Category Archives: Game Review

Game Report: Minnesota 20 @ Toronto 11

Posted on by

With no traffic, I can drive from my house to the ACC in about 45 minutes. Because this is Toronto and traffic is unpredictable, I normally leave for a game at least an hour and a half before game time. On Sunday, I left home at 1:10pm for a 3:00pm start. We arrived at our seats just before half-time. The last hour and a half of the drive took place within 5 km of the ACC. By the time we got to the game, it was almost three hours after we left home. But once I got there and started watching the game, I realized that being stuck in traffic wasn’t all that bad compared to what was going on down on the floor.

Anyone who thinks I’m a total Rock homer or that the Rock pay me to write positive Rock articles while pretending to be impartial (hey Jamie, great idea, huh? Whaddaya think?), read on.

I thought about skipping this whole article and just doing my game report as a tweet:

Minnesota @ Toronto game report: Wow, did that ever suck.

That pretty much sums it up. The Rock offense was terrible. It looked like the first game of the season – balls were dropped, passes were missed, shots missed the net by a foot or two or hit the goalie full in the chest, rebounds were given up on, it was bad. Colin Doyle was working his ass off, but nobody else seemed to be. Leblanc was invisible. Manning looked old. I don’t even remember seeing Beirnes, who’s one of my favourite players. I do remember seeing Sanderson digging around in the corners once or twice but other times he was invisible too. Even Billings looked like he didn’t know what to do, so he just kept shooting from bad angles or with a defender right in front of him.

Most of the Swarm defense is freaking huge – and even the ones that aren’t huge seemed to be. They had the Rock completely covered all game long, and I’m sure there were Rock players who didn’t know who was in net for Minnesota since they could never see him, let alone the net itself. To those Rock players: it was Tyler Carlson, who was amazing.

Toronto’s transition has been much better this year than previous years, but they were making some bad decisions as well. The transition player would speed up the floor with the ball, and regardless of whether he had a lane to the net, he’d go in anyway and take a low-percentage shot instead of circling around and waiting for the forwards to come out. If he did wait for the forwards, it took so long to get set up that by the time there were five forwards on the floor, there were only 10 seconds left on the shot clock.

Nick Rose wasn’t terrible, despite what the final score might tell you. He wasn’t great, make no mistake, I wouldn’t even say he was good. But as bad as the Rock offense was, the defense was worse. Swarm forwards seemed able to just run around defenders at will, and get a few seconds all by themselves to decide where to shoot on Rose. Sometimes it almost looked like the Rock defenders got out of the way of the Swarm forwards.

Of course, the fact that they were killing penalties for most of the second half certainly didn’t help. The Rock were so undisciplined out there that I thought we were watching the Bandits. (Too soon, Bandits fans? Sorry.) The worst one came early in the fourth quarter. Someone (don’t know who) hit Patrick Merrill with what seemed to me to be a completely legal, if bone-crunching, hit. Scott Evans took exception to the hit and went after the offender, while Jesse Gamble went after someone else at the same time. Gamble was given two for facemasking (though I think he was just trying to get the guy’s helmet off so he could fight him) and two for roughing. Evans was given two for checking from behind, two for instigating, five for fighting, and a game misconduct. When all was said and done, the Rock were on a nine-minute penalty kill, two minutes of which was 5-on-3. Luckily Minnesota took a penalty shortly afterwards to even it up a little, but still – all four goals the Swarm scored after that were on the power play.

This is the second straight year I’ve had to write about a stupid penalty that handcuffed the Rock during a playoff game. The score at this point was 16-8. The comeback was definitely a long shot, but they had almost an entire quarter to do it. Now we’re down one forward and are killing penalties for 2/3 of the rest of the game. Why? Partially to get revenge for a legal hit, but mainly because the Rock were frustrated. Frustrated that their offense couldn’t get anything going, frustrated that when they did get a decent shot Carlson was there to stop it, and frustrated that the Swarm forwards were running roughshod over the Rock defense.

I don’t want to take anything away from the Swarm by implying that they won because the Rock played badly. Not true – the Swarm won because they played very well. Five different Swarm players had hat-tricks, and Tyler Carlson was almost unbeatable. I’m not a big believer in the whole “they wanted it more” thing, but that’s really what it looked like. In the fourth quarter, the Rock players looked like they just wanted it to be over ASAP. And you can’t really blame them.

