Category Archives: Misc

The 2012 NLL Entry Draft, from a fan’s point of view

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Other than the eligible players and their families, it’s probably safe to say that the majority of people who attended this week’s NLL Entry Draft had been to previous drafts. Most of the GMs, coaches, scouts, and executives have likely been to many of them. Some are former players and were drafted themselves. But as a lacrosse outsider, this was my first time. Some of the event went as I expected, and there were a few surprises as well. For others out there who have never been to a draft, here are some of my observations. These are all serious, unlike the goofy thing I posted yesterday.

The draft took place at the Westin Harbour Castle in downtown Toronto, one of the most well-known and swankiest hotels in the city. Coincidentally, this was where my high school prom was held, back in (OMG) 1987 when it was the Harbour Castle Hilton. I arrived around 6:40pm, and the draft was scheduled to begin at 7:00. There was a stage at the front with a big “NLL DRAFT” banner behind it, as well as banners on each side with all of the team logos. To the left of that was a table where the commentators Andy McNamara, Stephen Stamp, and Randy Mearns sat, and directly in front of the stage were a number of long tables, one per team. I couldn’t see all of them, but the Rochester and Calgary tables were at the back. Edmonton was in front of Rochester, and Buffalo in front of them. Minnesota was in front of Calgary.

I sat in the front row, off to the left behind the Rochester table.  Looking around the front of the room, I saw a who’s who of NLL people – at one point without even moving my head I could see Curt Malawsky, Bob McMahon, Jamie Dawick, Terry Sanderson, Darris Kilgour, Steve Dietrich, Curt Styres, Bob Hamley, and George Daniel. A number of people from the Rochester scouting staff, including NLL legends Chris Driscoll and Paul Gait, were sitting in the row just down from me.

2012 NLL Draft

In this picture (click to enlarge), you see the Rochester table right in front of me. Owner Curt Styres is the guy with the braid. Andy McNamara and Stephen Stamp are sitting at the table on the far left. At the right edge is the left half of Calgary assistant coach Bob McMahon, and Curt Malawsky was sitting next to him (just out of the picture). You can also see Minnesota play-by-play man and scout (and last year’s Tom Borrelli award winner) Jake Elliott on the right – the big bald dude who’s seemingly looking right at me. Hi Jake!

The public seating was mostly empty when I got there, but there were a number of people milling about outside the room. Just before the proceedings began, I looked around again, and it had mostly filled up. There were a lot of young nervous-looking faces out there with girlfriends and parents. By the end of the night, many of those faces were smiling above brand new NLL jerseys.

Around 7:00, the event got underway. Andy McNamara, play-by-play voice of the Toronto Rock, was the MC for the evening, and introduced Stamp and Mearns as well. After a few words about what we can expect (including the exciting reveal of who the first player was going to be… not that we hadn’t known for weeks already), Andy turned things over to commissioner George Daniel and VP of Lacrosse Operations Brian Lemon, who explained a few of the rules. Basically, the teams were free to choose whoever they wanted, but if a player turned out to be ineligible or a pick was otherwise illegal, the pick would simply be retroactively cancelled. Each team had five minutes to make their selection in the first round, and two minutes in subsequent rounds, and each team had two five-minute extensions that can be used anytime. I believe the Bandits were the only team to use an extension.

Before long, Daniel announced that the Edmonton Rush were now “on the clock”, and the Rush brass panicked, since they only had five minutes to come up with… well, no, of course they didn’t. The Rush announced a while ago that Mark Matthews was going to be their pick, so less than a minute later, Daniel was up on the stage again making the least surprising announcement of the night. Matthews came down to the front, was given his new jersey (complete with his name on the back), and had the obligatory picture taken. He then went back to the table with the the Rush people and sat there the rest of the night, presumably providing input about players he knew for future rounds.

