Game report: Calgary 12 @ Toronto 17

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Graeme

I mentioned in my Week 7 picks article that Calgary scares me. They have arguably the best offense in the league, one of the best face-off men in the league, quick transition, a strong defense, and lots of toughness up and down the lineup. Oh yeah, and the reigning goaltender of the year. They’ve won four in a row, two of those by 7+ goals. There’s no question that the Roughnecks are one of the toughest teams to beat in the league, and that’s the team we saw tonight.

For the first quarter.

For the rest of the game they looked like just another pretty good lacrosse team. They certainly had flashes of brilliance – Poulin made a few great stops, the Roughnecks defense was pretty stifling all night long, and they scored a couple of goals that I, a Rock fan, even applauded. Shawn Evans didn’t score but dished out some pretty nice feeds. Dane Dobbie was on fire, and Shattler, Dickson, and Ranger had some pretty nice goals as well. But penalty trouble was the name of the game for the Roughnecks, as they gave the Rock 12 power play opportunities, 9 of which were converted.

The Rock started the game with the yips – shots going everywhere, dropped balls, fancy behind-the-back passes to nobody. It looked like the first game of the season out there – assuming nobody had picked up a lacrosse stick during the off-season. But things gradually came together and after being down 5-2 and 6-3, the Rock went on a 11-1 run including five straight power play goals in the third. Early in the second quarter, Garrett Billings scored an unbelievable behind-the-back no-look short-side goal and I mentioned on twitter that it “may be the most beautiful lacrosse goal ever scored in the history of the world” and was only partially kidding. But later in the same quarter, Billings scored another from almost the same place but this one was far side. I swear it looked like the ball curved after he shot it, since the space between Poulin’s arm and the post was almost nonexistent.

As I said, penalties caused the Roughnecks trouble all night, none more than Geoff Snider’s ejection early in the third. He was having his usual ho hum 78% face-off night, when he seemed to lose his mind and go after Scott Evans. Evans decided that fighting Snider was a bad idea (can’t blame him) and tried to walk away. Snider, who had hold of his jersey, pulled him back and started pummeling him. Refs quickly broke it up, but Snider was given 2 for instigating, 5 for fighting, and a game misconduct. The 2 and the 5 I get, but I honestly don’t know what earned him the misconduct. Evans, who never threw a punch, was given no penalties at all and the Rock went on a seven-minute power play, scoring three goals.

The Rock had a seven-goal lead at one point, but it dwindled to four with almost eight minutes left, so this was no blowout until the very end. Still, the Roughnecks seemed to get more and more frustrated (possibly with hitting the number of posts and crossbars that they did – they were banging more iron than a blacksmith), and both Andrew McBride and Shawn Evans got unsportsmanlike conduct penalties within the last five minutes of the game.

So with this win, did the Rock cement themselves as the best team in the league? Arguably yes, and they do have the best record, but given the parity in the league it’s hard to say they’re far and away the best. They’ve also played two more games than Rochester and Buffalo, and three more than Philadelphia so we’ll have to let them catch up in games played before we can make a meaningful comparison.

Only a couple of game notes, neither of which has anything to do with the game itself:

It took me over two hours to get to the ACC from my house. With no traffic, I can make it in 45 minutes easy. I was a little frustrated by the time I arrived, especially since I’ve now missed the first five minutes of two games (out of three) this season due to horrible traffic on Lakeshore Boulevard. I know that nobody but me cares about that, but hey, it’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to.
Because of this, I missed the pre-game event where a couple of members of the Grey Cup-winning Toronto Argonauts brought the Cup onto the field. The two captains Colin Doyle and Andrew McBride met the players, but after McBride declined to drink some beer from the Cup, the Argo player (Adriano Belli) poured beer over McBride’s head. There are a number of tweets from Roughnecks players and at least a couple from Rock players expressing their “disgust” over this. I can’t say I’m outraged but I agree this was a classless move. I don’t follow the CFL at all (and had never heard of Belli before this), but I’m pretty disappointed that a pro athlete would choose to disrespect a fellow pro athlete like this. I think an apology should be forthcoming from Belli and the Argos.

Week 7 picks

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Graeme

After starting the season 2-8, I’ve gone 10-6 since. Just enough to give me confidence that I might actually know what I’m doing. Therefore, look for a 1-4 week.

