Author Archives: Graeme

Game Review: Rochester 11 at Toronto 13

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The Toronto Rock won last night, and they also lost. The win was big, but the loss might have been bigger.

The win was, of course, the game, a 13-11 come-from-behind victory over the new-look Knighthawks. The first half was a see-saw battle, with the score tied at 1, 2, 3, 4, and at half-time, 5. Rochester had yet another one-goal lead at the end of the third, then a three-goal lead in the fourth before Toronto decided that they should just win the damn game and reeled off six straight goals in eight minutes to take a 12-9 lead. Rochester refused to go quietly, scoring two more in the last minute and a half around an empty-net goal by Patrick Merrill but it wasn’t quite enough.

The loss was Colin Doyle, who hobbled off the floor in the second quarter and was not seen again. The word from the Rock is a “lower body injury” and TSN later reported a pulled hamstring and that he will not play tonight in Calgary. This will be the first NLL game Doyle has missed since the 2000 season, a streak of 188 consecutive games. This ties him with former teammate Steve Toll for the NLL “iron man” record. Part of me is hoping the Rock put him out there tomorrow, even if it’s just for one shift, so he can set the record. They likely won’t and I can’t say I blame them; playing around with your captain’s health (not to mention scratching someone healthy so Doyle can play for 30 seconds) for the sake of a record is a bit silly. If Doyle’s injury is serious and he does miss a number of games, that will be a huge loss for the Rock who are already without Blaine Manning.

Rochester scored the first goal of the game on the first shot of the game, a minute and a half in. Cody Jamieson’s first of four on the night was a relatively weak shot from a mile away that beat Roik. After ten minutes, Roik had been beaten four times, though had only allowed that one goal – two shots hit posts (a trend that would continue all night for the Knighthawks) and one got through and trickled towards the net but Sandy Chapman managed to stop it before it went in. That was a weird play, actually – it happened with 9:00 left in the first, and Rochester coach Mike Hasen threw the challenge flag with 8:31 left. By my count, that’s 29 seconds. According to the 2012 rule book:

The challenging club must throw the flag within twenty seconds of the play being challenged. 

Despite Troy Cordingley gently reminding the ref of this rule, the play was reviewed but it wasn’t even close so the no-goal call stood. This ended up working in the Rock’s favour, since the KHawks almost scored a goal early in the second on a play that was closer, but Hasen had already wasted his first-half challenge. (After watching the replay on TV, that goal wasn’t all that close either.)

Only three goals were scored in the third, as the Knighthawks took a 7-5 lead before Ryan Sharp scored a shorthanded goal to bring the Rock within one. The first two goals of the fourth put the Knighthawks up by 3 before the Rock’s third power play goal began the six-goal run. The run also included the Rock’s fourth power play goal – the Rock were 4 for 6 on the power play, while the Knighthawks were only 1 for 5.

Both defenses were pretty solid on the night, though the Rock had some trouble with Cody Jamieson. Jamieson ended up with 4 goals, 4 assists, and 20 shots to lead all players. Stephen Keogh played pretty well but Johnny Powless was great, including a highlight-reel goal in the third. Matt Vinc was not outstanding but made a number of great saves. He did look pretty rattled when the Rock scored six in a row in the fourth. At the other end, Roik made his share of great stops as well, though as I said the first goal was a softie. “He’d like to have that one back” says Mr. Cliché Commentator – luckily Dave Randorf is not Mr. Cliché Commentator and correctly said that Roik really should have make that stop. That was the only real softie though. As he did in the first two games, Roik played well enough to keep the team in it, only this time the offense decided to show up. Drew Petkoff missed part of last year because of injury, and had a strong game in his return.

It was very nice to see the Rock bump their intensity level to come back in the fourth despite missing the leadership of Doyle and Manning. But there is a lot of veteran leadership on this team, so while losing Doyle will definitely hurt, it’s not devastating from a leadership point of view.

