Week 8 picks

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Graeme

OK, this is really getting weird. Another 4-1 week, and I’ve now got more than twice as many correct picks as incorrect ones. I’m tied with Brian Shanahan and two games ahead of anyone else on the IL Indoor team. I’m totally not used to this, and I’m assuming I’ve got some 0-fer weeks coming up. The really weird thing is that if I missed every pick in the next three weeks, I’d still be at .500. But I’ll try not to let it go to my head.

Read on for this week’s winners. Guaranteed, or your money back. Unfortunately, I didn’t get this article out early enough to put in my regular analysis, but I did give some when I gave my picks on this week’s Addicted to Lacrosse show.

Record: 21-10 (.677)

Game	Comments	Pick
VAN @ COL	Rhys Duch and Kyle Sorensen are back, which will give the Stealth a boost. Will it be enough to get past Grant/Westervelt/Powell without Adam Jones? I must have thought so on Monday when I did my picks though I have to say I’m less than 100% sure of this now. But I’m not sure I actually want to change it either.
EDM @ MIN	Can anyone beat Edmonton? Yes, at some point this season someone will. But at this point, it ain’t gonna be Minnesota.
ROC @ TOR	Probably a homer pick. Tyler mentioned a good point in the show – that it’s hard to pick Rose over Vinc. But the Rock have been scoring way more than the Knighthawks, so I’m going with the home team.
PHI @ BUF	Philly has already beat the Bandits, but Buffalo is playing far better now.
VAN @ CAL	Given how they’ve been playing, it’s hard to pick Vancouver to win once, let alone twice in the same weekend.

Week 7 picks… and more!

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Graeme

Another good week – 4-1! I’ve only had one week under .500, and that was 1-2 in week 1. In four of the other five weeks, I’ve only gotten one wrong. WTF? This is certainly different from the last two years where I finished under .500.

This is a two-in-one article, since you get my picks and as an added FREE bonus, some thoughts on the Rock roster moves this week.

Record: 17-9 (.654)

Game	Comments	Pick
PHI @ TOR	Toronto is undefeated at home, but the Wings are on a 2-game win streak and are 2-1 on the road. Should be a good game, and I’m predicting the Rock’s home winning streak to continue.
EDM @ PHI	I think I said this last week. Until the Rush does something to convince me that they’re not the best team in the league, I’m probably just going to keep picking them.
BUF @ ROC	Similar to the Rush, the Bandits are playing great right now and I’ll probably keep picking them too, until they play Edmonton. Then I have no idea.
CAL @ MIN	Calgary’s not having their greatest season ever, but it’s better than the Swarm’s so far. Logan Schuss is playing well but thus far isn’t the offensive star he was projected to be, and the production from Matisz and Jackson is way down.
COL @ VAN	The Stealth are on a 4-game losing streak and confidence has to be pretty low – and they’ll be without Rhys Duch who’s serving a suspension. They’ve already beaten the Mammoth this season, but that was with Duch and the Mammoth were without Casey Powell.

I never managed to write an entire article on my thought about the Rock moves this week, acquiring Billy Hostrawser from the Stealth and releasing Stephen Hoar, so I’ll just put a couple of thoughts here. First off, I have no problem with acquiring Hostrawser for draft picks – unless they’re in the first round, draft picks are always a crapshoot anyway so giving them up for an actual warm body who can play now is fine. And he’s a young defender who can fight – just ask Mike Lum-Walker, his new teammate and sparring partner in last week’s Rock/Stealth game. He’s even scored a goal and has a few assists.

I am a little puzzled by Hoar’s release, though. In a number of interviews, both Terry Sanderson and John Lovell have mentioned that they are looking forward to the return of Patrick Merrill and Chris White (and Bill Greer, while he was out) because they bring some veteran leadership to the defense. They said that the young players (Lum-Walker, O’Connor, Dunn, England) are doing fine but more veterans on the back end would not only help the team but would help the kids to learn as well. And then they release Hoar, who is a veteran defender, and replace him with a guy with all of 15 games of NLL experience.

