We’re about a third of the way through the 2026 NLL season. A bunch of teams are playing as well as expected or even better: Saskatchewan, Rochester, Colorado, Ottawa, Las Vegas, and arguably Georgia. Others are struggling: Calgary, San Diego, Philadelphia, Oshawa, Halifax. I wouldn’t say Buffalo is struggling exactly but maybe not playing as well as the Bandits of the last few years.

Last weekend featured a lot of games so let’s get into what was awesome and what wasn’t.

Awesome

Ottawa vs. Buffalo

This was an exciting game, and it’s nice to see the Ottawa team we were hoping to see this season. Teat (5+2) and Hellyer (2+5) is a lethal combination, and when you add O’Connor (0+6) and a couple of transition goals, that plus a strong D was enough to take down the mighty Bandits. Imagine the final score if Kearnan and Sundown (one assist between the two of them) had more typical games for them. Zach Higgins was excellent, stopping 83% of the shots the Bandits fired at him, but the Ottawa defense was strong in general, preventing even more Bandits shots or forcing them to be from distance or bad angles.

Zach Higgins

Dhane Smith was Dhane Smith but it was weird to see Josh Byrne kept off the scoresheet. He had an assist in the second and his only goal came with just over two minutes remaining in the fourth, though it was a crucial goal for Buffalo. Matt Vinc had a bit of a rough night though keeping Ottawa to only 10 goals isn’t terrible.

The last five minutes of the game were awesome. Teat scores his third of the quarter to give Ottawa a 10–7 lead, but Buffalo is always dangerous. Byrne scores his goal at 12:52 and then Kyle Buchanan scores a minute later, putting Buffalo behind by one with a full minute left.

After a Buffalo shot was blocked by a defender, Ottawa took the ball down to the Buffalo end, where there was no goalie. They killed some clock, which is obviously a good move, but failed to even shoot on the empty net. The Bandits got the ball back with about 27 seconds left. Buffalo didn’t score so it worked out for Ottawa, but that was almost a game-changing play. Killing clock in that situation is good, but you really need to score there and put your team up by two.

NLL returns to Edmonton

I originally wanted to put this in the Awesome category, and then I moved it to the Not Awesome category, but after thinking about it some more, I moved it back to Awesome. It didn’t entirely suck, but I found the attendance at the game in Edmonton a bit underwhelming. They got 6,941 and if you look at the list of NLL games held in Edmonton over the years, this one would rank 66th out of 87. I was hoping for a strong “we want the NLL back in Edmonton” message, and that’s not the message I saw. Of course there are the die-hards who really do want the NLL back in Edmonton, and I’m sure the majority of those folks were there. But this was the first real occasion in ten years for Edmonton to prove to the NLL that a team would be welcomed back, and they kinda didn’t.

But then again, attendance at this game was higher than any game in Saskatchewan, Georgia, Philadelphia, Toronto, Las Vegas, Oshawa, or Ottawa this season (though most have only had 2 or 3 home games), and sits near the middle of the pack in terms of all games this season. And as Adam Levi pointed out, if you remove the Bandits home games (which skew the average by quite a bit), the overall league attendance average for this year is 6,915. This game was above average in that respect.

If you’re looking for another Buffalo, Calgary, or Halifax, averaging 10,000+ per game, Edmonton may not be it, at least not right away. But if 6–7k per game is good enough for the owners to make money, or not lose much, there are far worse locations out there.

Swarm

Lyle Thompson broke out of his season-long slump on Friday night, scoring four and adding six assists to power the Swarm to a dominant 19–9 win over Calgary. Toron Eccleston also scored four, Bryan Cole and Shayne Jackson scored three each while both Calgary goaltenders struggled equally, both ending up with GAA over 17 and a save percentage under 70%. At the other end, Brett Dobson continued his incredible 2026 season, allowing only four goals on 34 shots (88.2% save percentage) in three quarters before Ed Comeau decided that a 12-goal lead was a pretty good time to give backup goalie Devlin Shanahan some minutes. After backing up Matt Vinc in Buffalo for four seasons, Shanahan wasn’t exactly overflowing with playing time over his career.

The Swarm have had an up-and-down season so far. They’ve alternated wins and losses, and while their last two wins have been by 9 and 10 goals, they also scored only five goals in their loss to the Mammoth in between those two wins. Maybe this win is the start of a bit more consistency in Georgia.

Desert Dogs

The Desert Dogs offense was about as balanced as you will ever see. Connor Kirst had four points, three players had three points, five had two, and three others had one. In a game where they only scored ten, that’s only seven players without points, and one of those was Alex Buque who never hit the floor at all. The defense was even better – they kept Sowers, Caputo, and Riorden to three points total, and if you can limit O’Neill and Resetarits to 5 and 4 points respectively, that’s not bad. Landon Kells has struggled at times this year but not on Saturday – seven goals allowed on 45 shots is an 84.4% save percentage. Kells had an outstanding game.