Other notes:

  • We almost had one of each type of goal: even strength (most of them), 5 power play goals, two short-handed, one empty net, Cody Jamieson hit the post on a penalty shot, and Matt Roik tried a long shot on an empty net that, I believe, would have made him the first goalie to score a goal in Rock history. That penalty shot happened because the Rock were hit with a too-many-men penalty in the last two minutes of the game, though the reason wasn’t announced (just “The Knighthawks have been awarded a penalty shot”) and a number of people at the game were confused, myself included.
  • The costume budget for the Toronto Rock Cheerleaders must have been drastically cut, though they kept the same number of people on the squad.
  • Toronto’s eighth goal was a weird one: Play in the Toronto end, Toronto defender forward Dan Carey knocked a pass out of the air, grabbed the loose ball and ran up the floor, then passed to forward defender Stephen Hoar who shot it by Vinc. Why Carey was back on D, I’m not sure, (who ever heard of an offensive player playing defense?) but it worked out rather well. Stephen Leblanc was also playing defense on that shift.
  • Stephen Leblanc’s goal in the second (his first of the year) was almost identical to Cody Jamieson’s second of the game in the first. Both cut inside from the goalie’s left and dove across the crease, scoring on the far side.
  • Garrett Billings did his best Blaine Manning impression (he’s already got the hair nailed) in the third, when he cut across the front of the crease, in traffic, and switched hands to shoot left-handed. Didn’t score, but a nice play.
  • The Rock took a too-many-men penalty with a minute left in the third, when Brad Self had a breakaway. It’s not unusual for a team to send a defender out early to try to prevent the breakaway – if the guy scores anyway, the penalty is negated and you lose nothing. If he doesn’t score, you count your blessings and take the two minute penalty. But in this case, Self was already beyond the bench when they sent the defenders out, so there was no point.
  • If the nets were an inch wider and an inch taller, the Knighthawks might have scored 20 goals. We counted ten posts hit by the ‘Hawks and around five by the Rock. Brad Self hit at least four.
  • Jamie Rooney made his Rock debut, and after a go-ahead goal in the first and a beautiful game-tying goal in the fourth, Rock fans have decided that he can stay.

The return of the two-way player?

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We all know about the rule changes that the NLL has put into effect this year, most notably the eight-second rule and the “two feet in the box on the change” rule. The idea of these rules, and others, was to speed up the game and the general consensus seems to be: mission accomplished. This means that we’re seeing more transition – after a turnover, the transition guys race up the floor trying to force odd-man rushes and breakaways, which seem to be happening with a little more regularity this season. With that will come more goals by transition players and defenders, and more assists by defenders and even goalies. After three games Mike Poulin has 4 assists, and Tyler Richards has 3 assists in 2 games. But whenever you create a rule like this, there are frequently unintended consequences. If these rule changes means that strong transition players get more floor time, someone has to get less. But who?

When transition players are heading up the floor on an odd-man rush, the players on the floor for the other team are going to be the attackers, not the defenders. They will likely not have time to get back to the bench to let the defensive specialists onto the floor, so you’re going to see more offensive players playing defense this year than in previous years. I’ve seen lots of people on the NLL Message Boards who talk about the good old days of the MILL, when just about every player played at both ends of the floor. If you were a great offensive player but sucked on defense, you better work on your D or you will find yourself on the bench. But in the last 10-15 years, that hasn’t been the case. Every now and then you’ll see a primarily offensive guy caught on the floor playing defense, and much of the time they keep looking towards the bench to see when they can get off.

There have certainly been players in the “modern era” who are/were comfortable at both ends of the floor – reigning MVP Jeff Shattler, Mark Steenhuis, Jim Veltman, and Chris Driscoll are great examples. Driscoll was primarily a (very good) transition and defensive guy for the last six or seven years of his career, but scored 49 points in 10 games with Rochester in ’97, and an amazing 76 points in 12 games (which extrapolates to 101 points over 16) with the Saints in 2003. Whatever era you’re in, two-way players like that are going to be exceptionally valuable, though I agree with Ty Pilson on the recent IL Indoor roundtable that we’re not likely to get back to having everyone play both ends. But what happens to the offensive stars who aren’t very good defensively?

