Typically in the playoffs we see lots of excitement, lots of jubilation, and lots of heartbreak. The first weekend of the 2024 NLL playoffs delivered on all counts. I mean, it would be nice to see less heartbreak, but every team worked extremely hard over the last five months to get to the playoffs and since half of the teams are going to see their season end in the first round, heartbreak is not really something that can be avoided.
Category Archives: Buffalo Bandits
2024 NLL Week 21
It was like watching The Usual Suspects or No Way Out for the first time – what an ending! Many of the questions we all had about playoff positioning were answered on Friday and Saturday, but the final playoff decision came down to the very last game of the season. You can’t ask for better drama and excitement than that.
2024 NLL Week 20
There is only one week left in the 2024 regular season, and every team has exactly one game left except Rochester, who has two. There are still two playoff spots up for grabs, and five teams (Panther City, Vancouver, Saskatchewan, New York, and Rochester, in descending order of likelihood) trying to get one of them. There are eight games next weekend, and even the very last one (Philly at Rochester, Sunday at 3pm EDT) could have playoff implications; there are scenarios where Rochester gets the last playoff spot if they win that game, and Vancouver gets it otherwise. Talk about down to the wire.
The Grant for Vinc blockbuster: a retrospective
In October 2010, one of the greatest players in the game and a box lacrosse legend was traded for another one. After ten seasons, one missed season, a Rookie of the Year award, an NLL Championship, and an MVP award, John Grant, Jr. was traded from the Rochester Knighthawks to the Colorado Mammoth for reigning goaltender of the year Matt Vinc. Three other players as well as a few draft picks were also involved in this blockbuster, which transformed both teams. Some of those draft picks wouldn’t be made for almost three years, and the full extent of the trade wasn’t felt for quite a while.
Here is an article from a newspaper in Everett, Washington, home of the Washington Stealth, describing the trade. It’s interesting to hear what the writer thought of the trade at the time, like “The Cody Jamieson era officially [begins] in Rochester” (correct), “The K’Hawks also seem to have solved their goal-tending woes with the addition of Vinc” (correct), and “It’s tough to think John Grant Jr. will stay with the Mammoth” (incorrect).
With the benefit of hindsight, let’s look over this trade and see what impacts it had on the two teams involved and a few others. Continue reading
2024 NLL Week 19
There were nine games this past weekend and every game had playoff implications for one or both teams playing and in some cases, a couple of other teams as well. That, by itself, is the first Awesome of the week. But there’s more!
2024 NLL Week 18
Only three weeks to go before playoffs begin! Of course, the three weeks have 9, 6, and 8 games, so there’s still a lotta lacrosse left, and tons of playoff scenarios. Unless you’re a Las Vegas fan, your team still has a shot of making the playoffs, and if you’re a Toronto, Albany, or San Diego fan, your team is already in! There were only four games last week but a few awesome things happened, so let’s have a look.
2024 NLL Week 17 report
What a week! Entirely home team wins except in Philly, four OT games, a few big comebacks, a last-place team almost beating a second-place team, a player tying a legend for a goals record, and another player almost tying another one. Let’s get to it!
2024 NLL Week 16 report
We’re getting close to the end of the season now. The Rock have clinched a playoff spot, though the other teams are still a week or two away from either clinching or being eliminated. The NLL Stats playoff scenario calculator (aka “Could Happen…”) is live on nllstats.com now, so feel free to go play around with that to see what scenarios are possible. For example, it’s possible for there to be a nine-way tie for first place, which means that one of the teams tied for first will miss the playoffs.
2024 NLL Week 15 report
I didn’t get a chance to do a week 14 report but it would have been minimal since I only saw the Rock/Desert Dogs game. I did watch the Rock/Seals game later on but that’s it. This week however, there were eight games and I watched a good chunk of them. I even had multiple games on at the same time for a while – Rush/Bandits on one screen and Roughnecks/Swarm on the other, since both games were tied in the final minutes of the fourth quarter. I muted Buffalo while Georgia was in OT, and as soon as the Swarm scored the game-winner, I killed that feed and went back to Buffalo and managed to see the game-winner there as well.
2024 NLL Week 10
The parity in the NLL gave us a bunch of exciting games this weekend and few games you might call upsets. But if you bet on lacrosse, you might be more inclined to phrase it as “parity reared its ugly head this weekend”. The old cliche of “any team can beat any other team on any given night” continues to hold true. In addition to some great games, we had a few milestones reached, and in the Not Awesome category, I make a suggestion that the NLL should implement, and it would likely only require them to upgrade many or all of the NLL arenas and cost them an insane amount of money!
NLL Chatter 