Minnesota had the next three picks, and I expected them to make all three at the same time, but they treated them as three separate picks. Brock Sorensen, here’s your jersey, take a picture. A couple of minutes later, Kiel Matisz, here’s your jersey, take a picture. A couple more minutes, Shayne Jackson, here’s your jersey, take a picture. This made total sense though; getting drafted is a big deal for these players, especially so high in the first round, so I’m glad that they didn’t water it down for these players by combining the picks and jersey presentations.

After the jersey presentation and pictures, each player was interviewed briefly by TSN’s Claude Feig, and most players ended up giving the same stock answers. It’s a dream come true, I’m excited to join the team, I’ve heard great things about them, looking forward to training camp, that kind of stuff. Not that any of them weren’t being genuine, and I imagine most of them are pretty new to giving interviews, but you did tend to hear the same responses over and over. It was amusing at the beginning when Feig talked to the first three picks and mentioned their height. They were all 6’4″ or 6’5″ – as tall as Feig himself who said later that it was “nice to have someone eye level to talk to.” Earlier in the evening, I saw Stephen Stamp walking up to the front, and he looked even taller than Feig.

In between picks, Stamp, McNamara, and Mearns offered analysis of the picks and players, and what each player could bring to their new team. Offensive star, defensive specialist, big and strong, small and wiry, hard shot, great passer, even one guy they described as something like “a really annoying guy to play against”, they knew something about everyone.

Despite the lower time limits, I didn’t notice the second and subsequent rounds going any faster than the first. Actually, the whole thing moved along pretty quickly. Once we got into the third and fourth rounds, some of the people chosen were not present as we got into the “what the hell, let’s take a chance on this guy” picks. At one point, I’m sure Chris Driscoll said “who?” as a name was read. There were only two trades on the night, both involving Minnesota and both picks for picks, no actual players involved. I was hoping for some obvious signs of talks going on, like seeing Terry Sanderson leaning over the Minnesota Swarm table saying things like “Sure, we can take Jordan MacIntosh off your hands”, but first off there were too many people wandering around, and secondly I didn’t recognize everyone up there, since there were GMs and assistant GMs and coaches and assistant coaches and scouts and owners and players (John Tavares was at the Bandits table) and possibly other people as well.

The only thing that was really different from what I expected was that George Daniel read out all the names of the players. For whatever reason, I expected each GM to come up and announce their pick, which is the reason I wrote the “behind the scenes” article as I did.

I enjoyed the draft and I’m glad I went, though I kind of wish I’d stuck around a little longer afterwards and introduced myself to some of the people I’ve talked to on Twitter a bunch of times but have never met in person. I know that some people had issues with the internet feed at the beginning, but as far as I could tell, the night went without a hitch. For a league that doesn’t have anywhere near the resources of the NHL or NBA, I thought they did an excellent job – it certainly didn’t look like a shoestring-budget kind of event. For those of us that are not lacrosse insiders, it was fascinating to see the inner workings of the league in action.

The Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame

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My family and I recently travelled to St. Catharine’s, Ontario, for a day of exploring the Welland Canal. This is about a 45-minute drive from where I’ve lived for the past fifteen years, but I had never been there. It wasn’t until we arrived at the Lock 3 visitor’s centre that I realized that the same building also houses the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Museum. In addition to watching 35,000-ton ships over 700 feet long navigate into a passage only two feet wider than themselves, we got to see some pretty cool lacrosse memorabilia and recognize some of the pioneers of lacrosse in Ontario.

Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame

The HoF is part of the St. Catharine’s Museum and is not a big place, but there are a lot of jerseys, sticks, old photographs, and even paintings and sculptures. There is a listing of players who have been inducted into the Ontario Hall, as well as Ontario-based players and builders who have been inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame, which is located in New Westminster, BC.