So the Rock are done for the year, the Raptors are out of the playoffs, the Blue Jays aren’t nearly what everyone thought they were going to be (though it’s still pretty early in the season), and the Argo season doesn’t start for six weeks. It’s come to this. Toronto sports fans now have to hang their hopes on the Maple Leafs.

God help us.

Game report: Rochester 9 @ Toronto 10

Posted on by

The Rock wanted to clinch first place in the East last week, but Matt Vinc had other ideas. Rochester’s 2013 season hasn’t gone they way they wanted to, I’m sure, but they are by no means out of the race and with Vinc in net, the Knighthawks are no pushovers. In Sunday’s rematch, the Rock didn’t exactly solve Vinc – he still only allowed 10 goals – but they certainly had more success in preventing the Knighthawks forwards from scoring. I wouldn’t say Nick Rose was outstanding, though he was solid, but the Rock defense played very well. In particular I saw outstanding defensive plays from Mike Hobbins, Stephen Hoar, Damon Edwards, Jesse Gamble, and Kyle Belton – and those are just the ones I made mental notes of.

The game started off with some good and bad news. Good news: Colin Doyle’s wife is in labour! Child #3 is on the way! Bad news: Colin has this crazy “I love my family” thing going, so he left to be with his wife – which is totally the right thing to do, I say as my wife reads this over my shoulder. Seriously, congratulations to the Doyle family and welcome to the world, young baby Doyle.

Doyle is having an outstanding season so his loss was going to be noticed. But as good teams do, everyone else stepped up when one of the top players is out. Josh Sanderson was acting captain and also returned to his old post of anchoring the offense along with Garrett Billings. Billings had 6 points – a pretty good total for most other players, but Billings’ second-lowest of the season (he had 4 games with 4 points). Kasey Beirnes also had a good game, also with 6 points, and continues his role as unsung hero of the Rock. If asked to name the offensive stars of the team, Beirnes’ name doesn’t come to mind quite as quickly as Billings, Doyle, Sanderson, or Leblanc, but if you ask Troy Cordingley, Terry Sanderson, or Colin Doyle about him, they can’t say enough good things about his play, and many Rock fans know him as one of the hardest working forwards out there. I asked this philosophical question a few years ago about Shawn Williams and it seems to apply to Beirnes as well – if everyone thinks of you as an underrated player, are you?

As I said before, the Rock defense was excellent. Not only did they play well as a unit, there were some great individual efforts as well. Mike Hobbins was covering Dan Dawson in the first quarter and just wouldn’t let him get open to take a shot or even pass. When the shot clock buzzer sounded, Dawson dropped the ball and was so frustrated he grabbed Hobbins, threw him to the floor, and stormed off to his bench. The Knighthawks defense was also solid, though I wish they’d use B. Self and S. Self on the jerseys instead of just Self so I’d know who to credit for a particular play in which someone (Beirnes?) was basically mashed into the end boards and held there until the shot clock expired. I think it was Scott (since Brad is more of a transition guy), who was a nice little pickup for the Knighthawks considering they gave up Kedoh Hill from their practice roster for him.

Only one game left in the Rock season, a game in Philly to try and clinch top spot in the league and home floor throughout the playoffs. The Knighthawks, on the other hand, have three games left – a nasty Alberta doubleheader against the Roughnecks and Rush, and then the season finale against Buffalo.

Just a couple of other game notes:

  • In the second half, a Knighthawks goal was disallowed (I think – might have been a Rock goal), and Rochester coach Mike Hasen wanted to challenge the call. He threw the challenge flag – and hit the referee square in the chest. The ref stopped and glared directly at Hasen for a full ten seconds before continuing to the officials area. I was watching the ref and not Hasen, so I don’t know what he was doing. NLL Rule 17.89 says that if the coach attempts to hit the ref with the flag, the team gets an unsportsmanlike minor and the coach gets a game misconduct. It also says that the ref has discretion to decide whether the throw was intentional or not. There was no penalty, so presumably the ref decided it was accidental. Oddly, Hasen did not throw the flag directly away from the bench, or closer to mid-floor as coaches generally do, he threw it in the direction of the net, which was also where the ref was. Perhaps he was trying to throw it near the ref, to make sure he was aware that he was challenging the call, and the throw was more accurate than he intended.
  • The Rock’s anthem singer also works game ops for the team, and was picking up balls during the halftime shooting contest. I was worried that a ball might hit him and break him in half – he looks about 6-foot-1 and 120 pounds. For a skinny little guy, he has one hell of a powerful voice though.