I watched Josh Sanderson play for the Rock for several years, and after three years away in Calgary and Boston, now he’s back on the team. In the offensive zone, he’s the quarterback: setting up plays, making amazing passes, and scoring a ton himself. In this role, he’s one of the best ever and I have to say I’m a big fan of his. But at the other end of the floor, it’s a different story. Josh is simply not the greatest defender around. I have to wonder if the Rock will reduce his playing time slightly, depending on the speed of the opponent and the strength of the their transition game, to make sure he doesn’t get caught out there and have to play defense.

Josh is probably a bad example here – he’s so good in the offensive zone that any potential liabilities in his defense are more than offset, so his playing time will likely not be affected. But what about the good-but-not-superstar forwards who have weak defensive skills? I’m sure there are plenty of guys in the league who are decent offensively but can’t play D. (I tried to come up with some examples, (“What about the Kasey Beirneses, Zack Greers, and Daryl Veltmans of the league?”), but in the current NLL, these guys play defense so infrequently that I have no idea if they’re good on D or not.) They made the NLL and managed to stay there because of their offense, and since they didn’t need to play D anyway, their lack of defensive skill wasn’t a liability. Also, the fact that they never played on D means that their already-limited defensive skills have atrophied. With these new rules, these guys might find themselves warming the bench more often than in previous years.

Given the choice between a defender who prevents goals but can’t score and a forward who can score but is a defensive liability, I wouldn’t be surprised if coaches start to opt for the former more often than the latter.

Week 4 picks

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For the second straight week, I went 2-2 with my picks. After three weeks, I’m still under .500 but getting closer. Now I’m a math guy, so I know that as long as I keep having .500 weeks, I can never reach .500 overall. This is the week I break the .500 barrier. I can just feel it.

Record: 4-5 (.444)

Game

Comments

Pick
ROC @ TOR Rochester has almost never won during the regular season in Toronto – which means precisely nothing. The Knighthawks played a strong game against Buffalo last week and demolished the Wings the week before, so there’s no reason to believe they can’t come into the ACC and beat the Rock. But after starting the season 0-2, the champs are hungry for a win, and they’ll want to get it before the home crowd. The offense is poised to break out and despite losing Manning, I think this is the game where they do it. Rock
PHI @ BUF After wins over Toronto and Rochester, the Bandits have looked strong and their confidence level has to be very high. Then again, Philly beat the Stealth in OT last week, and Dan Dawson hasn’t really hit his stride yet. I’m picking the Bandits, but I don’t think it’ll be a blowout. Bandits
BUF @ MIN I think Buffalo’s just too strong for the Swarm, particularly if they beat Philly on Friday night. The only way Minnesota stands a chance on Saturday is if (a) Buffalo gets slaughtered by the Wings on Friday and their confidence get shattered, or (b) the Bandits consider it an easy win and don’t work their tails off. Darris Kilgour won’t let either of those things happen. And if either one does happen, I wouldn’t want to be in the dressing room after that game. Bandits
ROC @ COL I’m still not 100% convinced that Colorado is for real, and I am sure that John Grant has to come back down to earth sometime. But even if he does, Adam Jones looks like he’s ready to take over. Despite Vinc vs. Levis, I think this will be another high-scoring game, with the Knighthawks coming out on top. Knighthawks
TOR @ CAL If Toronto loses on Friday night, this is a no-brainer – Calgary in a landslide, and the Rock are in deep trouble. But if the Rock can beat Rochester, this is going to be much closer. I still think Calgary is the team to beat in the West, so I’m picking the Roughies here. Roughnecks
EDM @ WAS Toughest pick of the week. Edmonton didn’t have a bad game against Colorado last weekend, but playing against the Grant/Jones/Prout combo has been difficult so far this year. The Stealth just lost Jeff Zywicki, and Ratcliff and Duch aren’t tearing up the floor like last year. Hmmm… offense isn’t clicking and they lost one of their stars to injury – sounds like the Rock, doesn’t it? Rush