There were a number of pictures of former Mann Cup winning teams from Ontario. There was one from the 1980 Brampton Excelsiors featuring a very young-looking Terry Sanderson. I found one from the 1993 Excelsiors that contained a whole bunch of familiar names: J. Sanderson (turned out to be John, not Josh), T. Cordingley (Ted), D. Teat, J. Grant (Sr.), P. Coyle, K. Dance, another T. Cordingley (that one’s Troy), J. Tavares, B. Shanahan (Brian), S. Dietrich, and P. St. John. Even the list of people who were absent from the picture is impressive: Jim Veltman, Tom Phair, Randy Mearns, Rich Kilgour, Darris Kilgour, Derek Graham. Recognize this kid?

Chugger

Yup, that’s none other than NLL Hall of Famer Steve “Chugger” Dietrich. How about these guys, holding some hardware?

The Shanahans

On the left with the Stanley Cup we have Brendan Shanahan and on the right with the Mann Cup is his big brother, TSN analyst and IL Indoor writer Brian Shanahan. Here’s one more picture, this one of two people whose names still come up frequently when talking about the NLL, even though this is a picture from the mid-90’s. One of them looks almost exactly the same now as he did then, while the other looks a little different:

Troy and JT

The caption reads “Mann’s Best Friends”, and of course this is Troy Cordingley and the ageless John Tavares. They’re both wearing Six Nations Chiefs jerseys (which would put the picture at 1995 or 1996 when they were both won the Mann with the Chiefs), but you can see “Bandits” on Cordingley’s stick.

There were lots of NLL All-Star jerseys hanging up, with lots more names familiar to NLL fans: Doyle, Point, Carey, Tavares. There were also pictures of the so-called “builders” of the game, which generally means GMs and coaches and such. But there were a number of exhibits on the real creators of lacrosse: the First Nations people. They showed how wooden sticks were made, and talked about how they have been playing lacrosse for hundreds of years, how they used it to settle disputes between tribes, how they played on fields that were miles long and had no “out of bounds”, and how they had no limit on the number of players on each team (as long as the numbers were “relatively close”). The thing that really amazed me was that in many cases, the only rule was that you were not allowed to touch the ball with your hands. The only rule. And you thought the game was rough now.

My whole family had a great time visiting the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame, as well as the St. Catharine’s Museum and Lock 3 on the Welland Canal. I was going to make a joke about “maybe someday when they have a Bloggers category, I might return as an inductee” but in all seriousness, even making such a joke makes me feel disrespectful to those players, builders, and pioneers of the game who have legitimately been inducted and celebrated. All of the inductees have my appreciation, my congratulations, and my respect.

Lacrosse’s loss is hockey’s gain once again

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It was announced today that Edmonton Rush defender Chris Corbeil had signed with the Stockton Thunder of the ECHL and so will likely not be playing the 2013 season with the Rush. Corbeil has been one of the best young defenders in the league over the last couple of years, having been named to both the All-Rookie team in 2010 and the 2012 All-Star team. Along with 2012 Defender of the Year Kyle Rubisch, Brett Mydske, and Jarrett Toll, Corbeil was part of a young group that allowed the 2nd fewest goals last season. Make no mistake, this is a big loss for the Rush.

But like any other Canadian kid who has the opportunity to play hockey at that level, Corbeil’s dream is to make the NHL, and the ECHL is the next step on his way there. Nobody can blame Corbeil for wanting to take that step. I’m sure he loves lacrosse and is (justifiably) proud of his accomplishments in the NLL, but if he has to give up either his NLL career or his chance to make the NHL, there’s no question what’s going to lose.

Chris CorbeilThere have been other lacrosse players who have done the same thing. Rochester’s Brad Self missed three full NLL seasons while playing hockey in Germany. The New York Islanders’ John Tavares excelled in lacrosse as well as hockey. NHL Hall of Famer Joe Nieuwendyk was a better lacrosse player than a hockey player. Other hockey players like Adam Foote, Gary Roberts, and even Wayne Gretzky all played lacrosse but chose a career in hockey. It’s sad that it has to come down to money, but the cold, hard truth is that nobody ever got rich playing pro lacrosse. If you want to make a decent living playing lacrosse, you’ll need another job while an NHL player can live quite comfortably on his hockey salary.