Game report: Buffalo 11 @ Toronto 18

Posted on by

The Rock and the Bandits really don’t like each other. This is not news to anyone who’s ever watched them play, and may be surprising considering the Bandits have eight former Rock players in their lineup plus their GM while Roger Vyse, former Bandit captain Chris White, and both the Rock coach and GM are former Bandits. We thought we’d be in for a long game during the first, with penalty after penalty after penalty, but eventually things settled down and we actually saw some good lacrosse for a while. Most of the really rough stuff was over halfway through the first, but the penalties continued all game.

If you read the NLL Message Boards, there’s a thread that starts before every game in the Bandits forum called Keys to the Game. Every week, someone comes up with three ways the Bandits can win – shut down the opponent’s star player, minimize opponent’s transition goals, grab an early lead (or prevent the other team from grabbing an early lead), that kind of thing. For the last ten years, #3 on that list has always been “NO DUMB PENALTIES”. Apparently the Bandits don’t read the message boards. The Rock have the best power play unit in the league, something you’d think Darris and the boys might have paid a little more attention to, but they didn’t. Special teams weren’t exactly root cause of the Bandits downfall, but Toronto’s four power play goals didn’t help.

That said, not all of their penalties were dumb. I’m not generally one to complain about reffing, but there were a number of phantom calls in this game, going both ways:

  • Alex Kedoh Hill was given a penalty for knocking Josh Sanderson down, though (a) Sanderson had just punched him in the head, and (b) Hill barely touched Sanderson, who dropped like a soccer player.
  • No less than eight players got roughing penalties at the same time after the first Bandits goal. It all started with some rough stuff between Josh Sanderson (!!) and Mark Steenhuis.
  • Anthony Cosmo gave Doyle a smack on the back with his goalie stick and although it wasn’t that hard a hit, Cosmo was penalized. Perhaps the refs thought it was too close to the head. I actually thought it did hit Doyle in the head, but on viewing the replay, it did not.
  • Just a couple of minutes later, Derek Hopcroft had possession when the Bandits were called for a moving pick. The whistle was blown and play stopped but Hopcroft did not drop the ball. Jesse Gamble tried to get it from him but he pulled away. Hopcroft should have gotten two minutes right there for delay of game – you must drop the ball as soon as the whistle is blown. Chris White then hit Hopcroft’s stick away (getting a slashing penalty in the process), and Gamble and Hopcroft had words. At this point Bill Greer stepped in which might have been a mistake, since Hopcroft immediately pulled Greer’s helmet off and just laid a beating on him. This was one of the most one-sided fights I can remember. I counted sixteen punches by Hopcroft and zero by Greer.
  • Just two minutes after that, Luke Wiles hit Patrick Merrill in the face, getting a slashing penalty. This was a good call.
  • But later on Wiles had possession when the whistle was blown and he dropped the ball right away. Perhaps it didn’t go straight down and stop – it did roll a little, but it seemed obvious to me that there was no intent to roll it away from the Rock player who was right there. Wiles was given a delay of game anyway. People around me were confused, wondering why I was complaining about that penalty since it was against the Bandits. Simple – it was undeserved.

All of that was in the first quarter.

The game did settle down after that. There were still lots of penalties (4 in the second and 5 in each of the third and fourth) but other than Luke Wiles double-minor for slashing and facemasking, most of them were fairly innocuous. I kind of held my breath near the end of the game, waiting for the Bandits to explode and start more fights (the “go down swinging” attitude that seems prevalent in some lacrosse people) but it never happened.

Cosmo wasn’t great but I wouldn’t place the blame for this loss on him, or on Kurtis Wagar. The problem was Buffalo’s defense. The Rock got a lot of chances in close, and when you have Colin Doyle with the ball standing just outside the crease and no defender within ten feet of him, he’s more than likely going to score. Give him and Kasey Beirnes a few of those types of chances each, and that’s a recipe for a blowout. Nick Rose had a pretty good game, but much of his success on Friday came because the Rock defense was preventing the Bandits from getting clear shots at the net. There is no video of the game highlights up on nll.com yet, but from what I remember, the bounce shot was not Rose’s friend.