Last week I said this about the Philadelphia-Rochester game: “I have a weird feeling about this one” and then picked Philadelphia. Shoulda just taken a Rolaids for that weird feeling. I also got the Toronto/Minnesota game wrong, though in fairness (Warning: cheap excuse ahead) I did say that if Crawford returned I was less sure about my pick, and Crawford did play.

Record: 12-14 (.462)

Game	Comments	Pick
WAS @ EDM	Looks like the 2012 Stealth are gone, and the 2010/2011 Stealth are back. They are second in the west, tied for most goals scored. The Rush are what they were last year – struggling to score goals but doing very well in the defense department. No brainer, right? No such thing in this league, buddy. But I’m still betting on Washington.
CAL @ TOR	This will be a fun one. Both teams are stacked offensively and have great goaltenders so I don’t know if this will be a blowout one way or the other, a defensive battle, or a 18-17 slugfest. Could be any of them. Toronto is 5-7 at home in 2012 and so far in 2013, and I’ve heard everyone from owner Jamie Dawick to GM Terry Sanderson to a handful of players talking about how they have to play better at home. I can think of no better challenge than having the Roughnecks come in on a four-game winning streak. The Rock did beat the Roughnecks earlier this year, but they were Dobbie-less and hadn’t clicked yet. I hate to pick against my Rock, but Calgary scares me.
EDM @ COL	This is kind of backwards to the Washington/Edmonton pick above: Edmonton’s defense is doing well and the Mammoth are struggling. The Mammoth is one of only two teams who have scored fewer goals than the Rush. Can they break out and score 15? With Junior on your team, definitely. But they only scored 6 against the Stealth and they’ve been more focused on their goaltending than their offense recently. Rush in a close one.
CAL @ MIN	Minnesota played very well in their game against Toronto last week, though they did give up the lead in the fourth quarter. But they didn’t give up entirely, scoring twice in overtime. One of those goals even counted! And this against the top team in the league. This time they’re facing the Roughnecks, the #2 team in the league (and if they beat the Rock on Friday, they’ll be the #1 team). Not sure the Swarm can pull that off two weeks in a row.
BUF @ ROC	Toughest game of the week to call other than CAL@TOR. The Knighthawks have been too strong over the last week or two while Buffalo has been consistently inconsistent and is still without JT.

Veterans and goal reviews and Dave Pym is a smart guy

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Graeme

There have been a few things I’ve wanted to write about but they weren’t really enough for a whole post. So I came up with the completely original idea of combining them all into one post. I know, right? Brilliant!

What is a veteran?

I recently got into a conversation over Twitter with @IKnowLax (and he does know lax) after a blog posting he made where he referenced Rock forward Garrett Billings as a veteran. I said that Billings hadn’t been in the league long enough yet to qualify as a veteran, and he disagreed. So I asked my twitter followers what they thought – how do you define “veteran” in the context of the NLL? Is it strictly time played in the league, and how long? Does the player’s impact on the league change things? I used an example: Cody Jamieson is in his third season but has already led his team to a Championship – is he a veteran? I got a few varied responses:

IKnowLax – “a person who has had a long experience in a particular field” I’d say 2 years. You’re not considered new at a job after that. …a guy like Cody Jamieson I would consider a vet.
TimNThen – I’d say it’s more based on playing time and impact combined
HindaCozaCulp – time in the league
banditfan11 – I don’t think he [Billings] should be called a veteran just yet
StealthDragon – I think years. If you make it to your 3rd year you’re a veteran [He clarified later to say that he meant once you’ve finished 3 years, so you’re a vet in your fourth]
apmckay – To me a veteran is someone who’s been through enough he can guide others through it too.

I also asked on the IL Indoor forums and got a few more responses there:

Wings-4-Life – My cutoff is 5 full years. I do not consider Jammer or Billings to be veterans.
Laxwizz – I’d say 50+ games in the league. If you’ve been able to stick with the league that long you deserve to be called a vet. [50 games is a little over 3 seasons.]
Hollywood42 – 5 or more years IMO
@podcasterryan – For me it’s 3 full seasons. In your fourth year you are a vet.
poskid – I like four years. Might be because the Swarm are so young and lasting four years here means something.
swami24 broke it down even further: You are a veteran at the start of your third full year. You are a seasoned veteran in your 6th season and a grizzled veteran in your 10th.