I wrote an article on In Lacrosse We Trust about a year and a half ago comparing the money that NLL players make with athletes in other sports and it was quite an eye-opener. (Unfortunately, when ILWT changed hosting providers all of their previous articles were lost, and I didn’t save mine away before that happened.) I don’t remember the numbers, but if John Tavares the lacrosse player had made the league maximum his entire career (he hasn’t) and if the maximum NLL salary had been where it is now that entire time (it hasn’t), he still would have made less money in his 20-plus-year career than his nephew the hockey player has in two years.

Of course, it’s not only about money. Many Canadian children grow up watching and playing hockey and dreaming of playing in the NHL. While I’m sure many kids grow up playing lacrosse and dream of winning a Mann Cup or an NLL Championship, it would still pale in comparison to winning the Stanley Cup.

Realistic lacrosse fans know that lacrosse is, and will likely always be, a second-tier sport. As much as we’d like to believe that someday ESPN will be give the NLL the same amount of coverage it gives the NHL or NBA, we all know deep down that that’s a pipe dream. Lacrosse will continue to lose the Corbeils and John Tavares’s to hockey, that’s just reality. We can only hope that the young lacrosse stars of today are all crappy skaters.

Movie review: Crooked Arrows

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There are lots of sports movies out there, and some are iconic for a particular sport: hockey has Slap Shot; baseball has Major League,The Natural or Field of Dreams; football has Any Given Sunday, Friday Night Lights, and Rudy; boxing has a ton including Raging Bull and the Rocky series; basketball has Hoosiers; and the list goes on. But lacrosse didn’t really have anything; there hasn’t really been a movie that included lacrosse as an integral part of the film. Any mention of lacrosse in movies such as American Pie was generally tangential, and usually involved US prep schools. And there has certainly been no film that looks at lacrosse from a Native American point of view. Until now.Crooked Arrows

The plot of Crooked Arrows isn’t exactly groundbreaking. It follows a relatively tried-and-true formula that has worked in a number of other sports movies, that of the underperforming team that gets a new coach / owner / manager who turns things around and makes them champions. Think Major League with middies. The difference here is that at the beginning, the coach doesn’t particularly want to be there either – so rather than Major League, perhaps A League of their Own might be a more apt comparison. Gradually the players start to adapt to their new playing style and gain confidence in their coach and themselves, and the coach realizes that he needs the team as much as the team needs him.

The coach in this case is Joe Logan (played by Brandon Routh, who has distant Native background), a half-Native whose father is on the tribal council. Logan is a former lacrosse star who is coerced by his father into finding his spirit by returning to his roots and coaching the reservation’s hapless lacrosse team. As you would expect, he encounters resistance and is pessimistic about his chances of success but gradually wins the team over. After that, it’s fairly predictable: most of what you might foresee happening does happen, and nothing really happens that you don’t see coming.

That said, I didn’t care how predictable it was. Even if you know the destination, how you get there can be entertaining and fun. There were a number of funny lines, particularly the stuffy rich mom of one of the prep school players who asked “when did the Indians start playing lacrosse anyway?” or the double-entendre “wisdom” of the coach – “if you don’t go into the forest, you don’t have any balls”. The characters you’re supposed to dislike (opposing team’s coach and players, greedy developer) are sufficiently slimy, and you do like the characters you’re supposed to like (coach’s sister and father, love interest, team benchwarmer). The scenes of lacrosse practices and games are exciting, and though they don’t go over the game in much detail (this is a film about the team and the community, not so much about the game itself), you do get a pretty good idea of how fast and exciting lacrosse can be. You find yourself cheering for the Crooked Arrows and are genuinely happy when they are successful.

