There were ten games this past weekend, which ties for second place among the busiest weekends in NLL history – the last weekend of the 2007 season featured eleven games. Every team played, a bunch of teams played twice, and yet the standings didn’t change an awful lot. The Black Bears, Bandits, and Wings jumped, while the Rock, Seals, Desert Dogs, and Knighthawks dropped but even so, the jumps or drops weren’t huge.

Awesome

Brett Swenson

In Friday night’s Buffalo/Saskatchewan game, Ashley Docking did a short story on Brett Swenson, son of Bandits PA announcer Chris Swenson, and how he’s as much a part of the Bandits family as any of the players. They showed Brett in the crowd with the title “Brett Swenson – Director of Ball Boy Operations”, which is awesome. Over the years, I’ve seen dozens of pictures and videos of Brett out on the floor with the players, talking to them, getting high fives and hugs after wins, and being included in the obligatory picture taken of the team after a Championship win. The Bandits just wouldn’t be the Bandits without Chris or Brett.

They were both in Hamilton for the game against the Rock, and I took this picture of them on the Bandits bench before the game:

Tehoka Nanticoke goal

For the third straight week, an amazing goal by Nanticoke makes the Awesome list. About halfway through the first quarter, Nanticoke was right on the crease and took a pass from Dhane Smith, spun 360° while ducking under a check from Robert Hudson, and then shot far corner while falling. As I said to my son at the time, he does not score ugly goals.

The Bandits

It’s no secret that Matt Vinc is not having the best season of his life. Even after the two wins this past weekend, his GAA, Save percentage, and GSAA are all in the lower half of the league’s starters. Many have asked the classic question of whether his time as a dominant or even decent goalie in the NLL is over – it’s a valid question considering he’ll be 44 in June. But this past weekend, Vinc looked a lot more like the Matt Vinc of the previous fifteen years than the Matt Vinc of early 2026. The “oh, he should have had that one” comments were mostly gone, and the “how on earth did he stop that?” comments were back with a vengeance.

Confidence in your goalie has a huge effect on the defense, who can afford to be just a bit more aggressive. And when monsters who are great at blocking shots like Dawson, Priolo, Spanger, de Snoo, Belter, Weiss, and Wyers, all of whom are 6’2″ or bigger, can be more aggressive, a lot of shots will not make it to Vinc at all, and a lot of shots will just not be taken because the shooter can’t see the net at all.

Josh Byrne is having a good season, and is on pace to score 102 points. But 102 is a far cry from the 135/134 he’s scored in the last two seasons. The concern was that he didn’t look like himself – he seemed a bit more tentative and less aggressive near the net. But just like Vinc, this weekend’s Byrne looked more like last season’s Byrne and just like Vinc, I imagine Bandits fans were excited to see him return to form. A fully healthy Josh Byrne combined with Dhane, Buchanan, Benesch, Nanticoke, and MacKay (though MacKay didn’t play in Toronto) makes a potent offense and that combined with that defense and the old Matt Vinc means…

The Bandits are back.

Games

There were so many games this weekend that I didn’t have a chance to watch all or even most of them. On Friday night, I admit I focused mostly on the Rush/Bandits game, though I did see some of the other three. On Saturday, after returning home from the Bandits/Rock game, I was able to watch the second half of Thunderbirds/Roughnecks but the other games were all over. I did watch Warriors/Seals on Sunday as well, but with various other family things going on, I didn’t have time to watch any replays. So I’ll make a few comments based on boxscores and the few highlights I’ve seen; there were probably awesome things (and not awesome things) that I missed.

Friday night

GEO @ PHI

I am enjoying watching the Swarm this season so I’m hoping to find time this week to watch this replay. Brett Dobson continues his amazing season and managed to lower his GAA from an incredible 7.03 to an even more incredible 6.93. We’re running out of ways to describe his season other than MVP-worthy. He did bump his GAA back up over seven after Saturday’s game but 7.02 is still in “incredible” territory.

SSK @ BUF

This was an amazing game to watch. The Bandits kept trying to pull away but the Rush wouldn’t let them, and then Frank Scigliano and the Rush defense kept the Bandits off the board for the last two minutes of the third and all of the fourth while scattering three goals, the last of which came with under a minute left. We headed to overtime, which might have been the most entertaining 6:47 of lacrosse this season before Josh Byrne scored his first of the game (to go along with his 7 assists) to win it for the Bandits and end the Rush 9-game winning streak.

SD @ COL

Dillon Ward had a rare bad game but Nathan Whittom took over and was outstanding. He finished with a save percentage over 86% and a GAA of 6.61, which was good enough to keep the Mammoth in the game and allow the offense to finally get to Chris Origlieri. Despite being down 5–0 halfway through the first quarter, the Mammoth kept chipping away and after a very exciting fourth quarter, they managed to take their first lead of the game with under four minutes left and hold on for the comeback win.

