This is Part III of my III-part season in review wrap-up. Part I included awesomes and not awesomes for each team from Buffalo through Oshawa, and Part II included each team from Ottawa through Vancouver. This one is about the league in general. There are more Not Awesome entries here than Awesome but don’t take that to mean that 2026 was anything other than a fantastic season for the NLL.
Category Archives: Las Vegas Desert Dogs
2026 NLL Season in review: Part I
I am trying something new here. Every week during the season, I list all the awesome and not-so-awesome things that happened that week, whether it’s a game, a team, a player, a specific play, a trade, or anything else relating to the NLL. This year, as a season-end wrap-up, I’m going to find at least one thing that was awesome and at least one thing that was not awesome about each team. That will get long, so I’ll break it into two alphabetically. Part I will include Buffalo through Oshawa, and Part II will include Ottawa through Vancouver.
But wait, there’s more! There were a bunch of awesome things and not awesome things about the league in general, so that will be in Part III. So we invite you, wherever you are, whether you’re at home or whatever, to kick your shoes off and put your feet up, and lean back and get yourself a cup of coffee or something, and just relax and join us in this 2026 NLL season in review.*
NLL Experience of GMs & Coaches
During the semi-finals, I noticed that all of the people listed on San Diego’s “Coaching staff” web page were very high NLL draft picks. I posted that to X and someone suggested that I do that for all the teams. I decided to add some additional information – when they played in the NLL if at all, whether they are in the Hall of Fame, and what awards they had won.
Continue reading2026 NLL Week 21
The 2026 NLL regular season has come to an end. The standings are final and the playoff bracket is set. You’ve probably seen the matchups in other places but just in case, next weekend we’ll have Vancouver hosting Halifax at 10:00 (all times Eastern) on Friday night, and three games on Saturday: Georgia hosting Buffalo at 7:30 and Colorado hosting San Diego and Saskatchewan hosting Toronto, both at 9:00.
2026 saw a couple of records set in terms of “best season of all time”, both by Brett Dobson. His save percentage of 84.7% beat Doug Jamieson’s 82.9% in 2020. His GAA of 7.86 is almost a full point better than second place Aaron Bold’s 8.73 in 2014. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just witnessed the best season by a goaltender, statistically, in NLL history.
2026 NLL Week 18
A couple more playoff decisions have been made, as Calgary and Oshawa are now out. Nobody else clinched so right now, we’re at three in and three out. We have a 10–5 team (Georgia) and a 6–9 team (Halifax) and with only three weeks left in the season, it’s still possible for Halifax to finish ahead of Georgia*.
After I scheduled this article but before it got published, we got the worst kind of news about the future of the Philadelphia Wings. Unfortunately, long-time NLL fans are used to it. I’ve added a second entry under Not Awesome.
2026 NLL Week 17
What an incredible weekend of games. Keegan Bal and the Warriors clinched a playoff spot by holding off Jeff Teat and the Black Bears in a meeting of the two top scorers in the league, the Mammoth held off the Roughnecks who were never out of that game, and the Rock beat the already-clinched Rush. And the other three games each featured amazing comebacks including one record-breaking one.
2026 NLL Week 16
The 2026 trade deadline was this past Monday and once the trades started being announced, it seemed like they just wouldn’t stop. No real blockbusters, but there were a couple of significant deals and a number of smaller trades as well. Las Vegas made a number of moves to improve their team while Philadelphia were clearly sellers.
Then there were the seven games on the weekend. We began with an OT thriller on Friday night and ended with two games decided by seven goals.
2026 NLL Week 14
There were ten games this past weekend, which ties for second place among the busiest weekends in NLL history – the last weekend of the 2007 season featured eleven games. Every team played, a bunch of teams played twice, and yet the standings didn’t change an awful lot. The Black Bears, Bandits, and Wings jumped, while the Rock, Seals, Desert Dogs, and Knighthawks dropped but even so, the jumps or drops weren’t huge.
2026 NLL Week 12
We are officially at the halfway point of the season, as every team has now played at least nine games. The Rush are now tied for the fourth-longest single-season winning streak at eight games, the Mammoth are right behind them with a seven-game streak, and the Swarm have won five in a row. At the other end of the spectrum are the Knighthawks and Thunderbirds, who have each lost four straight, and the FireWolves with a five-game losing streak.
Lots of Awesomes and only a couple of Not Awesomes this week, so let’s get to it.
2026 NLL Week 11
I would guess that nobody is shocked at most of the game results this week, other than maybe the game in Banditland (which I guess was more unexpected than shocking). The Warriors beating the Knighthawks isn’t shocking (they did it last week too), but the final score was a bit surprising. The Rock and Swarm took early leads and won, the Seals and Roughnecks took early leads and lost. As always, there were a few things that were awesome, and a few that weren’t.
NLL Chatter 