When I saw the film, I was curious how accurately the Native issues in the film were portrayed. I have no Native blood in me, and I’m not even sure if I’ve ever set foot on a Native reserve, so I can’t personally speak to that. But I did talk to someone who can, and was assured that the movie was accurate and realistic. The reservation in the film looks like any small town in rural America, so anyone looking for fields of tepees and wigwams may be disappointed, as they would be on a real reservation. But the fact that Natives are featured so prominently in a so-called “Hollywood” film is somewhat unusual in itself. Another recent movie that includes Native Americans in a prominent role is the popular Twilight series, and indeed the actor that plays Joe Logan’s father in Crooked Arrows also plays Jacob Black’s father in Twilight. I did notice that the Native characters in this film seemed a lot more upbeat and generally happy than the grumpy werewolves in Twilight, though I suppose if there were vampires living nearby I might be grumpy too.

One thing I really liked was the juxtaposition of the scenes of Native warriors from 800 years ago playing lacrosse with scenes of the Crooked Arrows team playing now. This was a very effective way to remind the viewer about the history involved with the game and the fact that to the Native community, lacrosse is not just a fun game or a sport that they invented, but an integral and important part of their way of life, and has been for hundreds of years.

Those in the lacrosse community have known this movie was coming for a while now, and the @crookedarrows twitter account was quite active in keeping followers informed on the progress of writing, casting, filming, post-production, and when and where the movie was playing. The filmmakers even managed to squeeze in a few cameos including some of the biggest names in lacrosse: Zack Greer, Brodie Merrill, Paul Rabil, and Gary Gait (though Gait wasn’t mentioned by name as the others were).

In a nutshell, I really enjoyed Crooked Arrows, as did my sons (12 and 10). Lacrosse fans will enjoy the action, but you don’t have to be a lacrosse fan to enjoy the movie.

The Leafs and Raptors need a Terry

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A little over three years ago, I wrote an article about the General Managers of the Leafs, Raptors, and Rock. The Leafs had just hired Brian Burke as their new GM, and it seemed that the Toronto media had already decided that he was going to save the team; in fact, I facetiously referred to him as Our Saviour for a while after that. Bryan Colangelo had been the Raptors’ GM for a year or two, and had done a pretty good job of turning around the mess that Rob Babcock had left behind. The Rock still had Mike Kloepfer as GM, and the team sucked.

My article suggested that the Rock needed to get rid of Kloepfer and hire themselves a “Brian” who would overhaul the team and make them not suck, which Burke and Colangelo were obviously about to do with the Leafs and Raptors. One of the suggestions I gave for who could take over was Terry Sanderson, and another was Jamie Batley. Ironically, less then four hours after I posted that article, the Rock did fire coach Glenn Clark, who was at least part of the problem, and Batley was hired as coach. The rest of the problem was solved at the end of the season when Mike Kloepfer resigned. A month later Sanderson was re-hired as GM. The next season (2010), the Rock went to the Championship game and in 2011, they won it all. We’re now midway through the 2012 season, and the Rock are tied for first place in the Eastern division. I’d call that mission accomplished.

I could pat myself on the back for predicting the Rock’s next course of action (kind of – I suggested Sanderson though I said it was unlikely), but the original point of my article was lost. It wasn’t so much that the Rock needed a new GM,  it was that the Rock needed to do what the Leafs and Raptors did and replace their rookie GM who screwed the team up with a proven veteran who could turn it around. The Rock did that, but the Leafs and Raptors haven’t had nearly the success that we all envisioned when Our Saviours came to power.

In the 3 seasons prior to Burke’s being hired, the Leafs had 91, 83, and 81 points and missed the playoffs every year. In the two full seasons since, they had 74 and 85 points and missed the playoffs every year. This year they’re on pace for 83 points and missing the playoffs. They don’t have any first-round draft picks for a couple of years because of the Kessel trade, so the rebuilding process will be continuing for a long while.