As expected, it was an entertaining and exciting game, and I’m glad the rough stuff was taken care of early in the game. Nothing pisses me off more at a lacrosse game than a team starting fights near the end because they’re getting blown out. If your team is getting destroyed, tough. Man up and regroup for your next game, learning from the mistakes you made. Starting fights because you’re losing is just an adult temper tantrum.

Other game notes:

  • It was Kids Night, so there were some special promotions and events and such for kids. What better way to celebrate Kids Night than with 14 roughing penalties, six slashing penalties, and a fight? Maybe pick the Mammoth or Stealth next year for Kids Night, not the Bandits.
  • On a similar note, the song called Dance With Me (which contains the inane lyrics “if you’re sexy and you know it, clap your hands”) may not have been the best choice for the cheerleaders on Kids Night.
  • As I mentioned last week, the Rock were pretty slow on the offense-to-defense transition. This week was much better – no lollygagging.
  • There was a guy sitting behind me who called for Nick Rose to be pulled at least two or three times in the first half. The last time he said “They gotta put Boychuk in. Get Rose out of there” as if it was 15-0 Bandits or 5-0 after three minutes. But this was near the end of the second quarter and Rose had given up 5 goals. He did allow another goal with a second left in the half, but then kept the Bandits off the board for the next sixteen minutes. Didn’t hear any complaints about the goaltending in the third quarter.
  • Also overheard from someone behind me: “That #9 [Steenhuis] is out there an awful lot, isn’t he?” Yes. Yes he is.
  • Nice to see Rock captain Colin Doyle and Bandits alternate captain Shawn Williams going out of their way to get the game ball from the ref after Roger Vyse and Kevin Brownell scored their first goals of the year – Vyse’s was his first as a Rock (that must have felt good, especially against the team that released him before the season) and Brownell’s was the first of his career.
  • Shawn Williams’ nine-year-old daughter Dylana sang O Canada and did an outstanding job.
  • Great to see Roberto Alomar doing the opening face-off. I recently watched a game from the 1992 World Series on TV and I think I had forgotten just how much fun Alomar was to watch.

Game report: Edmonton 17 @ Toronto 12

Posted on by

In my preview of the Edmonton Rush, I picked them to finish last in the West – not because I thought they were a last place team, but because there was so much uncertainty. Would Aaron Bold continue his strong play from 2012? Would the defense continue to dominate? Would Mark Matthews turn out to be the star everyone thought he would be? And after a 1-4 start, it looked like the Rush might have to wait at least another year to get back to the Championship game. But they’ve now won seven of their last eight games including five in a row, and have looked pretty dominant doing so. Sunday’s game against the Rock was no exception.

The first quarter might have been the Rock’s worst quarter of the season. The offense was sloppy, passes were missing their targets by several feet, lots of fancy over-the-shoulder passes were made to teammates not expecting them, and Nick Rose did not have his best game. Two minutes into the second, Rose was pulled for Zach Boychuk and the Rock were down 8-2. Shots after the first quarter were 22-8 for the Rush. Boychuk allowed another goal fairly quickly but then settled down and held the Rush scoreless for the next 12 minutes. Boychuk was hot and cold the rest of the way – he made a couple of holy-cow-how-did-he-stop-that saves, but let in a few softies as well. Boychuk is a much more athletic goalie than Rose; while Rose seems to move as little as possible to make the saves, Boychuk moves around a lot more. Not that either style is better or worse – whatever works.

The Rock’s play did improve over the next few quarters but still not up to the level of the Rush, who were simply dominant. Matthews didn’t have a huge game stat-wise, three goals and an assist, but he anchored the offense. And “anchor” is a pretty accurate description of this big guy – he can plow through defenders like they’re not there. His presence forced the Rock to focus more on him and allow the rest of the Rush forwards some good looks, but it was their defenders and transition guys that provided much of the scoring. Chris Corbeil and Kyle Rubisch, two of the best defenders in the game, contributed at both ends of the floor with two goals each, and Mydske, Dilks, LaFontaine, and Thompson each scored as well.

