Week 15 wasn’t nearly as busy as week 14, but there were some important results this past weekend. The Rock and Thunderbirds had their offenses working while Colorado and Rochester didn’t, and the FireWolves held off a late surge by the Wings. Next week features a few matchups between teams near each other in the standings: Toronto at Halifax, Philly at Oshawa, Vancouver at Georgia, and Rochester at Las Vegas. Colorado and Buffalo aren’t really near each other in the standings but the way Buffalo has been playing lately, they might be before long. Only San Diego at Saskatchewan and Ottawa at Calgary feature two teams not really near each other in the standings, but would it really shock anyone if the underdogs take those games?

Awesome

Toronto

The Rock offense was clicking on Friday night in Vancouver. CJ Kirst’s incredible rookie season continues, with his second five-goal and third six-point performance of the season. Challen Rogers and Mark Matthews had great nights as well but the points were spread out all over the place, with Sam English, Hugh Kelleher, and even Nick Rowlett getting in on the scoring. Ball movement was crisp and anytime you can put 13 behind Christian Del Bianco, you’re doing something right.

But it wasn’t all rosy, no pun intended. The Rock went 15+ minutes without scoring over the second and third, and then after scoring three times in a little over a minute, didn’t score for the final seventeen minutes of the game. Josh Dawick has scored once in his past four games and Dan Craig has scored four times all season, so there is still some room for improvement.

CJ Kirst

Speaking of things being rosy, Nick Rose returned to the team after seven weeks and didn’t look like he missed any time at all. He was making all the stops you expected him to, and he didn’t look tentative. I know the team has a ton of confidence in Troy Holowchuk, and I’ve talked positively about him here as well. But Nick Rose is the guy for the Rock and having him back in the lineup, playing well, and beating a great team like the Warriors fills the team with confidence. When a team that good is also really confident, look out.

Goaltending and defense in Colorado

The first three quarters were very close – the biggest lead was a two-goal lead for Colorado, which only lasted three minutes. The third quarter ended with a 5–5 tie, but it turned out that Colorado’s offense was already done for the night. Dillon Ward and Zach Higgins both played really well, and it was another one of those “one of these goalies is going to lose tonight, and that sucks” games. I wondered if it was overtime that was going to solve this one, until Jeff Teat scored three goals in under two minutes in the middle of the fourth quarter. Kudos to both goaltenders and both defenses for their performances.

Another Mayea diving backhand

One awesome goal I missed last week was from Brayden Mayea, an incredible leaping over the shoulder shot that beat Warren Hill. Well, he did it again. Not exactly a carbon copy (kids, ask your parents what that means) of the previous one, but it was another leaping over the shoulder shot that completely fooled the goalie, in this case Rylan Hartley. Mayea is having an amazing sophomore season, and is becoming one of the most exciting young players on a team full of exciting young players.

Not Awesome

Colorado offense

I don’t want to take anything away from Zach Higgins, who made some amazing stops (see above), but there were many Mammoth possessions where their offensive players didn’t seem to be on the same page and ended up turning the ball over before taking a shot. Andrew Kew scored four, Dylan MacIntosh scored one, and that was it. They were shut out for the last 26+ minutes of the game. For a while during this game I wondered why Will Malcom wasn’t playing, whether he was scratched or injured. It turned out he was playing, I just hadn’t heard his name on the broadcast. That’s fine if you’re a defender, but if you’re one of the top offensive players on a team, you want your name mentioned a lot. Thomas Vela was added to the IR earlier in the day, and Vela might be the Thomas Hoggarth of the Mammoth – not the top scorer but they really feel his absence when he’s not there.

Rochester offense

Similar to the Colorado entry above, I don’t want to dismiss Aden Walsh’s performance but Rochester just didn’t play very well. They were missing the net a lot, hitting Walsh right in the chest, or as one of the Rochester commentators mentioned, repeatedly trying to score five-hole which wasn’t working. McConvey and Fields took a combined 26 shots on net and scored on two of them. There were certainly times where Calgary’s defense prevented good looks so they had no choice but to throw something in the general direction of the net and hope for the best, but sometimes it seemed that the Knighthawks were doing that anyway.

Philadelphia Wings

The Wings are an enigma. In the present, they are having a weird season. They’re 3–10 and almost certainly out of the playoff picture, but look at the teams they’ve beaten: the Mammoth, the Bandits, and the Swarm. Those are teams almost certainly in the playoff picture. Meanwhile they’ve lost to the 3–10 FireWolves and the 3–9 Roughnecks. They’ve reached double digits in scoring only twice in their last nine games.

In the past, they’ve led the league in shots faced in each of the last four seasons and are leading again this year. The fact that they haven’t led the league in goals allowed in each of those seasons (only 2024 and this year) is a credit to their goaltenders but doesn’t say much for their defense.

Meanwhile, the GM of the Wings is Paul Day, who has seen a ton of success in the NLL as well as MSL. The guy knows how to put successful teams together, for example the four-Mann-Cups-in-a-row Peterborough Lakers. And yet the Wings have played in one playoff game in seven seasons. They will finish under .500 for the third straight season and out of the playoffs for the fourth. I don’t get it.