Update: My timing was off. The picks involved in the Kessel deal were for the last two drafts, so that’s done now. Thanks Faisal for the clarification!

Bryan Colangelo was hired by the Raptors in February 2006, six years and a week ago. In the first couple of years, Colangelo looked brilliant. The Raptors finished first in the Atlantic division the very next year, and Sam Mitchell was named Coach of the Year and Colangelo Executive of the Year. The Raptors lost in the first round of the playoffs, but made the playoffs again the next year. They lost again in the first round, and then things went south quickly. They haven’t made the playoffs since and haven’t really been much of a threat at all. Last season they were a hopeless 22-60 and this year they’re not much better at 11-25.

Barring miracles, the Leafs and Raptors are not likely to win championships during the Burke / Colangelo eras. I’m not suggesting firing them now, though I think the Colangelo era has run its course and unless the Raptors start turning things around on the floor very soon, Colangelo should be done at the end of the year. I don’t think Burke has done a terrible job; he’s acquired some players who have been great like Phaneuf and Lupul. The fact that the goaltenders play like Turk Broda one week and a turkey sandwich the next isn’t entirely Burke’s fault. I’d give him another year or two to right the ship but unless obvious improvement is made, he’s gone too.

Three years ago, I said that the Rock needed to find their Brian, and they did. Now the Leafs and Raptors need to find their Terry Sanderson.

Review: NLL.com stats pages

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For the second time in three years, the NLL has changed statistics providers. As a guy who loves stats, most of the time I spend on nll.com is looking over stats. The column I’m going to be writing for ILIndoor.com will be entirely about stats.  I run a lacrosse pool with my friends, and so I’ve written software to download and manipulate the stats. I keep having to change my code to handle changes to the URLs, the formats, which stats are actually included, and so on. Now I need to rewrite them all again to handle the new stuff. But rewriting that stuff is just a one-time inconvenience for me, and at most a handful of other people around the country doing something similar. Once that’s done, are we better off with the new stats provider and pages? Let’s investigate.

You don’t need to know anything about stats to read this article, but it will be quite long and detailed. You have my express written permission to skip it if you don’t care about the stats pages at NLL.com. But if you do skip it, you have to read the next article I post twice. Deal?

This may not be a completely accurate comparison since the old pages are no longer available, so I can’t compare side-by-side. I have to go by what I remember. I’ll also include a list of bugs I’ve found at the bottom.

Individual stats

When you click on “Stats” in the menu at the top, you get a page listing the individual leaders in a number of categories. This is likely what most visitors to the page are looking for, so this makes sense. For each stat, the top player is shown with a little picture, and then the next 4 or 5 in that category. It’s not immediately obvious, but if you want the entire list of a stat rather than just the top 5, you can click on the stat name. This takes you to a page with a list of players and a bunch of stats, and you can sort by any of them. This is fabulous, as it was one thing missing before. You can even sort by a player’s jersey number, though incorrectly.

There is also no legend. I know that PPG is power play goals, FO is face-offs taken, and FOW is face-offs won, but it took me a second to figure out that TO and FT were turnovers and forced turnovers. But if you have face-offs taken and face-offs won, do you really need a separate column for face-offs lost? I suppose you might if you want to sort by that column. The last column is for MVP. I have no idea what that is. My first thought was “are they really allowing you to sort by the number of game MVP awards a player has been given?” I didn’t think “game MVP” was even something the NLL awarded, other than the Championship Game. Whatever it is, it shows up in both the player list and the goalie list, and nobody in the Toronto-Calgary season opener was credited with one. Except that if you go to the game stats, Dane Dobbie got one, so maybe it is game MVP. Seems like a dumb stat to keep track of considering how subjective it is.

Team stats

There’s a page showing team scoring by quarter, which will be very interesting to watch over the season. Despite the fact that neither Colorado nor Minnesota have played yet, they have non-zero values in some columns. Colorado has scored 3 times in the first quarter, once in the second, three times in the third, and none overall.