Jeremy ThompsonI’ve always liked Jeremy Thompson as a player. He can score, he can defend, he’s fast, he can fight (as we saw – see below), he can do faceoffs, and he has a very cool twitter profile picture (right). On Sunday, he displayed another skill: getting under the skin of his opponents, which directly resulted in at least two power plays for the Rush. On the opening face-off of the second quarter, he said or did something to Patrick Merrill. From what I saw, the ref blew the whistle to start the quarter and then immediately signaled that the Rock should have possession. Merrill suddenly walked away from the ball and started cross-checking Thompson across the chest. Thompson simply walked backwards taking the hits until Merrill was given a penalty. Not a smart play by Merrill. Then just a few minutes later, Thompson said or did something to Scott Evans, who dropped his gloves and went after him. Again, Thompson did nothing and Evans went to the penalty box. To add insult to injury, Thompson himself scored on the resulting power play. Surely after watching the Bandits implode year after year after year by taking stupid penalties, the Rock would have learned to let the other team do that and not to do it themselves. Actually the Rock are usually pretty good for keeping their heads on straight, but not on this night.

All in all, it was a rather ugly game for the Rock. But they ran into a hot Edmonton Rush team, who have replaced the Rock at the top of Brian Shanahan’s power rankings list. I saw a few tweets before the game that this game might have been a Champion’s Cup preview. If so, the Rock will have to keep their heads on straight and clean up (or cut down on) the fancy passing in the rematch.

Other game notes:

  • The Edmonton defense was very strong. There were times that I was waiting for the whistle and the “too many men” call, because there were seven or eight defenders out there. But no, there were only five.
  • In one play in the second quarter, Kyle Rubisch approached a group of three players all huddled together and checked them all at once, knocking two of them down.
  • After being pulled in the second quarter, Nick Rose sat on the bench for the rest of the game with his helmet on.
  • The fight: in the third quarter, Scott Johnston grabbed Jeremy Thompson and wouldn’t let him go. He held Thompson by the facemask and eventually pulled his helmet off. Thompson looked like he had no real interest in the fight, but after Johnston finally threw the first actual punch, Thompson pulled Johnston’s mask off and got a few punches in before Johnston suplex’ed him to the floor. Decision: Thompson.
  • The Rock’s transition game (defense-to-offense) is one of the best they’ve had in years. But their offense-to-defense is a bit more of a problem. There was a fair bit of lollygagging by the offense on their way back to the bench. You know what that makes them? Lollygaggers.

Game Report: Colorado 10 @ Toronto 14

Posted on by

Lucky for me I don’t start writing my game report until well after the game has ended. If I were one of those actual reporters who bring their laptop and write during the game, I’d have been frustrated by the fact that I had to rewrite it after the first quarter. Then again, there were a few lengthy delays that would have given me plenty of time to write.

The Mammoth started out strong, both on offense and defense. After Blaine Manning put the Rock up early in the first, the Mammoth scored the next four while keeping the Rock off the board for over ten minutes. The Mammoth led 4-2 after one quarter and Dan Lewis, despite being 6’0″ and only 180 pounds (which is tiny for a goaltender), was playing very well. He moves around a lot more than Nick Rose but he has to, since Rose is the same height but 105 pounds heavier (and therefore wider). But in the second, Lewis was less effective as the Rock outscored the Mammoth 7-2. I thought they pulled Lewis a little early, and this did seem to backfire as Belanger allowed a goal on the first shot he faced, but he settled down quickly and kept the Rock off the board for fifteen minutes after that. Belanger played most of the second half as well (other than maybe a minute when he needed an equipment adjustment) and did very well for his first game since April last year (and only his fourth ever).

The Mammoth climbed back to within one three times, but just couldn’t get that one extra goal to tie it up. After a penalty to Richard Morgan halfway through the fourth (more on this later), Blaine Manning scored on the PP to give the Rock a 2-goal lead, and then Jesse Gamble continued his bid for Transition Player of the Year (he’s got my vote), scoring his second and third of the game late in the quarter, his third coming on a penalty shot. Make the final 14-10.

I’m not generally one to complain about reffing, but there were a few problems in tonight’s game. First off, there were four goal challenges and three of them took forever. The league really has to work on speeding these things up because they completely killed any flow or momentum in the game. I PVR’ed the game, and have gone over two of the reviews with a stopwatch. In the second quarter, Adam Jones scored and Troy Cordingley threw the challenge flag just as the faceoff was happening. The rule says the flag has to be thrown before the faceoff, but I guess they decided this was OK and 1:20 after the goal, the ref started the review. The review took an unbelievable 3:35, so by the time play began again, just shy of five minutes had elapsed.