So we don’t have a real consensus, but it looks like most people would consider a player a veteran after they had finished 3-4 years. Personally, I’d give it a couple more years – after five full years I’d probably use the term veteran. I might drop it to four if the player had had a significant impact, so I might give Jamieson that honour next year.

The magic number

Former Roughnecks coach and current Toronto Rock scout Dave Pym tweeted recently:

Unlike Spinal Tap the magic number is not 11. It is 12. If you can pop 12 then your winning % will be 75% and better. Probably a lot higher.

Of course, that made me curious, and I jumped into action. It’s not that I was trying to prove Pym right or wrong, I was just curious as to how true that was. It shouldn’t really be that surprising that Pym’s impressions after all of his years in lacrosse were pretty accurate.

Over the history of the NLL (not including any games from the 2013 season), the the average losing score was 10.6 (the average winning score was 14.4 in case you’re wondering). The median losing score is 10, so if you want to give yourself a >50% chance of winning, scoring 11 would do it, but just barely. Scoring 11 goals would have won you 51.6% of all NLL games. Scoring 12 would give you a much higher 64.6% winning percentage, and if you wanted to hit the 75% mark, you’d need to score 13 (which would actually give you 76%).

Automatic goal reviews

While watching the Calgary / Edmonton game a couple of weeks ago (not last week’s 9-8 nailbiter, but the 18-15 goal-o-rama game the week before), I thought I was watching a basketball game: there was lots of scoring and the last few minutes of the game took forever. I wasn’t the only one either; lots of people on twitter felt the same way. The reason for the frustration was the fact that there were three goals scored within the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, the time during which no goal challenges are allowed. Instead, the referees will automatically review every goal during those two minutes. This apparently ~~includes~~ included empty-net goals.

I get the idea of this rule. If a coach challenges a goal and the challenge is overturned, his team loses a timeout. If they don’t have a timeout remaining, they get a bench minor penalty. But if there aren’t two minutes left in the 4th quarter, the team can’t serve the whole two minutes, so there’s less of a risk to calling for a challenge. To avoid frivolous “nothing to lose” challenges near the end of a game, they simply take away that possibility and review every goal, negating the need for a challenge. But I expected that the rule was written to say that all goals in the last two minutes of the 4th were reviewed if necessary. If there is no question that the shooter was outside the crease, none of his teammates are near the crease, and the ball went in before the whistle, shot clock expiry or final buzzer, there’s no need to review it, right? Apparently not. Even worse, both of the empty-net goals were reviewed.

The fact that these goals were reviewed at all is frustrating enough. But when the reviews take two minutes or more, we start to get into “ridiculous” territory. They showed the replay from a couple of different angles during the telecast, and there was no question that the goals were good. There’s no reason those reviews should have taken more than about fifteen seconds. I have no idea why they took so long. The fans watching on twitter, those in the stands at the game, and even the announcers calling the game were similarly stumped.

Some of the suggestions I saw on twitter were to limit the time that a review could take (i.e. if the ref can’t figure it out within 30 or 60 seconds, the call on the floor stands), or allowing the coach of the team who was scored on to waive the review. The problem with the second option is that if the losing team is gaining momentum in the last two minutes, the scored-on coach would not waive the review because he wants to kill any momentum the scoring team might have had. But momentum is being killed anyway, so they need to do something.

Thankfully the NLL announced a couple of days later that empty-net goals in the final two minutes of the fourth (or OT) are no longer required to be reviewed. While this is a great addition, I would have preferred the rule be changed to give the referees the ability to decide for themselves whether a review is necessary. A lot of people complain about the refs in the NLL, but the league has to show enough confidence in them to allow them to see a goal and make a judgment call as to whether it needs reviewing. Maybe they can err on the side of caution and say “If it’s close at all, review it”.

Either way though, kudos to the NLL for addressing this issue quickly.

Colorado’s goalies

Last year, I seem to remember some trepidation about Chris Levis being the Mammoth’s starting goalie. Was he up to the task? By the end of the year, however, there were no doubts, and Levis placed third in IL Indoor’s Goaltender of the Year race (even getting one first-place vote). It seemed that many people forgot about this over the summer, though, since I saw a lot of people remarking at the beginning of this season that Colorado’s biggest question mark was goaltending. Now maybe Levis had a bad summer in the MSL or WLA, or got injured while windsurfing or something, and I didn’t hear about it. But it seemed to me that if Levis was one of the best goaltenders in 2012, there shouldn’t be much of a question about him in 2013 before any games have been played.