A tale of two champions

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Some odd similarities I noticed this evening:

Toronto: appeared in last two Championship games, won one and lost one
Washington: appeared in last two Championship games, won one and lost one

Toronto: currently 0-2
Washington: currently 0-2

Toronto: lost their first game of the season to Calgary by 3 goals
Washington: lost their first game of the season to Calgary by 3 goals

Toronto: After 2 games, they have 19 goals, 26 assists, and 23 PIM
Washington: After 2 games, they have 19 goals, 29 assists, and 25 PIM

Toronto: Top scorer last year, Leblanc, was #9 in the league. Currently tied for #51.
Washington: Top scorer last year, Ratcliff, was #2 in the league. Currently sitting at #23.

Toronto: Nobody has more than 10 points, only four players with 4 or more
Washington: Nobody has more than 10 points, only four players with 4 or more

Toronto: One of their offensive stars, Blaine Manning, is injured and will miss some games
Washington: One of their offensive stars, Jeff Zywicki, is injured and will miss some games

Toronto: To replace Manning, picked up Brendan Thenhaus, recently cut by the Bandits
Washington: To replace Zywicki, picked up Brett Bucktooth, recently cut by the Bandits

Toronto: Play the Stealth on March 3 in Toronto and April 20 in Washington
Washington: Play the Rock on March 3 in Toronto and April 20 in Washington

OK, that last one isn’t much of a coincidence.

Expect the unexpected

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The Emperor

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.
                                            The Emperor

We are now 3 weeks into the 2012 NLL season, and things are exactly as I predicted. Toronto and Washington are on top, Colorado is struggling to find offense, and the highly touted rookies in Philly, Colorado, and Rochester are showing promise, but will probably need a year or two under their belts to really have an impact.

Or not.

Let’s take a look at what’s going as expected and what’s not.

Expected: The Buffalo Bandits are 2-0. Calgary is 2-1.
Unexpected: Toronto and Washington are combined 0-4. Colorado is 3-0.

Expected: Grant, Prout, Tavares, Shattler, Jamieson, Dickson are in the top 10 in scoring.
Unexpected: There are two rookies in the top 5.

Expected: Mike Thompson has the lowest GAA in the league.
Unexpected: He’s almost two full points ahead of anyone else. Brandon Miller is up around 15.

Expected: A number of players have scored hat-tricks.
Unexpected: Neither Adam Jones nor Kevin Crowley have had a game yet where they haven’t. Two for Crowley, three for Jones.

Expected: John Grant and Gavin Prout make a pretty strong offensive pair.
Unexpected: Both are in the top 3 in scoring, along with rookie teammate Adam Jones. Grant is averaging 10 points per game.

Expected: The rule changes have led to more transition scoring, which might mean more goalie assists.
Unexpected: Mike Poulin has 4 points in 3 games, and Tyler Richards has 3 in 2 games. Poulin is outscoring Stephan Leblanc, Tracey Kelusky, and Jeff Zywicki.

Expected: Colorado will be better than last year, when they had a terrible offense and a great defense.
Unexpected: Colorado has a great offense and a terrible defense.

Expected: Josh Sanderson will have a big impact on Toronto’s offense.
Unexpected: No Toronto Rock players are in the top 20 in scoring. Sanderson is tied for 32nd. Stephan Leblanc is tied for 49th.

Week 3 picks

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I went 2-2 with my week 2 picks, so as week three begins, I’m sitting a game under .500. Let us continue our drive towards mediocrity with this week’s picks:
Record: 2-3 (.400)