Later on in the second after a goal by Stephen Leblanc, a Mammoth player fell to the ground with an apparent injury (though he ended up being OK), then Lewis needed some work done on his equipment, and then Bob Hamley threw the challenge flag. The time between the goal being scored and the flag being thrown was seventy seconds. The review didn’t even start for another minute after the flag was thrown, and then the review took another minute, so we had almost a 3½ minute delay between the goal and the face-off.

We were all angry at the time because we thought the rule was that the flag must be thrown within 20 seconds, but according to the rule book, what happened was perfectly legal. The challenge flag must be thrown “prior to the next faceoff”, and the refs are instructed to “endeavour to achieve a face-off… as soon as possible to a maximum of 20 seconds”, but the refs have leeway to allow for longer stoppages for injuries and things like that, so technically no rules were broken.

But that’s the problem – no rules were broken. Everything proceeded according to the rules, and yet we had such huge delays. The only rule that was not followed to the letter was:

Review by the officials shall be attempted to be completed within two minutes.

But since we have “shall be attempted to be” in there, this is more of what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule. The weird thing is that it was pretty evident from the overhead replay that the goal was good, so I’m not sure why it took so long.

In addition to the lengthy reviews, the Mammoth were given an undeserved penalty late in the game that might have been the final nail in the coffin. Richard Morgan hit Colin Doyle with what looked to me to be a clean check. Doyle might have embellished it a little but not a lot – Morgan is a big strong guy, and any check to your chest from such a man is going to knock you backwards. But it was still legal, and yet Morgan was sent to the penalty box. Blaine Manning scored on the resulting power play, putting the Rock up by 2. It’s not like a two-goal lead with 7 minutes left in the game is insurmountable by any stretch, but the unfairness of it might have taken a little of the wind out of the Mammoth’s sails.

Toronto fans weren’t too thrilled with the first quarter, but had to be happy with the Rock’s comeback and strong play in the fourth, which we didn’t see in last week’s loss to Buffalo. Mammoth fans were probably unhappy with their offense, which seemed disorganized, but should be fairly pleased with the play of their goaltenders. I thought they both played well – not outstanding, but Lewis was very good in the first quarter and Belanger only allowed 5 goals in the second half, one of which was a penalty shot.

Other game notes:

  • Toronto had four penalties, half of them bench minors. Colorado had eight penalties, half of them bench minors.
  • Rose tried to score on the empty Mammoth net in the final seconds of the second. He threw the ball way too high and hit the scoreboard. Pieces of it fell to the turf. Nick Rose broke the Air Canada Centre.
  • I listened to the most recent VoodooCast (a podcast done by Mammoth fans) on the way to the game. The panel mentioned what they believed to be Lewis’ weakness – he drops his right shoulder at inopportune times (like when the ball is flying towards it). The Rock’s second goal was a laser from Doyle directly at Lewis’ right shoulder, and just as the ball was coming towards him, he dropped the shoulder. Textbook. Maybe Doyle listened to the same podcast earlier in the day.
  • John Grant seems to be the quarterback of the Colorado offense and frequently takes the point position – except on the power play. When the Mammoth are a man up, Gavin Prout takes that position. Interesting. The Mammoth had four power plays and no goals, so maybe that strategy needs reworking.
  • A friend of mine commented that these behind-the-net “Air Gait” goals shouldn’t be allowed and I’m starting to agree. While some of them are spectacular to watch, it’s always seemed kind of cheap to me. Or maybe it’s because the Rock have allowed at least one of them per game this year.
  • Rock owner Jamie Dawick pledged to donate $25,000 of his own money to the Daily Bread Food Bank if the game was a sellout. The result? Attendance was up about 700 from the average of the previous four games. It wasn’t even the highest attendance this year. I was pretty skeptical we’d get the full 19,000+ to this game, but after all the hype, I was hoping for at least 14-15k. Disappointing.
  • The guy in front of me was texting on his phone almost the entire game. I check my phone twitter-reading device plenty of times as well, but usually only during TV timeouts and between quarters, rarely during play. This guy was writing a novel. The guy behind me was one of those guys who screams at the opposing players and refs about how much they suck. He was yelling at Lewis all night and when the Mammoth switched goalies, he was yelling about riding the pine. He yelled at one player to get a haircut. It wasn’t even short things like “Lewis you suck!”, it was full sentences, and he wasn’t even clever or funny. People, a word of advice. Don’t be that guy.