Sure enough though, Levis didn’t have a great start to the season and was released. Matt Roik, who had been brought in during the off-season as Levis’ backup, was given the starting job. But when the Mammoth signed Dan Lewis to back up Roik, I saw tweets from people talking about how the Mammoth had solved their goaltending problems. Really? Dan Lewis is the answer? Nothing against Lewis, about whom I know very little, but his entire NLL career consists of nine minutes during which he allowed 4 goals and made 10 saves. That’s not much to go on.

That said, as of now Lewis has played 8 minutes. He’s got a 9.25 GAA and 87.5% save percentage. Not bad at all.

Week 6 picks

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Graeme

I was 3-1 last week, my second consecutive week over .500. I can hit the magic .500 level on the season by going 4-1 this week. Bring it on.

Record: 9-12 (.429)

Game	Comments	Pick
TOR @ MIN	The Rock are rolling (HA!) on the road this year, and I think that will continue in Minnesota. If Callum Crawford returns I’m a little less sure about this one, not that I’m really sure about any of them.
ROC @ PHI	Who ever heard of an 11am game? This is 8am for our west coast friends, so there’s a lacrosse game on before some of them even get to work in the morning. The Wings have impressed me so far this year, and the Knighthawks have not. I still think Rochester will finish the season ahead of Philly, but I have a weird feeling about this one.
ROC @ BUF	John Tavares is out again this week, plus we know the Bandits are stupid. Darris said so. As for Rochester, either they’ll be ticked off that they lost the previous ~~night~~ morning, or they’ll win on Friday and ride a two-game winning streak into Buffalo.
EDM @ CAL	Can’t go against Calgary after their dominance last weekend.
COL @ WAS	The Stealth only gave up 7 goals last weekend and lost. In Colorado, it’s looking even more like the fortunes of the Mammoth follow the fortunes of John Grant. He scored 6 and 5 points in their losses and 8 and 11 points in their wins.

Week 5 picks

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Graeme

4-3 last week. Certainly better than the 0-4 the week before, and pushes my record (.353) up into the “not very good” range, which is way above last week’s “abysmal”. This week, I’m hoping to reach “mediocre”! Dream big!

Record: 6-11 (.353)

Game	Comments	Pick
TOR @ BUF	This will be a hell of a game. Thankfully the game is on TSN in Canada, since I’ve heard that the YouTube feeds coming out of Buffalo have been at best problematic and at worst non-existent. No John Tavares for the Bandits, which can only be a good thing for the Rock. I almost hate picking the Rock sometimes because it makes me look like a homer, but in this case, I just can’t not.
MIN @ COL	It’s weird – I heard a ton last year about how Chris Levis was the goalie the Mammoth had needed for years and he performed better than expected. Then after only 2 games this year, people started talking about how he’s the team’s biggest question mark. After one more game he’s released, they pick up a guy who’s played all of 9 minutes in his NLL career, and now their goaltending problems are solved?
CAL @ EDM	Calgary didn’t have the greatest first couple of weekends but holy crap, did they make up for it last weekend, winning twice by a combined score of 35-20. Edmonton won’t be a pushover by any stretch, but if the Roughnecks play like we now know they can, there are few teams in the league who can hold them back.
WAS @ ROC	Rochester can’t really be this bad, can they? I’m sure I said this all last year about the Stealth, and look how that turned out. But it’s not like the Stealth were a championship-contending team before that! Oh wait, yes they were. OK, I’ve almost talked myself out of picking the Knighthawks here, but I’m going to go with my first impression.

Hyperbole

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Graeme

As they say, hyperbole is just the worst.

Over the 12 years I’ve been “involved” with lacrosse (involved is in quotes since I don’t play or coach – my sole involvement is watching it and writing about it), I’ve heard a lot of claims about the sport and the league. Some are true and some are not, but many are opinions presented as fact. Let’s take a look at some of them and see which ones actually stand up.

Bring someone to a lacrosse game once and they’ll come back again and again.