Game
Comments
Pick
COL @ EDM Edmonton has had lots of time to prepare for this game, but they have a whole new lineup, and haven’t played together against an actual opponent in over a month (since the scrimmage against Calgary). Meanwhile, Colorado won big last weekend, and I think they’ll ride that wave to a victory over the Rush. Mammoth
WAS @ PHI I think Philadelphia has improved quite a bit this off-season, and I have to say their thrashing at the hands of the Knighthawks last week surprised me. But even if the new and improved Wings play up to their potential, they can’t handle the Stealth. Stealth
BUF @ ROC Using similar logic to the Mammoth pick above, the Knighthawks won big last week, and they will try to ride that wave to another victory – but they’re facing the Bandits who just beat the defending champs, not the Rush who have yet to play. Mikey Thompson will let Messrs. Keogh and Powless know what playing in the NLL is really like, lest they think that last week’s offensive explosion was typical. Bandits
COL @ CAL Can anyone stop the Roughnecks? Sure, with the parity in the league this year, almost anyone can, and if Calgary was playing the night before and Colorado wasn’t, I might pick the Mammoth. But it’s the other way around, so I’m taking the Roughies. Roughnecks

The NLL without Blaine Manning

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Next weekend, the Toronto Rock will play their first game without Blaine Manning in the line-up since the Championship game in 2001, more than ten years ago. Ten years is a long time, so let’s see how the league has changed in that time.

2001 2012
Teams in the league 9 9
The league is considering expanding to Vancouver in the not-too-distant future Yes Yes
The Toronto Rock have been in the last two championship games, winning one of them Yes Yes
John Tavares is a veteran, providing leadership to the Bandits and can still score with the best of them Yes Yes
Number of playoff wins in Philadelphia Wings history 16 16

OK, so things don’t look all that different so far. Maybe we should look at the changes from another angle. Let’s just list some things that have happened in the NLL since the end of the 2001 season:

Teams

  • 3 teams entered the league and are still around: Calgary, Montreal (which became Minnesota), Edmonton
  • 2 teams moved: Washington Power (became Colorado), Albany Attack (became San Jose and then Washington)
  • 2 teams folded: Ottawa, New York Saints
  • 1 team moved and then folded: Columbus (became Arizona)
  • 6 (or 8) teams entered the league and have since folded: Vancouver, New Jersey/Anaheim, Portland, Chicago, New York/Orlando, Boston

Championships

  • Toronto has won four more league Championships
  • Calgary has won two, and singles have been won by Buffalo, Rochester, Colorado, and Washington

Players

  • Someone other than Gary Gait or John Tavares was named league MVP. This had never happened in the first eight years this award was given.
  • Only one of the most recent four MVP winners (Casey Powell) had ever played an NLL game.
  • Players such as Brian Langtry, Taylor Wray, Shawn Nadelen, and Jay Jalbert have entered the league, had a significant impact, and retired (Update: Taylor Wray has not officially retired.)
  • The only players on the 2011 All-Pro teams who were in the league in 2001 were Pat McCready, John Tavares, and Anthony Cosmo
  • The only members of the 2011 All-Star teams who were in the league in 2001 were John Grant, John Tavares, Colin Doyle, Anthony Cosmo, and Bob Watson.
  • In 2001, Mark Steenhuis was 21 and had only been playing lacrosse for four years. Brodie Merrill was 19. Paul Rabil and Ryan Benesch were 15. Rock sophomore player Rob Hellyer was 9.

Blaine, here’s hoping for a speedy recovery and return to the line-up. The Rock, and the league, won’t be the same without you.

Game report: Toronto 10 @ Buffalo 14

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I learned something about myself tonight while watching the Rock-Bandits game (in hi-def on TV, thanks TSN). I learned that I pay far too much attention to my twitter feed when watching lacrosse on TV. I missed more than one goal while reading or composing tweets so perhaps in future I might decide to shut down the ole Twitter app during the game. Apparently the Rock won, or maybe lost, I dunno. Luckily, I PVR’ed the game, so I can go back and watch the whole thing again. Hang on.

OK, so the Rock lost, in a couple of ways. Not only did they lose the game, 14-10 to the Buffalo Bandits, but they lost Blaine Manning early in the game to a broken collarbone. Post-game reports say that he’ll be out 6-8 weeks. Manning is the current Rock “iron man”, not having missed a single game since becoming a member of the Rock in 2002. This means that the next Rock game will be the first the Rock have played without Manning since the Championship game in 2001. Colin Doyle is the league’s Iron Man at 180-something games (and will tie Steve Toll for the all-time NLL record in the next game) but he played three years with San Jose.

