Category Archives: Opinion

NLL Referees, Part 2: Bias and conspiracies

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This is the second of my two-part series on referees in the NLL. In part one, we talked about how referees have a thankless and difficult job. In addition to that, they have fans constantly complaining about the penalties they call or don’t call. Can they be inconsistent? Absolutely, but who isn’t? Do they make mistakes? Definitely, but who doesn’t? It seems that fans will not accept even the slightest error by an official. When was the last time you heard a fan say “Yeah, that was the wrong call, but hey, he’s only human”?

One of the biggest complaints about refs is that they are inconsistent, and I completely agree that this is a problem. Inconsistency can be a big problem in any sport, but honestly, I’ve never noticed NLL refs being any more inconsistent than officials in other sports. We’ve all seen an umpire that calls a high pitch a strike in the second inning and a ball in the seventh, but nobody pulls the old “All MLB umpires are incompetent and they should all be fired.” You also have to remember that there are two refs, so when they called Mr. Goon on your team for the hit from behind in the first quarter and then didn’t call Mr. 40-goal-scorer on the other team for a similar hit in the third, it may not have been the same ref. The one that called the first penalty may have been fifty feet away from the second, and the one that saw the second hit may not have seen the first and thought the second wasn’t a hit worth penalizing. Two different fans may disagree on what constitutes a clean hit from a dirty one, why wouldn’t two refs?

Another charge leveled at the refs is that they’re biased. Few, if any, refs in lacrosse can be completely unbiased. This is because very few people can be completely unbiased. The only way to make sure you have truly unbiased refs is to have people who DO NOT CARE who wins or loses, which means you need someone who doesn’t know the players or coaches personally, and has no history with any of them or any of the teams. But lacrosse is such a small community that this is pretty much impossible. People can overlook their personal relationships with players and I’m sure most officials in all sports do, but even so, the perception of bias will be there. Say a ref calls a crosschecking penalty against one player and ten minutes later does not call a penalty against another player for a similar hit. But if the ref and one of the players involved know each other from junior lacrosse or come from the same town or something, fans may believe that he has a bias against the first player or is a friend of the second. In actual fact, it could be that the ref just didn’t see the second hit, or from his vantage point the second hit was similar but clean. There’s pretty much no way around this. People are going to believe what they believe, sometimes in spite of the evidence. Refs are just going to have thick skins when it comes to fans accusing them of bias. And considering that in general the fans are actively rooting for one team over the other, having them accuse someone else of bias is just a touch ironic.

C'mon, really?But some people go even further than that, and make accusations that the refs, or the league as a whole, have it out for a particular team or want a particular team to be successful. There is a huge difference between having inconsistent or biased refs and an organized conspiracy. Bias can be explicit – “I don’t like this guy so if he hits someone and and it’s even close to being illegal, I’m going to call a penalty on him” – or implicit, where a ref may call a penalty against a player because he has a history of bad behaviour, and so he’s not given the benefit of the doubt even if this decision isn’t conscious. The former needs to be eliminated, if it can be detected, but there’s not much that can be done about the latter.

A conspiracy, on the other hand, implies knowingly applying the rules and making judgment calls differently based on the team or player that the potential infraction is against. It would also mean that more than one ref must be involved in this, since a single ref consistently calling penalties against one team and not the other would be noticed (and likely questioned) by the other ref if he weren’t in on it. This kind of accusation is serious, and would call into question every game the refs being accused have ever worked. If such an accusation could be proven – that one or more refs conspired to penalize one team more or less heavily than the others – this would be the biggest scandal the league has ever seen. If it could be proven that the league itself was involved, it’s safe to say the NLL would finally be getting the front-page coverage they’ve been seeking for years – right before they fold. Sure, having a Colorado / Toronto final would be better for ratings and publicity than an Edmonton / Rochester final, but the risks to the league of trying to arrange something like this are just too great for such a scheme to even be considered. We have to assume that the league and refs are impartial (or as impartial as possible) and that any claim otherwise is infeasible. You’d need extraordinary evidence in order to make a case for such an extraordinary claim. I’ve heard many such claims but have never seen the slightest shred of actual evidence.