Truth: Nope. If that were true, attendance would continually be increasing. NLL attendance goes up and down just like every other sport, depending on the team’s success, the economy, other sports and entertainment offerings in the city, and a bunch of other factors. The Wings and Rock are drawing far less than they used to. Buffalo had huge crowds, then they dropped off significantly, and now they’re back up. This year, Washington’s first home game had an attendance of 7,023. About 2,000 of those were Native Americans for whom Rochester owner Curt Styres bought tickets. Washington’s second home game was seen by 3,766, a drop of almost 50%.

Some people see a lacrosse game for the first time and are immediately hooked, myself included. Many others are not.

Lacrosse players play for the love of the game and not for money, unlike greedy NHL/MLB/every-other-sport players.

Truth: Tough one. Yes and no. It’s definitely true that lacrosse players make far less money than in the NBA, NHL, MLB, or NFL. While we see NHL players flying first class and staying in 5-star hotels and fighting for $8 million per season instead of a measly $7½ million (and baseball players fighting over double that amount), lacrosse players seem happy to take vacation days from their real jobs to fly coach (or take buses), play a game, and then travel home again before going back to work, all for an average of less than $15,000 per year.

At the same time, it’s not like there have been no labour issues in the NLL:

The 2005 season was almost cancelled because of labour difficulties, and last-minute negotiations resulted in a deal that saved the season.
The 2008 season was cancelled because of a players strike (not a lockout) over money. Again, some last-minute heroics saved the season.
That 2008 strike cost the league the Arizona Sting.
They are playing the 2013 season under the previous (expired) CBA because they couldn’t negotiate a new one in time for the season to start. Kudos to both the league and the PLPA for agreeing to do this.

It sounds like more hyperbole, but because of that strike in 2008 we almost lost the season and I’m not sure the league as a whole could have survived it. This was pre-Twitter, but those of us on the NLL message boards were quite convinced that we’d seen the last of the NLL. That event really soured me on the whole “players play for love of the game” thing, and whenever I hear someone say that, I immediately think “well mostly, but…..”

NLL teams that play games on back-to-back nights do better in the second game.

Truth: Nope. Last season, I looked at the back-to-back game stats over the history of the league (up to 2011 since 2012 was in progress at the time) and did the math. The numbers tell us that there is no pattern – playing two games on consecutive nights is no different from playing two games a week apart.

I think the confusion here is that it seems like common sense that a team playing on back-to-back nights would be tired on the second night and so one might expect that they lose those games more often. Since teams don’t have a terrible record in those games (on average, their records in those games aren’t any better or worse than their records in any other games), people think “they win more often than they should”, and that ends up translating to “they win more often than they lose”.

Lacrosse is the fastest-growing sport in North America.

Truth: Yes and no. I’ve been hearing this claim for ten years, and if lacrosse had been the fastest growing sport every year for 10 years, it’d be freakin’ huge by now. And I was right, sort of. Lacrosse has not been the fastest-growing sport in each of the last ten years; between 2007 and 2009 it was rugby. But over the last ten years as a whole, lacrosse is indeed the fastest-growing sport in the US. From that article, “Lacrosse participation is up 218.1 percent over the last 10 years.”

Note that all the stats I could find were American, and were likely talking about field lacrosse.

Offense wins games, defense wins championships.

Truth: Mainly false. Again, I’ve done the math and if we look at all of the champions in the 25-year history of the NLL, more often than not they’ve ranked higher in the league on offense than they did on defense. The Les Bartley era in Toronto (1998-2003) was a six-year anomaly.

Do you know of other similar statements about lacrosse? Want to know if they’re true? Post a comment and let me know.

The Rock are getting on TRAC

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Graeme

The Toronto Rock are the envy of the rest of the NLL. Owner Jamie Dawick is putting the finishing touches on a new facility that he hopes will put Oakville on the map of Ontario lacrosse hotbeds, along with Orangeville, Peterborough, and Six Nations. After years of practicing at the Iroquois Lacrosse Arena (ILA) in Six Nations, 100 km southwest of Toronto, the Rock now hold their practices at the brand new Toronto Rock Athletic Centre (TRAC). The TRAC, located near Trafalgar Road and the 403 in Oakville, is only 30 km from the ACC and is a state-of-the-art lacrosse facility. The Rock’s head office is also in the building, as is the gym run by their official strength coach, so as Dawick put it during the Toronto Rock Town Hall meeting back in December, the only thing the team doesn’t do in that building is play their actual games.