The power play page (which is just called “Team”) is weird – it lists “Team”, “PP”, and “PP%”. That’s it. Even PPG isn’t there, and no SHG or PK%.

You can click on a team name and it will take you to that team’s page, which is more than just stats. It includes the team’s W-L record;  the team leaders in goals, assists, points, shots, and GAA; quick summary of their latest game; the entire roster (the fact that this includes the practice squad, injured reserve, physically unable to perform, protected, and hold-outs is awesome); some recent stories  about that team; and upcoming games.

The game schedule page is very nice, with a mini-calendar sort of thing across the top (including the words “WIN” or “LOSS” for past games). The box score list shows the final score, period-by-period score, date/time/location, and a link to the detailed boxscore. There’s also a game list page that shows the same stuff minus the boxscore but in a very small font. I don’t know why you’d ever use that page over the boxscore page.

There’s a page for each game as well, though it’s pretty information-free for upcoming games. All times seem to be in EST but are not displayed with time zone indicators. For example, it says that next weekend’s Washington/Calgary game is at “10:30PM”, even though “7:30PM PST” would make more sense.

Game stats

The first word that comes to mind for the individual game page is slick. It’s all Web 2.0-y and slider-y and smooth scrolling-y and stuff like that. There’s a display of the floor with dots where each of the goals were scored from, and you can click on the goals to get who scored it and when. You can do the same for loose balls, shots, shots off target, and faceoffs. I’m not sure how useful it is, but it’s very slick. There’s a play-by-play page, which lists all the “events” (goals, face-offs, loose balls, turnovers, shots, etc.) in the order in which they happened. Finally there’s a Game Stats page with two tabs: Team stats, which lists a bunch of stats and the totals for each team plus a visual indicator of how the teams compare for that particular stat, and Player Stats which lists all the individual stats for each player on each team. All of the PIM (Penalty Minutes) values include a “.0” at the end, though I’ve never heard of penalties being given involving fractions of minutes. (“That illegal cross-check was worse than a minor penalty, but wasn’t bad enough to be a full 5 minute major, so the player will serve a 3.5 minute intermediate penalty.”)

Stuff that’s missing

There needs to be a full menu of all the different stats pages available. If I click on stats, I get a list of the individual leaders. But how do I get from there to the list of all players on one team and their stats? Turns out you go go the Teams menu at the top, not the Stats menu, but this isn’t obvious. Once there, you have to scroll down past stuff like the aggregate number of goals, assists, points, penalty minutes, etc. to get to the player list. The aggregate team stuff is useful, but it’s more likely that the reader wants to see the list of players, so it should be at the top.

If you click on a player’s name, you get a page with his current stats as well as a menu of previous seasons, with game-by-game level stats. This is nice, but should not be the default. Having one single list with one row per season is absolutely essential. Without it, comparing different seasons is much harder and spotting anomalies is essentially impossible.

Very high on my nice-to-have list, but probably priority zero on the NLL’s list: an XML interface to the entire statistics database. Close second: an XML interface to this year’s player stats. Man, would that make my life easier.

Bugs

To the NLL.com developer who is reading this: I am using Chrome on Windows.

  • When sorting the list of players by jersey number, it’s doing an alphanumeric sort rather than numeric. 3 should not come between 27 and 30.
  • As I said above, listing the player stats shows Dane Dobbie with a 0 in the “MVP” column, but in the game stats for the TOR/CAL game, he has 1.
  • On the player stats page, there are two separate lists. They don’t necessarily show the same players, and they’re not sorted by the same thing. When I click on the link to go to page 2, the upper list changes to page 2 but I’m shown the bottom list and have to scroll up to get back to the top.
  • Same page – when I’m on page 2, the link for “Previous” is on top of the link for page 1.
  • Team standings page – Edmonton, Philly, and Rochester are 0-0-0 while everyone else is just 0-0.
  • If you’re not using the latest version of your browser, you’re probably out of luck. Then again, that’s true for many web sites these days anyway. I tried to write a quick blog post on my sister’s computer last week, which is running IE7 (she can’t upgrade because of work restrictions). This ended being totally impossible.

