The 2026 trade deadline was this past Monday and once the trades started being announced, it seemed like they just wouldn’t stop. No real blockbusters, but there were a couple of significant deals and a number of smaller trades as well. Las Vegas made a number of moves to improve their team while Philadelphia were clearly sellers.

Then there were the seven games on the weekend. We began with an OT thriller on Friday night and ended with two games decided by seven goals.

Awesome

Trade deadline

We’ve had trade deadlines in the past (most of the time, actually) where almost nothing happened but the last two have been pretty eventful. Last year saw Christian Del Bianco head to Vancouver and Ottawa, Vancouver, Buffalo, and Albany involved in a four-way trade. This year had even more movement. I won’t go over all of the deals since that’s been done in multiple places by people with more in-depth knowledge than me (one of whom is Adam Levi on IL Indoor), but Joe Resetarits playing with the Bandits and Tyson Bell with Las Vegas will both make significant impacts, Marshal King gets to play with his brother Jesse in Vancouver, and Rochester native Blaze Riorden heads home.

It wasn’t a trade but Buffalo releasing Ryan Benesch (pictured at right, two or three years ago) was also big news, and Oshawa was happy to sign him just a few hours later. Benesch rewarded them with a six-point night on Friday, passing Colin Doyle for fourth place on the all-time scoring list. Benesch has been on many people’s list of “players I want to see win a Championship before they retire”, including mine, but I’m not sure this move will help that happen, at least this season. But it’s great for the FireWolves, who are stacked with offensive players under the age of 30. Bringing in a vet like Benesch basically gives them another offensive coach. It’s like the Rock bringing in Dan Dawson, but I’ve checked the rules and Dawson is not allowed to score goals during games. Benesch is, and will.

There was one other big move made on trade deadline day, and it also wasn’t a trade. See the first Not Awesome entry for that.

Close game in Halifax

The Rock and Thunderbirds always seem to play entertaining and sometimes chippy games. Friday’s game was definitely the former but not so much the latter. There were only six penalties in the whole game, but it was tied ten times. Partway through the fourth, it looked like we might need overtime but then Halifax scored twice and they grabbed some momentum, so no overtime. Then the Rock tied it, so we’ll need overtime. Challen Rogers scored his second straight to give Toronto the lead with under two minutes left, and Toronto had a bit of momentum, so no overtime. Then Brendan Bomberry tied it yet again with under twenty seconds left, and guess what? We headed to overtime.

OT lasted far longer than most overtime periods in the NLL, and both goalies made some incredible saves. It was almost six minutes before Josh Dawick was able to get one past Warren Hill. Toronto now owns the tiebreaker over Halifax though they’re also three full games ahead of Halifax in the standings, so that may not matter.

NLL+ Multi-View is back

I think it actually debuted last week but there weren’t any games that happened at the same time. I have two very minor complaints about it but the fact that it’s there at all outweighs both so I’m still listing this under Awesome. The first is that the background outside of the two game displays is constantly moving. Not only is this a waste of bandwidth but it’s distracting. The background needs to be a solid colour or a static non-moving image. The other complaint is that on Saturday night there were three games live at the same time, and Multi-View showed only two of them, so I kept having to switch tabs a lot which is the problem that Multi-View is supposed to solve.

Calgary Roughnecks

The Roughnecks are having a pretty tough season. They’re 4–9, in 12th place, and are likely to miss the playoffs. They had seven straight games of 10 or fewer goals, giving up 11 or more in all but one of them. But last week they beat the Knighthawks, and convincingly. They scored 14 and gave up only 7, and that was in the Knighthawks barn. Then this week they came home and broke the Ottawa Black Bears’ four-game winning streak with another convincing win. Aden Walsh looked really good in both games, and the Calgary offense was well-balanced with Dickson, Cook, Pace, and particularly Brayden Mayea scoring some beautiful goals.

Could Calgary pull a Vancouver and run the table after the trade deadline? Could they make the playoffs? Honestly, I think we need to pump the brakes a bit here. Both of those are possible but unlikely. It is only a two-game streak, and they play 3rd place Colorado next weekend. But their strong play in these two games against teams much higher in the standings does show that the Roughnecks are pulling things together. Next season could be a lot better than this one. But for now, Calgary fans, you have an exciting young team – only Tyler Pace and Riley Loewen are over 30 – so enjoy watching these guys play.

Not Awesome

Rochester coaching change

The most surprising move at the trade deadline wasn’t even a trade. The Rochester Knighthawks fired head coach Mike Hasen and assistant coach Pat O’Toole, which nobody saw coming. No, the Knighthawks season hasn’t gone the way many thought it would, but honestly, they’re 5–6 and half a game out of a playoff spot, which isn’t that bad. They did have a four-game streak where they lost to Toronto, Vancouver twice, and Ottawa – all teams ahead of them in the standings – but they’ve also beaten the Bandits and the Rush. I guess losing by seven to the 2–9 Calgary Roughnecks was the breaking point. But given Hasen’s coaching tenure in Rochester – five+ seasons with these Knighthawks plus nine more with the original Knighthawks, including Championships in 2012, 2013, and 2014 and a Championship appearance in 2018, I’m surprised it only took a bit of a slump and one bad game to turf Mike Hasen. So that was Not Awesome, and then the team responded by getting beaten handily by Las Vegas, a team with whom they are fighting for a playoff spot. That’s two Not Awesomes for Rochester, and we’re not done yet.

Rochester ignores Tucker Out Lymphoma night

It seems that the Knighthawks decided not to participate in the Tucker Out Lymphoma event in Las Vegas on Sunday. They did not have custom jerseys or stickers on their helmets or anything. This is disappointing considering Shawn Williams played the majority of his career in Rochester, even though it was for a different franchise. The Bandits still have it every year, and Williams played far more games for Rochester than for Buffalo.

Brett Dobson on Saturday

Of course Brett Dobson is still awesome overall so I had to qualify the title here. He didn’t have a great outing this past weekend, but as most “bad goalie outings” tend to be, it was the defense as a whole that didn’t have a great game. No, Dobson didn’t make all the incredible saves we’ve seen him make this season, but he also saw a few more one-on-ones and clear-lane shots from guys like Keegan Bal than he usually does. He was pulled, put back in, and then pulled again, and Devlin Shanahan played more minutes in that game than any other in his career apart from one start with the Bandits two years ago.

Dobson’s GAA for that game was 22.35, the highest in any game in his career, and his save percentage was 63.6%, fifth lowest of his career and lowest in two years. But even with that bad outing, his GAA is still 7.70, best in the league and a full point better than the best season in NLL history. His save percentage is 84.5%, best in the league and 3.6 percentage points better than the best season in NLL history. Don’t take that Goaltender of the Year award away quite yet.