The TRAC just opened in December, but is already packed almost every night of the week. The Rock hold a practice once a week, but Rock players come and go frequently. Some Minnesota Swarm players also practice there once a week, Troy Cordingley and Pat Campbell run youth lacrosse clinics, and there are Masters and youth league games there all the time. There are even floor hockey leagues and everyone from local rugby teams to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats have held events there.

On January 24, Jamie Dawick invited me for a tour of the TRAC, including the Rock dressing room, meeting and training rooms, and his own office overlooking the carpeted floor. Many thanks to Jamie for the offer and for showing me around this fabulous lacrosse facility.

And when I say “lacrosse facility”, I mean lacrosse facility. There are two rinks in the building, one with brand new carpet (identical to the brand new carpet on the floor of the ACC this year) and one with a concrete floor, but no ice-making facilities and no Zamboni. It was built specifically for lacrosse, though a local floor hockey league plays on the uncarpeted rink during the week (they were playing when I visited, see picture below). The carpeted rink was being used by Troy Cordingley’s lacrosse clinic, with Troy running drills for 30 or 40 kids, and Pat Campbell running goalie drills. If you’re a young lacrosse player, can you imagine learning the game from an NLL coach who’s been named Coach of the Year and has won three championships, and goaltending skills from a 14-year NLL vet?

The TRAC is also home to The Box Lacrosse Store, owned by Troy Cordingley and Rochester Knighthawks coach Mike Hasen. This is the biggest, and possibly only, lacrosse store in the area. As Dawick said, up to now anyone in the Toronto area would have to drive to Whitby, Orangeville (where Terry Sanderson owns Source for Sports – I wonder how he feels about his coach owning a competing store), or Six Nations in order to find a decent selection of lacrosse equipment. Despite the name, I did spot some field lacrosse equipment as well – though admittedly, an eight-foot-long lacrosse shaft isn’t overly hard to spot.

After the jump are some pictures from my visit. Click on any of them for a larger version.

	Nick Rose’s locker, with a goalie stick that’s clearly illegal. I don’t see the Reebok logo anywhere on that stick.
	A couple of massage tables just off the Rock dressing room, next to the “coach’s room” where Troy, Terry, and Jamie watch game film for hours.
	The main conference room, with windows overlooking the carpeted rink.
	Jamie’s office
	The Dynamic Athlete, a strengh training facility run by Sean Holmes, strength coach of the Rock. The turf at the left was just put down earlier in the day.
	Looks like Holmes (a two-time Mann Cup winner himself) has still got it.
	The carpeted rink, where Troy Cordingley is running his lacrosse camp
	“This is what we call the pressure defense, kids. Learn it. Live it. Love it.”
	Pat Campbell teaching some future NLL goaltenders
	The uncarpeted rink, hosting a local floor hockey league
	Brand new Rock logo, just above the stands overlooking the carpeted rink
	A lacrosse ball shaped hole in the wall, twenty feet off the ground. Considering the mesh behind the net, someone had to work pretty hard to put that there. This balcony comes off of the main conference room, pictured above.
	Pretty good head selection at the Box Lacrosse Store
	Fancy Rock-coloured mesh on the nets. Likely not allowed in the NLL. The shooters probably prefer the black mesh anyway but these still look cool.

Game report: Minnesota 12 at Toronto 13

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Graeme

In last week’s Rock home opener, the Rock had a three-goal lead in the fourth quarter but then allowed Philly to score the last four goals of the game to come back and win it. Friday night was a complete turnaround, in which the Minnesota Swarm had a four-goal lead in the third quarter but allowed Toronto to score the last five goals of the game to come back and win it. About the Rock’s 8-7 loss to Philly, Rock owner Jamie Dawick tweeted that he was “disgusted”, though later admitted that that term was a little harsh. But he said the other day that he’d rather lose 20-0 than have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory like that. I imagine Dawick’s first thought at the final buzzer on Friday was “That’s more like it”.