Once again, the Rock offense was stagnant. Doyle scored 3 with singles scored by Carey, Billings, and Beirnes, but once again Stephan Leblanc, who has been amazing in his first two years in the league, was nowhere to be found. After two games, he has still yet to score. Dan Carey’s goal in the second came after a very nice behind-the-back pass from Josh Sanderson, but I think Sanderson got it in his head that he’s really good at that, and he attempted a number of behind-the-back passes and shots over the rest of the game. He finished with no goals and 3 assists, so I’ll let you be the judge of how well that turned out. Carey looked a little lost in his first game, but looked pretty good in this one. One of my concerns with Carey because of his concussion history was that he’d be reluctant to get into the corners, digging for loose balls. You can hardly blame him after what’s happened to people like Ken Montour and Merrick Thomson and Sidney Crosby, so it was nice to see him in there working hard for the loosies.

The defense fared almost as well as the offense in terms of goal-scoring. The Rock had four goals from defenders – two from newcomer Bill Greer, and one each from Sandy Chapman and Glen Bryan. Chapman, Stephen Hoar, and Phil Sanderson scored in the first game, so right now Chapman has as many goals (2) as Josh Sanderson (1), Blaine Manning (1), and Stephen Leblanc (0) combined.

I tweeted during the game that the Rock’s practice nets must be a touch bigger than the ones they were using in Buffalo. Shots on net were going high all night long. Maybe there was a scouting report that going high was the way to beat Mike Thompson. Actually, in the game against Calgary, that looked like the way to beat Matt Roik. It didn’t work against Thompson, but then again, not much did. Thompson was outstanding, and stopped more than one shot from point-blank range. In at least one case, the Rock forward was standing just behind the crease line, all by himself, for at least three seconds, trying to decide where to shoot. Three seconds may not seem like much, but when you’re a goalie about to face a shot from that close, three seconds is an eternity. The Rock shooter feinted shooting low, waited for Thompson to drop, and then shot high but Thompson waited him out and make an amazing stop.

In my picks for last week, I called a close game won by the Rock, and I was mostly right. Except that the Rock lost. And it wasn’t all that close at the end. I also said that I didn’t know who was going to score for the Mammoth, who scored 20, though I got the outcome right. And I said that Brodie Merrill and the Wings defense wouldn’t let the Rochester forwards get that many shots on Brandon Miller. I was kind of right there in that they only got 32 shots on Miller, but there was also the 26 shots on Wagar. I got the Calgary game right as well, making me 2-2 on the weekend and 2-3 overall.

Week 2 picks

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As the IL Indoor folks (I’m a newbie over there so I’m not in the “in” crowd yet) and the In Lax We Trust folks always do (and ILWT already have done), here are the week 2 picks for the entire NLL Chatter staff. I picked the Rock to beat Calgary last week, so I’m 0-1 to start the year. I can guarantee you that my average will not go down with this week’s picks:
Record: 0-1 (.000)

Game
Comments
Pick
TOR @ BUF I have to say that I’m not terribly confident with this pick. The Rock players are unhappy with their opening game and will be fired up to prove that they’re still the team to beat. But a healthy Mike Thompson showed last year that he can be as good a goalie as anyone in the league. Wiles and Buchanan will want to prove themselves to their new coach, teammates, and fans as well, and I think Tracey Kelusky will have a much better season than last year. Buffalo is a tough place to play as an opponent, but I’ll go with the Rock in a close one. Rock
MIN @ COL After Grant and Prout, the offensive numbers drop considerably for the Mammoth. Then again, same for Minnesota after Benesch and Crawford. This game features two strong goalies, but Minnesota has lots of rookies on their lineup while Colorado has more established players. Until the Swarm rookies prove themselves, I’ll take the Mammoth. Mammoth
ROC @ PHI I think the addition of Dan Dawson to the Philly offense will be huge, and not just because he’s nine feet tall. This is another battle of great goalies (aren’t they all, though?), but I think the Wings offense can overpower the Rochester defense and get more shots on Vinc than Brodie and the boys will let the Knighthawks get on Miller. Wings
CAL @ WAS TRich is a very good goalie, no question, and was outstanding in the Championship game last year. But in my list of NLL goalies, I’d rank Mike Poulin higher. Calgary are on a high after beating the defending champs in their own barn and I think that will carry over into a Roughnecks win. Roughnecks