Many people reading these articles will simply brush me off as an NLL ref apologist. Some might wonder if I have a friend or relative who’s a ref. For the record, I don’t. And there is at least one NLL ref who I don’t particularly like. I find he tends to make a big show of some calls, as if he wants it to be about him, making sure everyone knows that he is in charge. As I said before, the best refs are the ones who do their job and fade into the background, not getting in the way unless it’s necessary.

Now I will admit that I may be totally off-base with some of this. Maybe I’ve been lucky and the refs I’ve seen are pretty good while the ones that play Philly and Rochester and out west aren’t as good. It’s possible that never having actually played lacrosse, I just don’t know bad reffing when I see it. Or maybe the overall talent level is not high but is fairly consistent, and I’m confusing that with “they’re all pretty good”.

Yes, there are always going to be bad calls by refs in lacrosse games. But if you don’t give in to confirmation bias, I suspect that in the long run you’ll find that just as many bad calls go against your team as against the other teams. This means that there is indeed a level playing field and so any biases, real or perceived, are eventually cancelled out. NLL games are decided by the players, not the refs.

NLL Referees, Part 1: Judgment calls and consistency

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Over the years, I’ve heard countless complaints about NLL refs. They’re incompetent, they’re inconsistent, they’re biased, and they just plain suck are the most popular. There are always going to be complaints about officials in all sports, but they’re generally about individuals or the reffing in a particular game or even on a particular play. In the NLL, it’s more general – it seems that it’s a generally agreed-upon “fact” that all NLL refs are terrible.

Quite honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing about it. After just about every game, you’ll see complaints on twitter or on various message boards that the refs affected the outcome, because of the one bad call that was made (frequently a judgment call that can’t be proven right or wrong), or because they didn’t just “let them play” (OMG, you mean they actually called penalties when rules were broken? Fire ’em all!), or because they did just “let them play”. Obviously there needs to be a balance between calling every “ticky-tack” rule violation and not calling anything unless limbs are removed, but for every call a ref may let go because it’s too minor, half the fans are going to yell because he let it go. For every call he does make, half the fans are yelling “You called that? He barely touched him!” I imagine that refs learn very early in their career that they simply can’t win so they have to do what they think is right and ignore people who yell at them.

I’m of the opinion that the majority of NLL refs are good at what they do, and that significant biases are few and far between. Mistakes are definitely made: mostly minor, occasionally egregious, sometimes completely baffling. But the number of times I’ve come out of an NLL game thinking that the refs had a significant effect on the outcome is pretty low. However, these complaints come up so often that they’re worth taking a look at.

I’ve broken this discussion up into two parts. The first part deals with the job itself and why fans often manage to convince themselves that the refs are terrible.

Few would argue that being an official in just about any league and in just about any sport is a thankless job. There’s a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, and while the players on each team have their fans, nobody comes to see the ref. Some fans will even applaud for a player on the opposing team if he makes a particularly good play, but regardless of how good a job he does, nobody applauds the ref. If you’re a ref that fades into the background and none of the fans know your name, you’re probably doing a good job.

Face off

In many sports refs have to run around almost as much as the players do, and lacrosse is no exception. In fact, since they don’t get to rest for 30 seconds while the play is at the other end of the floor, your average lacrosse ref may run around more than many of the players do over the course of a game. They have to be on the floor, running with the play, making sure to be in a position to watch everything but also making sure to stay out of the way, and making constant judgment calls for the entire 60 minutes.

I’d be interested to know just how many judgment calls they have to make in a game. Did that 100 mph shot ricochet off the post or the goalie’s shoulder? Was that a moving pick or were his feet planted, or was it incidental contact that should just be ignored? Was that a high hit that should be penalized, or a hit to the shoulder that slid up and accidentally made contact with the guy’s head? If the player wasn’t hurt, does it matter? I saw that same hit earlier in the game and called a penalty, but now it’s overtime, do I call it?