Friday’s game was one of momentum, I thought. The first quarter was back and forth and nobody really dominated for most of it. The Rock scored the last two goals, within 35 seconds, to take a 4-2 lead and with Doyle’s goal, it looked like things were swinging the Rock’s way. But in the second quarter the momentum shifted, as the Swarm scored two within 22 seconds to tie it up and then two more over the next 3 minutes. Again the Rock tied it and it looked like if they scored the next goal, they’d be off and running. Instead, the Swarm again swung the momentum back their way, this time scoring six of the next eight goals to take a 12-8 lead. They even chased Nick Rose from the game for a few minutes and giving Zack Boychuk his first taste of NLL action. The Rock pecked away at the lead at the end of the third, and made it a brand new game in the fourth as Josh Sanderson scored his fourth of the game and Garrett Billings tied it less than a minute in. There was only one goal the rest of the way, Stephen Leblanc’s winner.

Both goaltenders were very good, though not outstanding like last week; there were goals on both sides that probably shouldn’t have been. Both defenses also played very well, and it was evident why Brock Sorensen was drafted as high as he was. He’s a big solid guy who not only made it difficult for the Rock forwards to even see the net, but he can put the ball in the net himself, as we saw with his beautiful behind-the-back goal in the third. John Grant couldn’t have made that look any nicer.

The Rock defenders, on the other hand, aren’t huge as a rule, but for the most part they managed pretty well to keep the Swarm forwards off-balance. That said, the first goal of the night was from Kiel Matisz and at 6’5″, this may be the way he will score a great many of his goals. He was standing to the left of the net with his back to it, and Chris White in between him and Rosey. He stepped backwards into White and then stopped, as though testing how much resistance he was going to get. Evidently he decided “not enough”, and then plowed backwards, pushing White out of the way, and dove across the crease, depositing the ball over Rosey’s left shoulder. Pretty goal, and the power behind it was unreal.

There are games where if you end up losing, nobody would blame you for not playing hard. Last week’s game was like that – the Rock really should have put the Wings away but Brandon Miller didn’t let them. It’s not that the Rock gave up or didn’t work hard, but it just didn’t happen. But if you have a game like that and end up winning it, the phrase that’s come up in recent years is “character win” and that’s exactly what we saw on Friday. There were times when those in the crowd thought the game might be over even though it was only the third quarter, but the team never did.

Other game notes:

Callum Crawford had a couple of nice goals, but rather than plowing through the defense like Matisz, his were more of the get-open-and-fire-a-bullet type.
There were at least two Air Gait attempts by the Swarm and one by the Rock, none of which worked. On one of them, Boychuk already had his arm across the crossbar before the shot, so it looked like he had practiced preventing such goals. I’ve got mixed feelings about this play. While it looks spectacular, it’s kind of a cheap goal.
From my seat, I had a great angle of Garrett Billings’ tying goal in the 4th. Leblanc got him the ball and he fired a laser into a tiny little triangle in the top corner. It’s not obvious from the TV angles, but the space he had to hit was barely bigger than the ball. Pinpoint accuracy.
With a little over two minutes left in the fourth, the Rock scored a weird goal and Joe Sullivan threw the challenge flag. After a couple of minutes of watching the video, the goal was waved off. Once the replay was shown, it was immediately obvious that the Rock player was in the crease when the ball crossed the line. There was no question, so why did the review take so long?
I missed the anthem last week because of traffic, but I remember this anthem singer from last year. How does such a skinny little guy like that generate so much power with his voice? His body was shaking so much during some of the notes I thought he was going to explode.

Week 4 picks

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Graeme

This just gets better and better. After an 0-1 opening weekend and a more positive 2-3 week 2, I was 0-4 last weekend. Maybe it’s time to start flipping coins. The comments on these picks keeps getting harder and harder too – for every reason I can come up with why Team A will beat Team B, I can come up with another for why Team B will win. Plus even if team A has a far better offense than team B, Team A’s offense may have a bad game. Or Team B’s defense may have an exceptionally good game. Or a couple of the players have a cold and while it doesn’t take them out of the game, they may be less effective. Or a whole host of other reasons. Trust me, I can come up with a whole bunch of ~~excuses~~ reasons of why I’m not predicting 100%.

There are a whole bunch of games this weekend, and the only way I can end up at or above .500 this week is to get every pick right. Even one wrong leaves me at 8-9. Unfortunately, I’ve been very busy this week and so I am putting this together at the last minute and don’t have time to put comments in, so I’ll just post my picks. If I get energetic tomorrow, I may revisit this article and put comments in for games that haven’t happened yet.