Review: NLL.com stats pages

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For the second time in three years, the NLL has changed statistics providers. As a guy who loves stats, most of the time I spend on nll.com is looking over stats. The column I’m going to be writing for ILIndoor.com will be entirely about stats.  I run a lacrosse pool with my friends, and so I’ve written software to download and manipulate the stats. I keep having to change my code to handle changes to the URLs, the formats, which stats are actually included, and so on. Now I need to rewrite them all again to handle the new stuff. But rewriting that stuff is just a one-time inconvenience for me, and at most a handful of other people around the country doing something similar. Once that’s done, are we better off with the new stats provider and pages? Let’s investigate.

You don’t need to know anything about stats to read this article, but it will be quite long and detailed. You have my express written permission to skip it if you don’t care about the stats pages at NLL.com. But if you do skip it, you have to read the next article I post twice. Deal?

This may not be a completely accurate comparison since the old pages are no longer available, so I can’t compare side-by-side. I have to go by what I remember. I’ll also include a list of bugs I’ve found at the bottom.

Individual stats

When you click on “Stats” in the menu at the top, you get a page listing the individual leaders in a number of categories. This is likely what most visitors to the page are looking for, so this makes sense. For each stat, the top player is shown with a little picture, and then the next 4 or 5 in that category. It’s not immediately obvious, but if you want the entire list of a stat rather than just the top 5, you can click on the stat name. This takes you to a page with a list of players and a bunch of stats, and you can sort by any of them. This is fabulous, as it was one thing missing before. You can even sort by a player’s jersey number, though incorrectly.

There is also no legend. I know that PPG is power play goals, FO is face-offs taken, and FOW is face-offs won, but it took me a second to figure out that TO and FT were turnovers and forced turnovers. But if you have face-offs taken and face-offs won, do you really need a separate column for face-offs lost? I suppose you might if you want to sort by that column. The last column is for MVP. I have no idea what that is. My first thought was “are they really allowing you to sort by the number of game MVP awards a player has been given?” I didn’t think “game MVP” was even something the NLL awarded, other than the Championship Game. Whatever it is, it shows up in both the player list and the goalie list, and nobody in the Toronto-Calgary season opener was credited with one. Except that if you go to the game stats, Dane Dobbie got one, so maybe it is game MVP. Seems like a dumb stat to keep track of considering how subjective it is.

Team stats

There’s a page showing team scoring by quarter, which will be very interesting to watch over the season. Despite the fact that neither Colorado nor Minnesota have played yet, they have non-zero values in some columns. Colorado has scored 3 times in the first quarter, once in the second, three times in the third, and none overall.

The power play page (which is just called “Team”) is weird – it lists “Team”, “PP”, and “PP%”. That’s it. Even PPG isn’t there, and no SHG or PK%.

You can click on a team name and it will take you to that team’s page, which is more than just stats. It includes the team’s W-L record;  the team leaders in goals, assists, points, shots, and GAA; quick summary of their latest game; the entire roster (the fact that this includes the practice squad, injured reserve, physically unable to perform, protected, and hold-outs is awesome); some recent stories  about that team; and upcoming games.

The game schedule page is very nice, with a mini-calendar sort of thing across the top (including the words “WIN” or “LOSS” for past games). The box score list shows the final score, period-by-period score, date/time/location, and a link to the detailed boxscore. There’s also a game list page that shows the same stuff minus the boxscore but in a very small font. I don’t know why you’d ever use that page over the boxscore page.