Hoar is also their only face-off guy who’s not injured. So I hope Patrick Merrill is back tonight, since 13 Rock face-offs this year have not been taken by Hoar, and they’ve only won 5 of them. Hostrawser has never taken one in the NLL, so no help there. That said, it’s not like Hoar is Geoff Snider either. He has a sub-.500 career faceoff percentage and was only at 35.7% this season. The Rock have never had a really strong face-off guy, since Merrill is under .500 over his career as well.

Week 5 picks

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Graeme

I went 4-3 last week, getting the Philly/Minnesota back-to-back backwards, and going with Vancouver over Calgary. Props to my Addicted to Lacrosse co-host Tyler for going 6-1. He also got the VAN/CAL game wrong, but after the show he found out that Kyle Sorensen wouldn’t play in Calgary and tweeted that Vancouver wouldn’t win in Calgary without him. This turned out to be correct, so we’ll give him 6.5 out of 7.

Only three games this week, but still some tough ones.

Record: 11-7 (.611)

Game	Comments	Pick
ROC @ BUF	The Bandits are playing with a ton of confidence right now. The offense is clicking (even without John Tavares last weekend), and the defense is playing well in front of a revitalized Anthony Cosmo. I’ve said before that it’s hard for me to bet against Matt Vinc, but I guess it’s not impossible.
COL @ CAL	Colorado beat the Stealth in week 2, but haven’t played well since. It’s hard to convince myself at this point that they can beat the Roughnecks. Drew Westervelt will miss this game because of a US field lacrosse team tryout or practice or something, so that won’t help the Mammoth at all.
EDM @ VAN	With these two goalies and defenses, this could be the lowest scoring game of the year. Edmonton is unlikely to go 18-0, and Vancouver definitely has the talent to beat them, but not this time. Looking forward to the Rush/Knighthawks game next weekend.

Week 4 picks

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Graeme

Holy crap. I went 5-1 last week, my best weekend for making picks EVER except for my 5-0 week back in March of 2012. Of course, the only one I got wrong was the one I most wanted to be right – the Toronto/Buffalo game. A whopping seven games this weekend, so I have lots of opportunity to make a huge jump in the percentages, and lots of opportunity to drop back under .500.

Once again, I gave my picks on this week’s Addicted to Lacrosse show.

Record: 7-4 (.636)

Game	Comments	Pick
CAL @ EDM	Edmonton looked really good last weekend, and they’re at home again.
COL @ VAN	Iannucci playing against his old team makes this an interesting game, but I still have to go with the Stealth. I’m starting to feel the same about betting against Tyler Richards as I am about Matt Vinc.
MIN @ PHI	Philly lost their game against Buffalo last week but they have to feel confident about their 2nd half comeback. Minnesota has yet to prove that they can score without Ryan Benesch.
TOR @ ROC	I hate to pick against my team, but like I said, I also find it hard to pick against Matt Vinc.
VAN @ CAL	I have no explanation for this pick. This will be really good game and I can see either one taking it.
BUF @ COL	Buffalo looked really good in the second half of their game against the Rock. That plus their OT win in Philly will give them confidence.
PHI @ MIN	Minnesota’s home opener, and they’re playing against their former teammate, who they also saw the previous night.

Week 3 picks

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Graeme

The first of two busy weekend in the NLL – six games this weekend, seven next weekend. I announced all my picks on this week’s Addicted to Lacrosse show but in the unlikely event that you didn’t watch the show (you did, right? RIGHT?), here they are. This will be true going forward – we plan on making predictions on the show every week, and I’ll be posting mine here as well.