Game report: Buffalo 15 @ Toronto 13

Posted on by

I don’t know who the Rock played in Thursday night’s game, but it certainly wasn’t the Buffalo Bandits that I, as a Rock fan, know and love. You know, the undisciplined team that takes stupid penalties at key times, sometimes giving away leads and games? Yeah, those Bandits were nowhere to be seen. The ones that showed up didn’t play perfectly all night, but they played well enough to beat the top team in the league and that’s really all that counts.

I wouldn’t say the first half was “all Buffalo” but the Bandits were doing a really good job with their passing, while the Rock were a little messy with theirs. In the second quarter, the Bandits took two penalties within 11 seconds, giving the Rock a 5-on-3 for almost two full minutes. A 5-on-3 in lacrosse is almost a guaranteed goal (or more accurately, should be a guaranteed goal), but the Bandits D came up huge. The Rock couldn’t get many decent shots away and Cosmo handled the ones that managed to get through. The Bandits took a 6-5 lead into the half.

The Rock came out of halftime pretty flat, not looking like they were really in the game at all. But after one early Bandits goal, they really turned it on and went on a 5-goal run to take a 3-goal lead and seemed in control. Up by three, only fifteen minutes left – this one’s over, right? Surprisingly enough, no. The Bandits came back with 5 of their own in a little over 6 minutes to take back their two-goal lead. They traded goals after that but the the Rock just couldn’t get that one extra to tie it.

Scott Evans was a healthy scratch. Right, because we don’t need gritty tough guys when playing the Bandits. But maybe they sat him because he’s gritty and tough and therefore more likely to get involved in the physical stuff. Maybe they figured “that’s the way Buffalo plays but we want to play our game”. Turned out that’s not the way Buffalo played anyway. At one point late in the fourth (after Buffalo had their 2-goal lead back), there was some pushing and shoving after a play and I thought “Oh good! The Bandits are going to do their normal thing and lose their minds and start taking dumb penalties. Man I wish Scott Evans was out there!” But to their credit, the Bandits kept it together and continued playing disciplined, smart lacrosse.

Goaltending wasn’t really part of the story here. I didn’t think Cosmo was outstanding but was very good in the first half, particularly during that 5-on-3. Nick Rose wasn’t terrible but it certainly wasn’t one of his better games and there were a few softies which we don’t see him allow often. I think I said this last year, but if there’s one thing that I don’t like about Rose’s game it’s that he gives up too many rebounds. Far too many times during this game he’d make a great save only to give up a huge rebound and have the Bandits recover the ball for either a second shot or a fresh 30. Here’s some goaltending advice for ya Rosey: stop doing that.

Jay Thorimbert was great on the faceoffs, winning a Snider-esque 80.6%, and even scored twice on breakaways. Speaking of breakaways, the Rock had a few, actually more than a few, but I don’t think they scored on any of them.

Long story short, the Bandits played very well while the Rock played OK, except in the third when it was reversed. I don’t buy into this “they wanted it more” crap, but the Bandits just played better and deserved the win.

Other game notes:

  • My friend Mike noticed that there were no moving pick calls the entire game. My other friend Steve said that this was likely because they were all moving, so if you call one, you have to call them all. Otherwise, the officiating would be inconsistent, and we can’t have that, can we?
  • Jimmy Purves: dude, what’s with the thigh-high socks? Looked like he was wearing leggings.
  • I don’t know if the decision to have a Thursday night game was intentional or whether that’s the only date that was left, but I think it’s safe to call that experiment a failure. The announced attendance was 8213, the lowest in Rock history.
  • Fearless Fred from Edge 102 was one of the in-game hosts. I’ve never heard him on the radio, but he was less animated than I expected an afternoon radio guy to be. He didn’t add much to the experience.
  • Dear Rock music guy: “Brick House” is the song they play in Buffalo for Mark Steenhuis. We should probably not play it in Toronto when playing the Bandits.
  • Overheard: “There’s a lot of money in pro lacrosse. A LOT of money.” Boy, would I like to have heard more of that conversation, mainly to find out where the hell it is.