Considering all the hits, shots, changes of possession, shot clock resets, loose balls, face-offs, penalties, and goals, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few hundred judgment calls in each and every game. Many of them are minor and many of them are technically judgment calls but there was no real decision to be made. There are a lot of plays, however, where a actual judgment is required. But the fans don’t think about that. You get one of those few hundred judgment calls wrong, and you’re not very good. Two wrong and you’re incompetent. Three or more wrong and you are the worst official ever to set foot on the floor in any sport. Three mistakes out of three hundred judgment calls is a 1% failure rate. How many other industries can you get 99% of your decisions right and still have people booing you and talking about how completely useless you are?

So why is it that fans think the refs are so bad? Could they be hockey or field lacrosse refs who recently started working indoor lacrosse games. Maybe, though the field lacrosse connection is more likely to be a problem with refs from Colorado and Philadelphia, and less so in Edmonton and Toronto. Do they not know the rules? I suppose that’s possible, particularly with the field guys I mentioned. It’s also possible that these refs work the NLL, the MSL or WLA, and any number of junior and minor lacrosse leagues, all of which have slightly different rules. I sometimes run on autopilot and call my younger son by my older son’s name. Nobody thinks I don’t know his name, it’s just a minor “brain fart” which happens to everybody. If it can happen to parents with their children, arguably the most important thing in their lives, it can certainly happen to a ref who works part-time for three different lacrosse leagues.

We also have to consider that the refs are on the floor and see things differently than people in the stands or on TV. They don’t have the benefit of slow motion. They don’t get to watch the Jumbotron. They can’t see the entire floor at once. They may have a player or several players standing in their field of view. They have to move around to make sure they have the best view possible but when the ball moves at 100 mph, that’s not always possible. There are only two of them, watching twelve players. Believe it or not, they’re human and they make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are going to come at crucial times and that’s unfortunate. But expecting 100% error-free officiating is simply not realistic.

A lot of fans go into a game already believing that the refs suck, and if they see one bad call (not even necessarily an incorrect call – just one that a fan disagrees with), they’ll call that proof of the ref’s incompetence. The other 299 correct calls go unnoticed. This is what’s called confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias occurs when you have a pre-existing belief (“refs suck”) and ignore evidence that contradicts it (the few hundred correct judgment calls) but remember evidence that confirms it (that one call you didn’t agree with). This is extremely common and happens to everyone, and is almost always unconscious and unintentional. But it happens. Ever get a “reading” done by a psychic? If you have, I guarantee that you remember the three or four guesses “predictions” she made that ended up being correct, but forget the fifty or so she made that were wrong. In this case, you walk into a lacrosse game thinking “So what are these incompetent refs going to screw up today?”, and walk out thinking “See? They called a penalty on Joe Awesomeguy for that crosscheck that was totally legal.” But you forget the challenge that the coach made that was overturned because the original call was correct. You forget the correct penalty call that led to your team’s power play goal. You forget the hundred loose ball calls and shot clock resets and such. And how many times have you heard home team fans yelling at the refs because they called an unfair penalty against the visiting team? Are you really complaining about their incompetence, or only when it disadvantages your team? Who’s really biased here?

In our second installment, we’ll expand on the concept of bias and talk about when fans accuse the refs of being biased – or worse.

Are Kilgour’s days numbered?

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Just before the season began, I wrote up my predictions for the final standings and some of the NLL awards. In the East division, I have 0 correct out of 4, while in the West division I have 1 correct out of 5. Some of my awards picks could still happen: Dan Dawson for MVP, Kyle Rubisch for Defensive Player, and Kevin Crowley for Rookie. My Goaltender (Mike Thompson) and Transition Player (Paul Rabil) picks aren’t looking too good, and my GM pick (Derek Keenan) ain’t looking great either, though you could argue that the Iannucci / Rabil trades were good trades, and the fact that both players ended up holding out wasn’t Keenan’s fault.DarrisKilgour

My pick for the Les Bartley Award was Darris Kilgour. This could also still happen – as long as the Bandits run the table while winning every game 15-0. If Darris can get his team to pull that off, people might forget the 6-game losing streak from earlier this year. But assuming that doesn’t happen, Kilgour will have taken a team that won the East last year, lost Chris Corbeil but added Luke Wiles, Kevin Buchanan, Mat Giles, Jeremy Thompson, and Anthony Cosmo, and coached them to a last place finish. Unless they turn it around very soon, this is likely to be their worst season since Kilgour began coaching the Bandits in 2003. Could this be the end of the Darris Kilgour era in Buffalo?