There’s a page for each game as well, though it’s pretty information-free for upcoming games. All times seem to be in EST but are not displayed with time zone indicators. For example, it says that next weekend’s Washington/Calgary game is at “10:30PM”, even though “7:30PM PST” would make more sense.

Game stats

The first word that comes to mind for the individual game page is slick. It’s all Web 2.0-y and slider-y and smooth scrolling-y and stuff like that. There’s a display of the floor with dots where each of the goals were scored from, and you can click on the goals to get who scored it and when. You can do the same for loose balls, shots, shots off target, and faceoffs. I’m not sure how useful it is, but it’s very slick. There’s a play-by-play page, which lists all the “events” (goals, face-offs, loose balls, turnovers, shots, etc.) in the order in which they happened. Finally there’s a Game Stats page with two tabs: Team stats, which lists a bunch of stats and the totals for each team plus a visual indicator of how the teams compare for that particular stat, and Player Stats which lists all the individual stats for each player on each team. All of the PIM (Penalty Minutes) values include a “.0” at the end, though I’ve never heard of penalties being given involving fractions of minutes. (“That illegal cross-check was worse than a minor penalty, but wasn’t bad enough to be a full 5 minute major, so the player will serve a 3.5 minute intermediate penalty.”)

Stuff that’s missing

There needs to be a full menu of all the different stats pages available. If I click on stats, I get a list of the individual leaders. But how do I get from there to the list of all players on one team and their stats? Turns out you go go the Teams menu at the top, not the Stats menu, but this isn’t obvious. Once there, you have to scroll down past stuff like the aggregate number of goals, assists, points, penalty minutes, etc. to get to the player list. The aggregate team stuff is useful, but it’s more likely that the reader wants to see the list of players, so it should be at the top.

If you click on a player’s name, you get a page with his current stats as well as a menu of previous seasons, with game-by-game level stats. This is nice, but should not be the default. Having one single list with one row per season is absolutely essential. Without it, comparing different seasons is much harder and spotting anomalies is essentially impossible.

Very high on my nice-to-have list, but probably priority zero on the NLL’s list: an XML interface to the entire statistics database. Close second: an XML interface to this year’s player stats. Man, would that make my life easier.

Bugs

To the NLL.com developer who is reading this: I am using Chrome on Windows.

  • When sorting the list of players by jersey number, it’s doing an alphanumeric sort rather than numeric. 3 should not come between 27 and 30.
  • As I said above, listing the player stats shows Dane Dobbie with a 0 in the “MVP” column, but in the game stats for the TOR/CAL game, he has 1.
  • On the player stats page, there are two separate lists. They don’t necessarily show the same players, and they’re not sorted by the same thing. When I click on the link to go to page 2, the upper list changes to page 2 but I’m shown the bottom list and have to scroll up to get back to the top.
  • Same page – when I’m on page 2, the link for “Previous” is on top of the link for page 1.
  • Team standings page – Edmonton, Philly, and Rochester are 0-0-0 while everyone else is just 0-0.
  • If you’re not using the latest version of your browser, you’re probably out of luck. Then again, that’s true for many web sites these days anyway. I tried to write a quick blog post on my sister’s computer last week, which is running IE7 (she can’t upgrade because of work restrictions). This ended being totally impossible.

Overall

For me personally, I’m mostly happy with the new site, though there are some missing items and in general it seems to take an extra click or two to get to where you want to be. For your average non-stathead fan who just wants to see who’s leading the league, it’s great. With the old site, you had nll.com and stats.nll.com, and sometimes it was obvious that the page you were looking at was a shell from one site around an ajax page from another site. The new one is much more uniform.

From an aesthetic point of view, the new site looks great. The fancy game page stuff is slick and fairly fast, though I found that page loads were taking quite a while. There are lots of images; almost everywhere you see a team you see a logo, and there are lots of player pictures as well. I suppose it’s possible that these were causing the slow page loads, but they should have been cached pretty quickly so that seems unlikely.

Kudos to the NLL on the new site. Now, if I could please have my XML interface, that’d be great. KTHXBYE.