Only two games in Week two but lots to talk about, including one of the best goaltending performances ever, an amazing NLL debut goal, and a big comeback. Let get right to it.
Category Archives: Halifax Thunderbirds
2026 NLL Preview: Part I
Here’s a quick look at each team, where I think each team will end up, and who might have a breakout year. I’ll go alphabetically and cover Buffalo through Oshawa in this article, and then Ottawa through Vancouver in Part II.
As I did last year, I’m not going to make specific standings predictions. I’ll break things up into groups: Top 4, Middle 4 (i.e. #5-8), and Miss Playoffs (#9-14).
NLL 2026: Who’s in, who’s out
Here it is: a complete summary of all the roster changes for each team, all in one place. I will update this article as things change, up until the beginning of the season.
Just to be clear, “In” means that the player is part of the announced roster for the 2026 season and was not on the active roster during the team’s last game of the season in 2025. “Out” means just the opposite: they were on the roster for the last game last year, but are not on the active roster as of now. So a player who was injured at the time of the last game last year but is back now is “In”, while a player who is currently injured might be “Out”.
Not all teams have announced who’s on their IR, PUP, or holdout lists so take an empty list with a grain of salt. Also most teams don’t have (or didn’t announce) a Protected or Draft list, but a few did.
2025 Offseason report, Part II
My goodness, the second half of the off-season was crazy busy. We had the new CBA finally agreed upon and signed, and then an absolute frenzy of free agent signings. Many free agents returned to their previous team but an awful lot of them signed somewhere else. If only half of those signings result in a compensatory first round draft pick in 2026, the first round of that draft could have 25 picks in it.
Anyway, he’s a summary of what’s happened since I last rapped at ya back in September.
Future Hall of Famers, Part I
The National Lacrosse League Hall of Fame is a very important place. It contains players, coaches, GMs, journalists, and officials that have had a significant effect on the league during their careers. However, it’s also not a place at all, in the sense that there is no specific location associated with it. You can’t go and visit the NLL Hall of Fame like you can the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame (in St. Catharine’s, Ontario), the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame (in New Westminster, BC), or the National [American] Lacrosse Hall of Fame in Sparks, MD.
It also seems to have fallen off the radar of the league itself, since only one group of people has been inducted into the Hall in the last ten years.
2025 NLL Playoffs: Semi-finals week two
There was only one game this past weekend but it was an exciting game, particularly the crazy ending. The finals are now set and will feature the Buffalo Bandits hosting the Saskatchewan Rush in a rematch of the 2016 finals. The Rush won that series in two straight but both teams are very different now. The 2025 Finals will be a great series.
2025 NLL Semifinals – week one
And then there were three.
Christian Del Bianco and the Vancouver Warriors played two strong games, but Matt Vinc and the Bandits were just too much for them and the Bandits swept their semi-final series. Buffalo will now need to wait a week to see who they will host in the 2025 NLL Finals, and then wait another week to actually play again.
The Rush went into Halifax and won, but as I’ll explain below, it was a much closer game than the score would indicate, at least until the last few minutes of the game.
2025 NLL Quarterfinals
We are through the first round of 2025 playoff games. Home fans in all four cities were sent home happy as the higher seeds prevailed in each quarterfinal game, and the semifinal matchups are set. The defending champion Buffalo Bandits will take on the unbeaten-in-seven Vancouver Warriors, and the Halifax Thunderbirds, fresh off their first-ever playoff win, will meet the Saskatchewan Rush, fresh off their first playoff win in six years. These series are going to be amazing.
Why your team will/won’t win the 2025 NLL Championship
For all you fans of NLL teams that are not in the playoffs, or maybe those of you who want to bet some bucks on the NLL playoffs, here is a handy reference guide for why each playoff team may or may not win the Championship.
2025 NLL Week 21
That will do it for the 2025 regular season. Seems like just a few weeks ago we were getting ready to start the season and now it’s already over. But of course, the playoffs are an entirely different beast, and even though there are no more than thirteen games left before the long off-season, those games will be the most meaningful ones played all season. There was an awful lot of Awesome this past week, so let’s get into it.
NLL Chatter 