Record: 2-3 (.400)

Game	Comments	Pick
TOR @ BUF	The Rock looked really good last weekend while Buffalo didn’t. The Rock are 14-6 all-time in Buffalo. That said, Troy Cordingley would love to prove to the Rock that firing him was a mistake, and so he’ll have his team ready to play. I’m going to this game – should be a good one.
COL @ CAL	Calgary did not play like Calgary last week and so they will want to prove to their home fans that they are still a team to be reckoned with. Colorado will attempt to reckon with them. If Dillon Ward starts and plays like he’s done so far this year, this prediction could easily go south. (Get it? Colorado is south of Calgary)
PHI @ ROC	Philly looked really good last weekend, but I find it hard to bet against Matt Vinc.
COL @ EDM	Toughest game to call this week. Edmonton was 2-6 at home last year and 7-1 away, but I’m betting they can improve on that this year.
MIN @ VAN	The Swarm kept the Knighthawks to only 8 goals last week, but I don’t think they can be that strong defensively two weeks in a row. The Stealth are playing their first-ever home game in Vancouver (as a Vancouver team, anyway, they played the Championship game last year and a couple of pre-season games in Langley over the last couple of years) so they’ll want to put on a good show.
BUF @ PHI	After losing their first two (assuming my prediction above holds), the Bandits will be angry and will do whatever they can to avoid starting 0-3. This anger and desperation could result in a debacle where they take a million penalties and lose by a ton, or Troy could pull them together and make them play better. There’s no evidence yet that he can do the latter (Darris certainly couldn’t over the last couple of years), but that’s what I’m going to go with.

Game review: Calgary 11 @ Toronto 16

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Graeme

The Toronto Rock and Calgary Roughnecks opened their seasons on Friday night in Toronto, and things couldn’t really have gone much better for the Rock. Captain Colin Doyle scored the first goal of the season four minutes in, and two minutes later, the Rock had a three goal lead. Not only did the Rock keep the lead for the rest of the game, but Calgary only got back within one once, and after the first quarter, the Rock’s lead would never drop below three. The Roughnecks had problems in all areas of the floor – goaltending, defense, taking bad penalties, and particularly the offense, which looked pretty sloppy. Shots were missing the net all night, and other times a Roughnecks player would try to sneak one by Rose through a screen rather than waiting for a better shot opportunity.

That said, the Riggers did try to make a game of it in the 3rd and 4th, as Jeff Shattler scored four straight Calgary goals and then early in the fourth, Shawn Evans and Curtis Dickson (neither of whom had scored up to this point) each scored to bring the Roughnecks back to within 3 with 10 minutes to play – and of course 10 minutes to score 3 goals is tons of time. But Nick Rose and the Rock D only allowed one more the rest of the way, and the Rock offense never let up the pressure.

Garrett Billings scored one and assisted on nine to lead the game (and now the league) in scoring, and Stephen Leblanc had an excellent game with 5 goals and a couple of helpers. Jesse Gamble is already making me reconsider my Transition Player of the Year prediction (Geoff Snider), and I wondered during the game who would win in a race: Gamble or Steve Toll in his prime. On the Calgary side, Shawn Evans had a goal and seven assists, and Jeff Shattler scored four. I noticed rookies Karsen Leung and Garrett McIntosh a few times but I don’t even remember seeing Tor Reinholdt’s name. He’s on the scoresheet, so he obviously played, but I have no memory of him.

But man, those Roughnecks have some pests, don’t they? Evans, Dobbie, and Snider spent a grand total of 2 minutes in the penalty box, but they were being their usual irritating selves (though if I were an NLL GM, I’d take any one of them on my team in a heartbeat), and Greg (or possibly Jon) Harnett and Andrew McBride also got in on the action. There were no fights but a fair bit of pushing and shoving all night, which is somewhat typical between these teams. However Mike Carnegie was given a 5-minute major for illegal cross-checking which I didn’t think was warranted at all. It looked to me like a good hit – maybe high across the chest, but I didn’t think it was a head hit, and it certainly didn’t look like an intentional head hit.

Next weekend, the Rock travel to Buffalo to see old coach Troy Cordingley, while the Roughnecks host the Mammoth.