LV @ VAN

Landon Kells didn’t have a great start in this one, allowing eight goals on 21 shots in 27 minutes. Alex Buque was better, with a GAA under 10 and a 77% save percentage, but the damage was done and when you’re facing Christian Del Bianco, the odds of a big late comeback are pretty low. That said, Vegas had a strong fourth quarter, outscoring the Warriors 5–2, and one of those Warriors goals was an empty-netter with 12 seconds left. The Dogs got back within three but once again proved that they are a team that will not give up.

Keegan Bal is a Desert Dog killer. He’s now played the Dogs eight times in his career and the Warriors have a 7–1 record. In every one of those games, Bal has had eight, nine, or ten points.

Keegan Bal

Saturday night

SSK @ ROC

The game was tied at least once in each quarter. The Rush kept retaking the lead (six times!) but the Knighthawks managed to tie it up every time. Then after playing catch-up all night, Rochester finally took the lead at the best possible time – in OT. Rochester’s season began 4–1 but then they lost four straight, and people started to wonder if they were the playoff team many expected before the season. After this win, they’re 5–5 and certainly not out of it yet. The Rush went 0–2 on the weekend, putting them at 10–3. They’re still in first place, but not by as much as last Thursday.

OSH @ OTT

After a close first half, Oshawa scored eight straight goals to build a six-goal lead. But then the Black Bears came storming back, with an 8–3 fourth quarter, tying the game with fourteen seconds left in regulation, and then again to win the game just under two minutes into overtime. I don’t know if this was an epic comeback from the Bears or an epic collapse from the FireWolves but honestly, you can’t really have one without the other.

BUF @ TOR

Before the games started, the Rock fan in me was a bit concerned about playing Buffalo the night after they faced the #1 Rush. If they lost, they’d be really pissed and either beat the Rock or beat the Rock up. But when they won against the Rush, I thought that maybe they wouldn’t be so pissed and therefore less dangerous. They weren’t pissed at all and the game wasn’t nearly as chippy as you’d expect from these two teams. But for the Rock it was just as bad – Buffalo’s win over the Rush gave them confidence and that, not their anger, is what helped them win on Saturday. Again, Matt Vinc looked like the Matt Vinc from a few years ago, Josh Byrne looked great, and the defense as a whole looked really strong (see the Awesome section).

It was a close back-and-forth game until the fourth quarter when Buffalo took over, outscoring the Rock 5–2. They didn’t look borderline untouchable, like they have at many points in the past couple of seasons, but their goaltending, defense, and offense were all strong and the Rock, as well as they played, just couldn’t match it.

And once again, kudos to the awesome Bandits fans who made the trip to Hamilton for this game. If you were listening to the game rather than watching it, it might have been difficult to tell based on crowd noise which team had just scored. And I got a good laugh hearing them chant “You can’t do that” when the Rock took a penalty.

PHI @ GEO

Brett Dobson had a GAA of 8 and a save percentage of 83% – a bit of a down game for him this season but good enough to win, right? Not when Nick Damude has his best game of the season and one of the best of his career, only allowing five and saving 90+% of the 53 shots he faced. But a second story here is that Joe Resetarits, Michael Sowers, and Kyle Jackson were all out of the lineup for the Wings, and Brennan O’Neill picked up no goals and a single assist. Despite missing all of those pieces, the Wings offense managed to score nine goals on one of the top defences, and far and away the best goaltender, in the league. A huge character win for Philadelphia.

HFX @ CAL

What a nail-biter. The first seventeen goals of this game either tied the score or broke a tie. But four minutes into the third quarter, the Thunderbirds began a five-goal streak that effectively put the game away. Calgary was able to score two in the fourth but it wasn’t enough as Halifax broke their five-game losing streak. The Roughnecks fall to 2–9 and will have, at best, a .500 season. Technically, they still have a chance of making the playoffs but realistically, they’d need to run the table and get some help.

Sunday

VAN @ SD

After San Diego scored the first goal of the game, the next ten goals (over 45 minutes) alternated between the two teams. San Diego held the lead the entire time, and had five different two-goal leads. But then the Warriors scored four straight and kept the Seals off the board to take the comeback win 9–7.

San Diego native Marquez White’s first career goal in the second quarter was great but the real awesome was the reaction from both his teammates and his family. The whole San Diego bench emptied to congratulate him and I saw another Seals player grab the ball. Meanwhile, there was nobody in the building, Marquez and his teammates included, who was more excited about that goal than White’s parents. Just an amazing moment.

Not Awesome

Sound system in Hamilton

For the second straight week, the sound system in TD Coliseum was messed up. Last week it was just a volume thing – the music was much louder than the PA announcer for most of the game. This week it was the same again, where the PA volume was just too low but in the later stages of the game, the sound of the PA also got crackly and distorted.