The problem here is that Kilgour is both the GM and the head coach. It’s unlikely that he’ll resign as coach but stay on as GM, and it’s unlikely that the Bandits owner would fire him from one of those positions and not the other. But for the sake of argument, let’s just talk about Darris the coach.

I’ve been of two minds about Darris Kilgour forever. I have a lot of respect for him as a coach (you don’t become the winningest coach in NLL history by accident), though I frequently disagree with how he coaches. The Bandits have had a particular “style” of lacrosse for years. When someone has talked about “Bandits lacrosse” over the last ten years, you know what they mean – tough, physical, gritty “old school” lacrosse, not always pretty and rarely flashy. One of those things that is hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it. I don’t think there have been as many player changes on the Bandits as on many other teams; it seems that players like Chris White, Billy Dee Smith, John Tavares, Roger Vyse, Tom Montour, Mark Steenhuis, and obviously Darris and Richie Kilgour have been Bandits forever. The fact that Kilgour has managed to create a recognizable style and get every new incoming player to adapt to it is a testament to his coaching ability.

If you ever listen to the Voodoocast podcast, they talk about the Bandits as nothing more than a team full of goons, and I’ve heard that sentiment elsewhere as well. For years, it seemed that the way to beat the Bandits was to piss them off – they’d start taking stupid penalties and beat themselves. Kilgour mostly put a stop to that and the Bandits started playing smarter, which corresponded exactly to them turning from a pretty good team to a perennial contender.

But this season, that seems to be gone. The Bandits are less disciplined than in the last few years. Indeed, the Bandits have given up 42 power play goals this year, 3.8 per game, more than any other team by over half a goal. They’ve also allowed more shorthanded goals than anyone (tied with the Rock). Mike Thompson has been wildly inconsistent, and the Cosmo experiment appears to have been a mistake. John Tavares and Luke Wiles are in the top 10 in scoring, but after that you have to drop down to #25 to find another Bandit (Chad Culp). They’ve given up 15 or more goals three times this season, and are dead last in goals against per game at 13.3. The next closest team is Philly, almost a full goal back at 12.5.

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about Kilgour’s “gentle” reaction to the Bandits being down 11-8 in the first half of last week’s game against the Rock. In the second half of that game, the Bandits played perfect “Bandits lacrosse” – tough but not stupid – and outscored the Rock 13-3 in a convincing win, and then they went out and beat the Swarm the next night as well. But a week later, after the Bandits lost 17-6 to the Roughnecks, Kilgour had this to say about his team:

It’s pathetic. My team’s pathetic. My team’s stupid. I don’t even know what to say about these guys right now. I totally question the hearts of basically everybody but about four guys on our team. Other than that, they’re a bunch of bush leaguers and they don’t give a (expletive).

I get that he’s frustrated, but is this the way to get your team motivated to play for you? One week he makes a very smart coaching decision and gets the guys to play as a cohesive unit, and the next he says that almost everyone on the team sucks. There were three fights at the same time near the end of the game, as the Bandits’ frustration boiled over. For all of you who assumed that Kilgour sent them out there and told them to “send a message” or whatever, he had this to say:

That’s bush league. I didn’t send anyone out there to do that. They took it upon themselves to do it and you know what, I don’t care. That doesn’t show me anything. That doesn’t show me one thing. Show me you can play lacrosse, that’s what I want. I don’t care if you can fight.

But then again, it was Kilgour who sent Irving, Francis, and Priolo out onto the floor at the same time, and I doubt it was because he thought they had the best chance of beginning the Bandits’ comeback.