Overall

For me personally, I’m mostly happy with the new site, though there are some missing items and in general it seems to take an extra click or two to get to where you want to be. For your average non-stathead fan who just wants to see who’s leading the league, it’s great. With the old site, you had nll.com and stats.nll.com, and sometimes it was obvious that the page you were looking at was a shell from one site around an ajax page from another site. The new one is much more uniform.

From an aesthetic point of view, the new site looks great. The fancy game page stuff is slick and fairly fast, though I found that page loads were taking quite a while. There are lots of images; almost everywhere you see a team you see a logo, and there are lots of player pictures as well. I suppose it’s possible that these were causing the slow page loads, but they should have been cached pretty quickly so that seems unlikely.

Kudos to the NLL on the new site. Now, if I could please have my XML interface, that’d be great. KTHXBYE.

The best lacrosse writers in the world… and me

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This coming NLL season, I will be writing for the two best lacrosse blogs in the world! This one (obviously) and now I can announce that I will be joining the staff at ILIndoor.com. I will be writing a weekly column called The Moneyballers every Monday starting on January 16.

ILIndoor.com has some of best-known names in indoor lacrosse, including the aforementioned Teddy Jenner, a former player and current blogger, radio show host, and in-game announcer for the Washington Stealth; Ty Pilson, sports editor for the Calgary Sun and former Tom Borrelli winner (that’s the NLL’s award for the best writer of the year); Brian Shanahan, another former NLL player who has done colour for many lacrosse TV broadcasts (and yes, he’s Brendan’s brother); Marty O’Neill, the former GM of the Minnesota Swarm; and other great writers like Bob Chavez, Stephen Stamp and Casey Vock.

The Moneyballers will be a weekly look at the clutch players in the league from a statistical point of view. We have a system that assigns points to players for goals and assists that either tie a game or put their team ahead. Goals later in the game count for more than goals earlier, and OT goals count the most. Each week, I will tally up the points for that week’s games, and keep track of the league leaders as the season goes on. Here’s a link to last year’s season-ending article.

I am very excited about this opportunity, but very nervous as well. The Moneyballers is a series that has been on ILIndoor.com for a few years, and up to this year, it was written by another legendary lacrosse writer, Paul Tutka. Tutka won three straight Tom Borrelli awards, so that’s a pretty tough act to follow. However, I am up to the challenge. But if you call me on a Sunday evening during NLL season, don’t expect me to answer the phone.

Merry Christmas from NLL Chatter

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Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a Roughnecks coach was stirring, not even Mouse.
The lacrosse sticks were packed up, along with the gear
Cause the regular season soon will be here.

George Daniel was nestled all snug in his bed
While visions of sold-out crowds danced in his head.
The players are ready, the coaches are too
But for GMs and owners, there’s so much to do.

There’s Urban and Dawick and Watkins and Cline,
Arlotta and Styres, but whose turn to shine?
And hoping for thousands to all of their games,
Owners of the Avalanche, Sabres and Flames.

For Keogh and Crowley, some newcomer fear
but for Johnny Tavares, it’s his twentieth year.
Matt Roik in Toronto has some big shoes to fill
While the Stealth has some new guys like Ross and Dean Hill.

Shawn Williams heads west with Shawn Evans in tow
To Alberta these former Knighthawks will go.
Dan Dawson’s in Philly and Brodie as well
Iannucci’s in Edmonton, colder ‘n hell.

Goalie pads are smaller, there’s an eight-second rule
And defenders short sticks make offensive guys drool.
The season is coming, I can hardly wait
We’re all looking forward to January 8!

Now this blogger’s saying, as I turn out the light,
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!