Other game notes:

Nice to see Ethan O’Connor get his first NLL goal in his first NLL game. Sure it was an empty-netter, but it still counts.
Mike Poulin was hot and cold. Mostly cold in the first half and better as the game went on, but he made a few damned impressive saves throughout the game. Nick Rose had a few OMG-worthy saves as well, but let in a couple of softies. Then again, when Jeff Shattler is standing 15 feet from you and winding up like he’s going to put a 100 mph shot through you, you’re getting ready to feel the pain. You’re not looking for a 40 mph change-up that bounces right at your feet.
Right at the end of the game, Damon Edwards was running out the last 5 or 10 seconds on the clock, when McBride started hitting him into the boards with some legal but very hard cross-checks – much harder than the situation warranted. When the hits continued after the final buzzer Edwards started shoving back, and a fight almost began. The refs broke it up before anything happened, and a minute later they were shaking hands in the lineup.
The Rock cheerleaders had new outfits including denim jackets, but it looked like they decided that each girl would go and buy their own, since none of them matched. Some were longer than others, some were light blue while others were dark, it was weird. Normally their outfits are very co-ordinated.
I like the Trainer’s Choice commercial they show on the Jumbotron during Rock games, showing players falling on various parts of their body. The best part is when they show a player falling through the crease. As soon as his elbow hits the ground, the video stops and the word “ANKLE” appears in big letters. This is a sports medicine company.
They didn’t show the car rental company commercial that everyone loves. (“A little more to your right, a little back to the left, just an inch more to your right. OK, there. Do it. <BANG>”) I can’t currently remember which car rental company it’s for, so from that point of view it’s a lousy commercial. Makes me laugh every time though.

Week 2 picks

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Graeme

The first week of the season had some of the expected and a bit of the unexpected. The expected: Rochester and Minnesota both got great goaltending but the Knighthawks offense was just that much better than the Swarm’s. The unexpected: Colorado had goaltending problems until rookie Dillon Ward showed up, John Grant didn’t record a point until almost the end of the third quarter, and Mark Matthews didn’t score. Also unexpected: Philadelphia impressed, Buffalo did not. Well, given the fact that Buffalo ended up last in the league last year and wasn’t much better the year before, perhaps that shouldn’t have been unexpected. But I really thought the changes the Bandits made would make for a better performance than what we saw.

Record: 1-2 (.333)

Game	Comments	Pick
CAL @ TOR	No team in the league scares me as much as Calgary when they come to town. Their offense is just too stacked and the team is just strong top to bottom. That said, the Rock ain’t bad either so I’m going with the home floor advantage.
VAN @ COL	The Stealth are right behind the Roughnecks in terms of a strong top-to-bottom team. Tyler Richards is probably the best goalie in the league not named Matt, and they must have some serious confidence in the likes of Tyler Digby and Cody Bremner to keep them in lieu of Dean Hill and the Nooch.

2014 NLL Predictions

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Graeme

As I do every year, here are my predictions for the final regular season standings for the upcoming season, and also the major end-of-season awards.

Final Standings

East

West

Individual Awards

MVP

Winner: Garrett Billings. He’s been right up there in MVP voting for a couple of years, and I think this is his year.
Short list: Cody Jamieson, Mark Matthews

Goaltender of the Year

Winner: Matt Vinc. I may just pick Vinc every year until he retires or The Next Matt Vinc arrives.
Short list: Tyler Richards, Aaron Bold

Defensive Player of the Year

Winner: Kyle Rubisch. Like Vinc, I’ll likely just keeping guessing Rubisch until someone else rips the award away from him.
Short list: Mike Grimes, Rory Smith

Transition Player of the Year

Winner: Geoff Snider. This is who I think should win. If I were to pick who I think will win, it’d be Jordan MacIntosh. But MacIntosh isn’t strictly a transition player, and for some reason this really annoys me. This is similar to Jeff Shattler a couple of years ago – was he the MVP: yes. Was he the transition player of the year: in my opinion, no.
Short list: Jesse Gamble, Brad Self