BanditlandOne problem with having a recognizable style is that you may become predictable. After Calgary’s blowout of the Bandits this past weekend, Shawn Evans said (emphasis mine):

We knew exactly what Buffalo wanted to do and how they play. They fell into our game plan. They took penalties. They ran around, they chased us. We did everything right. We killed them on the power play tonight.

Is it possible that Kilgour has lost the room? Have the Bandits been playing the same kind of lacrosse for so long that the rest of the league knows how to deal with them, and Kilgour’s style is no longer effective? Perhaps it’s time for Banditball to have a new face and a new style. I have no suggestions on who they should bring in, nor do I have any predictions on where Kilgour may go. He’s too good and too young to just retire. Darris has been a Bandit so long, it’s hard to imagine him anywhere else. Kilgour behind the Rock bench? Or the Roughnecks? Or the Swarm? It’s hard to picture, though so was John Grant in a Mammoth uniform at one point. As weird as it is for a Toronto Rock fan to say this, the National Lacrosse League is better with a strong Buffalo Bandits franchise. I’m not sure Darris Kilgour can deliver that any longer.

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.

Campbell vs. Snider

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By now, we all know about the fight that took place near the beginning of last Saturday’s Rock-Roughnecks game involving Geoff Snider and Pat Campbell. I mentioned this in my game review and said I’d get back to it later. Well, now it’s later. But I’ve looked over the replay again a number of times and I think I’ve changed my mind a little. Campbell’s move was still unwise and put the Rock at a disadvantage, but after watching the replay (the TSN feed was better than the one in the video I linked to in my game review) and hearing and reading interviews with other people about him, not to mention his own words describing what happened, I think I understand why he did what he did, and I think I’m OK with it.

Pat CampbellI’m pretty sure this is the first lacrosse fight I’ve ever seen involving one goalie but not two. Let’s start with the play as I saw it. Snider is behind the net with the ball. He gets double- and then triple-teamed by Rock defenders Rob Marshall, Phil Sanderson, and Ryan Sharp. He takes a hit to the face (Sanderson) then gets cross-checked from behind (Sharp), then takes another hit to the face (Sanderson again). Snider’s helmet comes off and he goes down. He then gets up rather upset (understandably), drops his gloves, and heads towards Sanderson. As he’s pulling Marshall out of the way, Campbell, who has not been involved until now, runs over to Snider and punches him in the face. The refs try to pull them apart but Snider pulls Campbell’s helmet off, then they separate and Campbell takes his own jersey and shoulder pads off. They’re just about to go at it when Snider trips over the pile of pads on the floor and falls. Campbell drops beside him and throws two huge punches before the refs break it up. That’s it.

It wasn’t much of a fight. I’m not sure Snider actually landed any real punches, but he was given five for fighting anyway. Campbell was given five for fighting, two for instigating, and a game misconduct. He first went to the penalty box and then to the dressing room through a sea of high-fives from his teammates. I was watching the game on TV and my twitter feed on the laptop at the same time, and there were lots of tweets about the fight, mostly positive. I know I’m in the minority when it comes to fighting – I don’t particularly like it, but most people do, and that’s fine. As long as it’s not a pre-determined thing or people who are primarily fighters are sent out just to fight, I’m OK with it. Snider had been hit illegally three times within about five seconds, and no penalties were being called, so I can’t blame him for wanting to fight. But Campbell wasn’t involved and the way I saw it originally, there was no reason for him to get involved unless he questioned Phil Sanderson’s ability to defend himself.

Campbell’s actions did put the Rock at a disadvantage, in a number of ways:

  1. Campbell was ejected, so Matt Roik had to come in and play the rest of the game. If Roik had been injured during the game, the Rock would have been in deep trouble. I was going to say that Roik had minimal time to warm up, but this was only 4 minutes into the game, so his pre-game warm-ups were probably sufficient.
  2. Calgary got a two-minute power-play.
  3. The Rock lost Bill Greer for two minutes, since someone had to serve the penalty.

