Back in August, I wrote part I of the off-season report, covering the trades and stuff that had happened at the time. There were a couple of situations that had yet to be resolved, namely those regarding the Panther City franchise and Christian Del Bianco’s status.
After lots of rumours about relocating, the league and the Panther City franchise finally ran out of options and time, and so PCLC is no more. It’s a huge drag, not only because it’s not a great look for the league, but a whole bunch of people – obviously players and coaches, but don’t forget the rest of the team staff – are now out of work. No, not all of the PCLC players are out of work, because of the dispersal draft, but for each player drafted, the drafting team had to release someone. Basically, there around 25 fewer lacrosse players in the NLL now. But it’s also a drag because the team had really begun to gel and make some waves in the playoffs. Now all of those players need to start learning new systems and new coaches and new teammates. It’s not like it was a waste of time but it would have been interesting to see what that group could have accomplished in the next couple of seasons.
As of this writing, the Del Bianco situation has not changed. He will not be playing for Calgary next season, Calgary has not traded him, and they’ve given him the Franchise Player tag so he can’t sign anywhere else. He’s willing to sit if they don’t trade him, and they’re willing to let him sit if they don’t get something reasonable in a trade. You can’t really blame either side but having one of the top goalies in the league sitting at home watching NLL games on TV is really unfortunate.
Dispersal Draft
The results themselves were not too surprising. Will Malcom went first to Colorado (who originally drafted him), Jonathan Donville went to Las Vegas, and Nick Damude went to Philly. That gave the Wings a better-than-solid platoon of goalies in Damude and Higgins, so just as you might expect, one was traded. See below. Actually, Philadelphia might have benefited the most from this draft. Not only did they draft Nick Damude, Tony Malcom, Connor Sellars, and Tim Manning, but with the Higgins trade, they also picked up Phil Caputo and Liam Patten. No, none of them is Will Malcom or Jon Donville, but combined, the Wings improved their offense, defense, transition, and goaltending.
Will Malcom
Trades
There were a few trades during the dispersal draft and no offense intended to any of the players involved, but they weren’t blockbusters. Calgary sent Seth Van Shepen to Georgia while Ottawa sent goalie Will Johnston to Albany, each in exchange for a dispersal pick. But then after the draft, we had a much bigger trade as Ottawa sent Phil Caputo, Liam Patten, and a 2027 first round pick to Philly for Zach Higgins. I thought the Black Bears were happy with Cam Dunkerley as their goalie, but he is only 25 (and 155 pounds – someone buy that guy a cheeseburger) so perhaps they figured he could take another season or two to learn some more from a veteran. They just got Caputo and Patten for free from Panther City, so all it really cost them to get Higgins is a first-round pick.
Thomas Whitty was sent from Rochester to Buffalo for Brandon Robinson in a rare one-for-one deal. Robinson is a big forward who never lit up the scoresheet, but when playing with Dhane Smith, Josh Byrne, and that crew, that was never his job. It will be interesting to see what he does with the (presumed) more floor time he will see in Rochester. Whitty is a slightly smaller defender/transition guy. Buffalo did have trouble with their defence last season, not so much that they weren’t playing well, it was more keeping enough bodies available to play. Obviously they won the Championship so they managed to play through it but having more defenders is always better than less.
And the semi-rebuild of the offense continues in Halifax as fan favourite Eric Fannell was sent to the Albany FireWoves for a 2026 first and a 2026 fourth. Fannell missed all of last year due to injury but picked up 40 and 52 points respectively in 2022 and 2023. Fannell is also one of the growing number of NLL players whose father also played in the NLL; Steve Fannell played 93 games for Buffalo, Albany (!!), and Ottawa from 1996-2003.
And finally, Thomas Hoggarth was dealt from Calgary to Halifax for prospect Caelan Mander, a first round pick in 2024 (the draft is tonight!), and a fourth in 2026. Hoggarth has bounced around a little, having played for four teams in his seven seasons, but he can play anywhere on the floor and is good at making space in front of the net and grinding out loose balls. He played more of a transition role in Calgary so his numbers weren’t nearly as high but as I said, you can put him anywhere and he’ll be effective.