Rookie of the Year

Winner: Robert Church. This award is almost always a tough one. It’s a crapshoot which rookies will quickly adapt to the NLL and which will not.
Short list: Logan Schuss, Jason Noble, Cody Bremner, Karsen Leung

Les Bartley (Coach of the Year)

Winner: Chris Hall
Short list: Troy Cordingley, Derek Keenan

GM of the Year

Winner: Steve Dietrich
Short list: Doug Locker

2014 preview: Calgary Roughnecks

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Graeme

The success the Calgary Roughnecks has seen over the life of the franchise is surprising, in a couple of ways. In their twelve seasons, they have only missed the playoffs once, and that was in their first year. They’ve only had two seasons under .500. They’ve finished with more goals scored than allowed every season but their first. They’ve finished first in their division five times (2013, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2005). And yet with all that regular season success, they’ve only made it to the Championship game twice, winning both of them.

2013 season summary

Record	9-7 (Tied for 1st in West, seeded 1st)
Home	3-5
Away	6-2
Goals for	222
Goals against	211
Top scorer	Shawn Evans (112 points)
Playoffs	Division semi-finals: Beat Colorado 15-10 Division Finals: Lost to Washington 14-13

Roster changes

Only the Knighthawks made fewer off-season moves than the Roughnecks. In fact, if it weren’t for injuries, there might only have been one – and that one wasn’t even made by the team: defender Nolan Heavenor announced his retirement. Heavenor was one of those fly-under-the-radar kind of defensemen – no glory (not that defenders ever get much glory) but lots of respect from teammates and opponents alike.

Notable names missing from the announced roster include Travis Cornwall, Scott Ranger, and Pete McFetridge, all of whom are on the PUP list, and Scott Carnegie, assigned to the practice squad. Also missing from last year are Joe Resetarits who was traded to Buffalo, and Aaron Pascas who was released. Additions to the roster include Tor Reinholdt and Karsen Leung, both Mann Cup finalists with the Langley Thunder, and a third goaltender – Peter Dubenski, who will play behind Mike Poulin and Frankie Scigliano.

Ranger is a big part of the Roughnecks offense whose absence will be very much noticed, so I find it odd that they didn’t go with another forward on the roster instead of a third goaltender. Their forwards include the likes of Dobbie, Dickson, Shattler, Veltman, and Shawn Evans, so perhaps they’ve decided that they’re fine on offense, but the only other forward on their roster is Matthew Dinsdale, who only got 7 points in 13 games last year. They can’t be sending out 5 of these 6 guys on every offensive shift, so presumably some of the transition guys (Leung, Reinholdt, and Geoff Snider) will be pulled forward for some shifts until Ranger returns.

Burning question

Which Mike Poulin will the Roughnecks see – the 2012 version (Goaltender of the Year, 10.27 GAA, 78.9 Save%), or the 2013 version (12.82 GAA, 74.2 Save%)?

Look out for

Curtis Dickson. Widely regarded as one of the best offensive players anyway, I can see this 50-60 point guy climbing into the 80-90 range. And not just because there are two more games.

Prediction

First in the west.

Haiku

Roughnecks score a lot
Evans was the MVP
But there’s no Ranger

NLL 2014 rosters: Who’s in, who’s out

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Graeme

Here is a complete list of the changes in rosters for each team compared to last season. The “In” lists contain players that are on the 20-man roster that were not on the final roster from last season, and may include players that were on the practice roster or IR last year. The “Out” lists contain players that were on the final roster last year but are not on the 20-man roster now, and does not include players that are now on one of the other lists (eg. PUP, IR). Players on the Holdout, Physically Unable to Perform (PUP), or Injured Reserve (IR) lists may be moved to the active roster before the season begins.

Names for each list are in alphabetical order.

