s Championship runner-up. Sigh.

Teams that have vanished due to low attendance: Ottawa (the first time), Panther City, Albany twice, New York several times, New England twice, New Jersey twice, Vancouver, Chicago, San Jose, Anaheim, and many more. Right now Philadelphia, Georgia, Las Vegas, Saskatchewan, and Ottawa are all pulling in mediocre-at-best numbers.

I get that a league full of Buffalos is unrealistic but is a few more Halifax/Calgary/Colorado-type cities too much to ask? We keep hearing “due diligence” when it comes to vetting new NLL cities, but I’m growing less and less confident that the league is actually doing any due diligence or if they are, it ain’t much.

Attendance in Hamilton

Not exactly the same problem as the previous entry, at least hopefully. Reported attendance to see the Rock’s return to Hamilton was only 5,706. The weird thing is that it felt like a lot more than that. Prior to the renovations, a full lower bowl and an empty (i.e. closed) upper bowl meant attendance of at least 8,000. There were games where the upper bowl was opened and another thousand or two were there. At Saturday’s game, the lower bowl looked pretty much full and the upper bowl was closed. It’s possible that they rearranged the seating so that the lower bowl only holds 6k and the upper bowl holds the rest, but that would mean 12k in the upper bowl.

There may be two Not Awesomes here. The first is that I don’t believe the reported attendance, though criticizing a team for reporting fewer people at the game than were actually there would be a first. But if there really were less than 6k people at that game, then the Not Awesome is that we must add the Rock to the “mediocre-at-best” list above. And given how crowded the arena was with 5,700 there, if the attendance does increase again (there were over 13k at a Bandits game a couple of years ago), that place will be insanely packed.

Oshawa offense

The Oshawa FireWolves set a couple of records on Saturday night, but not the kind you want to set. Between last week’s game and this one, they went more than 60 minutes without scoring – the 67:25 scoreless streak is a league record. And a combined total of seven goals in back-to-back games is also a league record. Given their top four – Simmons, Kurtz, Williams, and Walker – plus guys like Taggart Clark and Kyle Jackson, they should be scoring more than this. Even in their win over the Rock, they only scored eight. I’m sure it’s just a blip and they’ll figure it out, but they’re three games into this blip now, and their next game is against Christian Del Bianco, so it ain’t getting easier anytime soon.