Free agents – San Diego
The parade of star free agents to sign with the San Diego Seals continues. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen guys like Poulin, Rubisch, Baptiste, Dickson, Dobbie, Brodie Merrill, and Kyle Jackson all sign with (or ask to be traded to) the Seals, and every year we think “man, they are going for it this year!” So far, it hasn’t exactly worked out for them in the playoffs. But after trading to get Zach Currier, they just signed three more superstars, including a future Hall of Famer.
First off, Ryan Benesch. Some vets of Benesch’s age want to stay close to home, and who can blame them? But Benesch really wants that Championship that’s eluded him his whole career, so I guess he’s decided that some cross-country flights are worth it for that chance. The addition of Benesch to any offense would make it better, but San Diego traded Curtis Dickson back to Calgary, and will likely be without Austin Staats’s services for much of this season, if not all of it, so being able to replace them is critical. They also picked Callum Crawford in the Panther City dispersal draft but Crawford explicitly wanted to play in Fort Worth because it’s close to his home in Oklahoma. If they can convince Crawford to play in San Diego, it would reunite him with Benesch for the first time since 2013 in Minnesota and strengthen that offense even more. Crawford has refused the franchise player tag from the Seals, so it’s unclear how interested he is in playing there.
And just in case the contributions from Benesch and possibly Crawford are somehow insufficient, they now also have Ben McIntosh and Rob Hellyer. McIntosh has played nine seasons in the NLL, and has scored 30+ goals in eight of them. The only one he missed was the shortened 2020 season, where he was on pace for 36 goals. He is also deadly on the power play. The only player with a higher “power play goals per game” average over their career (since 2005) is John Grant Jr. Hellyer started as an 18-year-old with the Toronto Rock and only played 13 games in his first three seasons. But since he became a regular, he’s had 4 seasons of 90+ points (one of those in only 14 games), was on pace for a fifth in 2020, and hit 113 in 2016. Not that the Seals are short on leadership, but Hellyer also spent the last two seasons as captain of the Desert Dogs.
Benesch will turn 40 in January of this coming season, but McIntosh is only 33, Hellyer 32, and Currier 30, so not only are they set up for success this coming season, they are set up for several years to come.
Man, they are going for it this year!
Free agents – Everyone else
Calgary is fresh out of Curriers as Zach was traded to San Diego, and now Josh has signed with the Ottawa Black Bears.
Austin Shanks is heading to Saskatchewan, so while Halifax is up Thomas Hoggarth, they are down Shanks and Benesch, two of their top three scorers from last season as well as Eric Fannell. And Randy Staats is still a free agent.
Due Diligence
I recently wrote about the history of NLL dispersal drafts. Back in the early 2000’s, anyone with enough bucks could have themselves an NLL team. But when Nick Sakiewicz became commissioner in 2016, he stated that he wanted to grow the league, but not haphazardly like in the past. The league would spend more time and effort vetting owners and locations to make sure they were going to (a) be a good fit for the league, and (b) have a good shot at being profitable. They would do their “due diligence” to make sure we had more Calgarys and Colorados and fewer Orlandos and Columbuses. This resulted in Panther City and Las Vegas both undergoing lots more market research than cities got in the past, and the teams being announced well over a year before the teams began playing, in order to give them time to make themselves known to the community and build up a fan base.
But Panther City just never caught on. Despite having an exciting young team that made the playoffs in years two and three, they averaged only about 5k per game in their first season, then about 2,800 in their second season and 2,700 in their third. Every time there was a Panther City home game, there would be people (sometimes me) making jokes on social media like “It must be “dress as a chair night” in Fort Worth” or “there are more people on the lacrosse floor than in the stands”. From the sounds of things, local advertising was nonexistent so it may not have been a lack of interest, but perhaps a lack of knowledge that the team even existed. So how did the due diligence in Fort Worth conclude that the NLL could succeed there?
When it was rumoured that the team might be moving to Charlotte, or one of a number of other cities, I was concerned because this was a last-minute thing and so the league wouldn’t have time to do the due diligence and market research and such. In addition, the team would have just a couple of months to build up interest and sell tickets, rather than the full year-plus that PCLC and Las Vegas did. But then I was forced to wonder if the due diligence that had failed so spectacularly in Fort Worth would be worth it anyway.
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