Buffalo Bandits

In: Ryan Benesch, Kevin Brownell, Troy Cordingley (head coach), Dave Pym (assistant coach), Joe Resetarits, Rory Smith, Andrew Watt
Out: Carter Bender, Nick Cotter, Jon Harasym, Mike Hominuck, Derek Hopcroft, Tracey Kelusky, Darris Kilgour (head coach), Mike McNamara, Luke Wiles
IR: Eric Penney
PUP:
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Colin Boucher, Jordan Critch, Hayden Smith, Mitch Wilde

Minnesota Swarm

In: East Division, Cameron Flint, Mike Hobbins, Jordan Houtby, Scott Jones, Jason Noble, Logan Schuss
Out: Dan Ball, Mitch Belisle, Ryan Benesch, Nic Bilic, Jay Card, Evan Kirk, Pat Smith, Corbyn Tao, Andrew Watt, West Division
IR:
PUP: Matt Gibson
Holdout:
Practice Squad:

Philadelphia Wings

In: Don Alton, Kyle Buchanan, Blane Harrison (head coach), Tracey Kelusky, Evan Kirk, Brian Megill, Michael Poppleton, John Ranagan, Pat Saunders, Garrett Thul, Ryan Ward
Out: Kevin Buchanan, Ned Crotty, Angus Dinley, Ethan Farrell, Jim Forsythe, Brandon Francis, Kyle Hartzell, Pat Heim, Steve Holmes, John McFadyen, Mike McLellan, Brandon Miller, Johnny Mouradian (head coach), Paul Rabil, Jeff Reynolds, Brian Teuber, Drew Westervelt
IR:
PUP: Rob Campbell, Brendan Mundorf, Max Siebald, Kyle Wailes
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Michael Diehl, Eric Hoffman, Bill McGlone

Rochester Knighthawks

In: Mac Allen, Mike Thompson
Out: Mike Accursi, Rory Glaves, Matt Hummel, Kyle Laverty, Jimmy Purves, Jon Sullivan
IR: Jamie Batson
PUP: Angus Goodleaf, Zac Reid
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Wenster Green, Mark White

Toronto Rock

In: Craig England, Dan Ladouceur (assistant coach), John Lovell (head coach), Blaine Manning (assistant coach), Ethan O’Connor
Out: Troy Cordingley (head coach), Scott Evans, Mike Hobbins, Blaine Manning, Brendan Thenhaus, Roger Vyse, Cam Woods
IR:
PUP:
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Dustin Dunn, Eric Law, Jeff Swift, Mike Lum-Walker

Calgary Roughnecks

In: Peter Dubenski, Cody Hawkins, Karsen Leung, Garrett McIntosh, Tor Reinholdt
Out: Jackson Decker, Nolan Heavenor, Aaron Pascas, Joe Resetarits
IR:
PUP: Travis Cornwall, Pete McFetridge, Scott Ranger
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Brett Baron, Scott Carnegie, Jake Hayes, Barclay Hickey

Colorado Mammoth

In: Cameron Mann, Bob Snider, Dillon Ward, Drew Westervelt
Out: Mac Allen, Joel Delgarno, Ilija Gajic, Jaeden Gastaldo, Ian Hawksbee, Ryan Hotaling, Dan Lewis, Richard Morgan, Jarrett Park, Gavin Prout, Rory Smith
IR:
PUP:
Holdout: Casey Powell
Practice Squad:

Edmonton Rush

In: Nic Bilic, Robert Church, Riley Loewen, Jimmy Quinlan (defensive coach), Adrian Sorichetti, Dane Stevens
Out: Mike Burke, Mike Cudmore, Jimmy Quinlan (player), Ryan Ward, Devan Wray (defensive coach)
IR:
PUP: Corey Small
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Mitch Bannister, Jarrett Toll, Alex Turner

Vancouver Stealth

In: Cody Bremner, Tyler Digby, Alex Gajic, Ilija Gajic, Brett Hickey, Sean Lundstrom
Out: Kyle Buchanan, Tim Henderson, Dean Hill, Athan Iannucci, Mitch Jones, Justin Pychel, Bob Snider
IR: Brett Bucktooth, Mitch McMichael
PUP:
Holdout:
Practice Squad: Josh Hawkins, Neil Tyacke, Chris Wardle, Nick Weiss

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