Game report: Calgary 12 @ Toronto 17

Posted on by

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.

Game report: Minnesota 12 at Toronto 13

Posted on by

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.

Game report: Philadelphia 8 @ Toronto 7

Posted on by

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.

CLax game review: Oshweken 18 @ Iroquois 15

Posted on by

The number of non-NLL lacrosse games I’ve been to is rather small – I listed them all in this post about an MLL game last summer. On Saturday I added one to this list: my first CLax game. This was the second season opener for the league, and was a rematch of last year’s championship game – the champion Oshweken Demons against the Iroquois Ironmen. The game was at the ILA (Iroquois Lacrosse Arena) near Hagersville Ontario, the home arena for both teams. For this game, the Ironmen were considered the home team and actually had more fans cheering for them.

If you’re used to watching lacrosse in a small arena with no music playing, you’ll feel right at home at a CLax game. But if, like myself, you’re more used to the pomp and circumstance of the NLL, it might be a bit of a shock. There is no music. There are no cheerleaders. There weren’t thousands of fans there; in fact there weren’t even one thousand fans there. They didn’t do the wave. There were no dancing peanuts or commercials or “Let’s Get LOUD!” or kiss cam on the video board. Actually, there was no video board. If any or all of those things are necessary for you to enjoy a lacrosse game, better steer clear of CLax.

But if you just want to watch a fast-paced box lacrosse game, you could certainly do worse. The game didn’t look significantly different from an NLL game – lots of action and ball movement, and I thought there was even less standing around waiting for O/D changes than in the NLL. One of the interesting rules in CLax is that players must enter the floor using the bench door furthest from their goaltender. Quite honestly, I didn’t really notice this all that much except when looking for it. I did notice (actually, my son noticed) that the goaltenders switched ends after the first and third quarters but not after the second, so the Demons goalie was to our right during the first and fourth, not the first and third.

The Demons got off to a strong start, leading 5-0 in the first and 11-5 at the half. It seemed like it might be a rout but the Ironmen clawed their way back into it and got within three a couple of times, but that was as close as it got. But in the end, the Demons were just too strong and took the victory 18-15. Oshweken teammates Wayne VanEmery and former Buffalo Bandit Roger Vyse scored a bunch, as did the Ironmen’s Chris Attwood who was last year’s CLax MVP. Attwood was everywhere – not only at the offensive end, but there were a couple of transition attempts by the Demons that were scuttled by Attwood racing down the floor on D.

The goalie for the Demons, Jeff Powless, looked almost unbeatable in the first half. He was a little more human in the second, but still pretty impressive. The Demons, oddly, had three goaltenders dressed for the game, though one wasn’t wearing a Demons jersey.

Other games notes:

  • For NLL fans, there were a number of familiar names: Roger and Holden Vyse, Travis Hill, Cory Bomberry, Cody Jacobs, Delby Powless, and of course CLax deputy commissioner Jim Veltman.
  • The Ironmen’s first goal was beautiful. Chancey Johnson deked his way inside in front of the net. With only one defender left to get by, he stepped next to him, gave him a hard shoulder check that knocked him flat, and then buried the shot.
  • I don’t know if the faceoff rules are different from the NLL or if the players taking the faceoffs were very evenly matched, but faceoffs seemed either instant (usually because the whistle was blown right away and someone awarded the ball) or took 15-20 seconds with both teams hovering around the two faceoff guys who had trapped the ball between them and weren’t moving.
  • I was sitting in the middle of the arena, right across from the Demon bench, and got ZERO internet signal. We went out to get snacks at halftime and had no troubles out there, but back at our seats, nothing. This is a serious problem that the arena folks need to address. I believe this is the main reason the Rock built the TRAC rather than have their practices at the ILA.
  • None of the refs was wearing a helmet. Having seen refs take shots to the head, this amazed me. The refs know how hard the ball is, right? And they know how fast it goes, right? So, like, dude, WTF? I wouldn’t dream of stepping on that floor during play without a helmet. I was sure that NLL refs all wore helmets, but it turns out they don’t either, or at least most of them don’t. I don’t understand this at all.