Record: 2-8 (.200)

Game	Pick
CAL @ COL
WAS @ EDM
MIN @ TOR
PHI @ BUF
WAS @ MIN
TOR @ ROC
CAL @ PHI

Game report: Philadelphia 8 @ Toronto 7

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Graeme

Usually my first Rock game report of the season contains talk of how either the Rock or their opponents (or frequently both) had some missed passes or defenders getting beaten easily or whatever because it’s early in the season. In this one, however, both the Rock and the Wings – particularly the goaltending – looked in mid-season form, as the Wings pulled off the last-minute comeback to win 8-7. The Rock have played two games already plus three scrimmages, and the Wings have played one plus two scrimmages, so I guess their lack of rustiness makes some sense. But now the team I picked to finish last in the league is 2-0. Not only that, but they were two solid victories – one where they dominated throughout, and one where their goalie kept them in the game and they came from behind with four straight goals to win it. I’m starting to wonder if this Philadelphia team may not be the dark horse in the East.

The Rock’s offense was a lot more aggressive than I’ve seen them in a while, and it showed on the scoresheet in terms of shots – they took 60 shots on Brandon Miller who was easily Philadelphia’s best player. They seemed to be trying a new strategy – a player doing the Gretzky thing, standing behind the net. The behind-the-net strategy seemed to work pretty well for the Wings, however, as they scored 3 of their 8 goals from behind the net, including the game-winner with 10 seconds left in the fourth.

With only four goals scored in the first half, it looked like we might be on the way to a scoring record. Bob Watson allowed only 2 Wings goals during a playoff game in 2000, while the lowest-scoring NLL game took place in Toronto in 2001, with Toronto defeating Albany 7-4. Watson’s record wasn’t really in much danger, and became safe 3 minutes into the third after the second of two consecutive “Air Gait” type goals by Brodie Merrill (who was on offense most of the night) and Drew Westervelt. The 7-4 score was reached halfway through the fourth when Colin Doyle scored his second of the night. Unfortunately for the home team, that was the last goal they’d score.

If the Rock had listened to me, the game might have ended differently. A number of times when the Rock were in close, they tried to score over Miller’s shoulder, and I don’t think it worked once. I tried to get them to shoot low and they eventually did – both of Doyle’s goals were low – but it was too late by then. I imagine I should have yelled “shoot low!” louder. Sorry Rock fans, my fault. (Yes, to the people who have actually played lacrosse before, I’m being totally facetious here. Coaching from the stands is much easier than coaching from the bench.)

This was a very entertaining game, and considering the other two games last night (Buffalo and Rochester trading leads for most of the game, Calgary and Colorado going to overtime), it’s obvious that the parity in the league is making for some very exiting lacrosse. And we still have 13 weeks to go! And then playoffs!

Other game notes:

Both goalies were outstanding – Rose’s save percentage was 85.7% and Miller’s was an unbelievable 88.3%. Both defenses were very good as well.
Toronto only won 4 faceoffs all night. Philadelphia won 15.
At about 5:40 of the 2nd quarter, there was a scrum in the corner. The ref blew the whistle and awarded the Rock the ball. He then grabbed it, threw it in the air, and blew the whistle to start play, despite the fact that there was no Rock player there. The Wings grabbed the ball and took off. If you’re going to award the Rock the ball, shouldn’t you give the ball to a Rock player? I’ve seen refs do that when the team you’re giving the ball to is lollygagging or attempting to slow things down on the change, but that wasn’t the case here.
Ethan Farrell was rather reminiscent of Tom Ryan with the long hair flying. His weren’t dreadlocks, but still.
Jesse Gamble played a great game on defense and transition. Sandy Chapman isn’t the only “Charlie Hustle” on this team.
Nick Rose is really good with outlet passes up the floor. He missed an open net goal by this much, and hit someone about 3/4 of the way down the floor with a perfect pass.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned something like this before but when you’re the Rock PA guy and your team is losing with 10 seconds left in the 4th, perhaps the theme from Mission: Impossible is not the right song to play.

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Game report: Calgary 12 @ Toronto 17

Week 7 picks