The Dogs are now tied with the Bandits and Swarm at 3–3, and Las Vegas has scored more goals than the Bandits have. Can’t say I saw that one coming.

Troy Holowchuk

Holowchuk was solid in net for the Rock after Nick Rose was injured in the third quarter. He allowed 3 goals on 16 shots in 22 minutes, giving him a better-than-respectable 7.94 GAA and 81.2% save percentage. He did a great job as the starter last season after Rose was traded, to the point where Rock fans wondered if Rose would be coming back at all. Holowchuk has earned the team’s trust so that if anything happens to Rose – whether he’s injured or just having a bad night – they are confident with Troy behind them.

Rush

Saskatchewan is playing with a ton of confidence, and rightly so. They’re 6–1, undefeated at home, have the biggest goal differential in the league, Ryan Keenan is having an MVP-like season, Zach Manns and Austin Shanks are continuing their strong play from last year, and while Frank Scigliano isn’t seeing the incredible numbers that Brett Dobson is, he’s getting the job done. With all due respect to the 3-time champion Bandits, the Rush are the best team in the league right now.

Halifax discipline

Halifax only took four penalties on Friday night against the Mammoth, so it’s good that they managed to clean up that part of their game. They only scored six goals though, so there’s still some work to be done.

Warriors

Vancouver has had some games and pieces of games where they look like the juggernaut that finished last season 6–0. But they’ve also had times where they’re struggling to score. You wouldn’t think that a team with Dickson, King, Charalambides, Bal, and Klarich should have that problem but here we are. On Saturday against San Diego, they scored four goals in just over two minutes in the second quarter to tie the game, and then scored just three more over the next 34 minutes.

Not Awesome

Nick Weiss’s dumb penalty

Matt Marinier ran into Matt Vinc and knocked him over, so Nick Weiss went after him. That’s not that unusual but the only reason Marinier hit Vinc at all was that he was checked into him by Weiss. Marinier really had no chance to avoid hitting Vinc. Completely nonsensical. Someone told me on Twitter that Marinier gave Vinc an extra shove and that’s why Weiss went after him but I’ve watched the replay a couple of times and I didn’t see any extra shove. Weiss and Marinier both went to the box, so Weiss didn’t really disadvantage his team but it was still, in my opinion, a dumb play.

Missed penalty calls

In the last minute of the Toronto / Rochester game, there was a definite instance of a Toronto defender in the crease blocking a shot, and potentially a second one. Neither was called. In the first case, Billy Hostrawser was standing in the crease and when the shot came in, he jumped in a fairly obvious attempt to block it. It shouldn’t have been a penalty shot like the announcers were saying because we weren’t in the last 30 seconds of regulation, but in my mind, there was no question that it met the criteria for the new rule. Then with maybe one second left on the game clock, Phil Mazzuca blocked a shot while standing in the crease. In that case, I think he just happened to be in the crease and was not attempting to block a shot, but I understand why it should be called anyway.

But neither one was called a penalty at all. At least one of them should have been, and maybe both. The second one should have resulted in a potentially game-tying penalty shot. I would totally understand if Rochester fans feel like the team got a bit screwed there.

Missed goal call, sort of

At the end of the San Diego / Vancouver game, Curtis Dickson scored a really nice diving goal that would have tied the game. But the call on the floor was no goal because of a crease violation, and a review was held. The review ended up inconclusive and a lot of people disagreed with that call. Due to the camera angles, there was no way to see whether Dickson’s right knee or foot touched down in the crease before the ball crossed the line, so inconclusive was really the only call. I think it was probably a good goal, and Jake Elliott mentioned on the broadcast that after years of being one of the top scorers in the league (specializing in goals just like that one), Dickson’s body control is better than most and he’s unlikely to have touched the crease. But Dickson is now 37, so his body control may not be what it once was, and also “unlikely” isn’t “definitive”. The “Not Awesome” here is NOT that the refs or Dickson screwed up, it’s the fact that there weren’t enough camera angles to be able to tell for sure.

NLL on TSN ad

I have nothing against this ad at all. In fact, I think it’s pretty well done. But don’t play it twice in a row, and certainly don’t play it twice in a row dozens of times over multiple broadcasts on multiple nights. People complain about ref calls that they disagree with, and say that it makes the league look “bush”. I disagree with that (officials in every sport make mistakes here and there), but you know what does make the league look bush? This.

Lucas Argier

“Not great”? Really?