The first game of the NLL season featured the Roughnecks in Toronto, and during that game Snider had been chirping Roik incessantly, and it did look at one point like it would come to blows, but never did. There was some talk that the event on Saturday was somehow related to that, and it was even suggested that Campbell (who has a bit of a reputation) was given the start for that reason – not specifically to fight Snider, but just so that the Roughnecks might think twice about trying to get under the goalie’s skin. Maybe so, but I think the whole Snider-Roik thing was overblown and I doubt the Rock were really thinking about revenge for that minor incident three weeks later.

In a post-game interview, Campbell said “I saw his gloves come off and I knew he was ready to go. We are a team, a tough team and we don’t fight our own fights, we fight for each other“. I’ve since heard a number of interviews with people talking about what a great teammate Campbell is and how he would do anything for his teammates. It sounds like he was willing to fight Snider so that Flip didn’t have to, but not because he was questioning Sanderson’s ability. Maybe he figured that he stood a better chance against Snider than Flip did. Maybe he figured that sitting in the penalty box for five minutes himself wouldn’t hurt the team as much as having Sanderson in the box for five.

But the most likely explanation is that he didn’t figure anything. He didn’t think at all – just acted to defend his teammate. Not because the teammate couldn’t defend himself, but just because that’s what teammates do. I can’t fault him for that.

The return of the two-way player?

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We all know about the rule changes that the NLL has put into effect this year, most notably the eight-second rule and the “two feet in the box on the change” rule. The idea of these rules, and others, was to speed up the game and the general consensus seems to be: mission accomplished. This means that we’re seeing more transition – after a turnover, the transition guys race up the floor trying to force odd-man rushes and breakaways, which seem to be happening with a little more regularity this season. With that will come more goals by transition players and defenders, and more assists by defenders and even goalies. After three games Mike Poulin has 4 assists, and Tyler Richards has 3 assists in 2 games. But whenever you create a rule like this, there are frequently unintended consequences. If these rule changes means that strong transition players get more floor time, someone has to get less. But who?

When transition players are heading up the floor on an odd-man rush, the players on the floor for the other team are going to be the attackers, not the defenders. They will likely not have time to get back to the bench to let the defensive specialists onto the floor, so you’re going to see more offensive players playing defense this year than in previous years. I’ve seen lots of people on the NLL Message Boards who talk about the good old days of the MILL, when just about every player played at both ends of the floor. If you were a great offensive player but sucked on defense, you better work on your D or you will find yourself on the bench. But in the last 10-15 years, that hasn’t been the case. Every now and then you’ll see a primarily offensive guy caught on the floor playing defense, and much of the time they keep looking towards the bench to see when they can get off.

There have certainly been players in the “modern era” who are/were comfortable at both ends of the floor – reigning MVP Jeff Shattler, Mark Steenhuis, Jim Veltman, and Chris Driscoll are great examples. Driscoll was primarily a (very good) transition and defensive guy for the last six or seven years of his career, but scored 49 points in 10 games with Rochester in ’97, and an amazing 76 points in 12 games (which extrapolates to 101 points over 16) with the Saints in 2003. Whatever era you’re in, two-way players like that are going to be exceptionally valuable, though I agree with Ty Pilson on the recent IL Indoor roundtable that we’re not likely to get back to having everyone play both ends. But what happens to the offensive stars who aren’t very good defensively?

I watched Josh Sanderson play for the Rock for several years, and after three years away in Calgary and Boston, now he’s back on the team. In the offensive zone, he’s the quarterback: setting up plays, making amazing passes, and scoring a ton himself. In this role, he’s one of the best ever and I have to say I’m a big fan of his. But at the other end of the floor, it’s a different story. Josh is simply not the greatest defender around. I have to wonder if the Rock will reduce his playing time slightly, depending on the speed of the opponent and the strength of the their transition game, to make sure he doesn’t get caught out there and have to play defense.

Josh is probably a bad example here – he’s so good in the offensive zone that any potential liabilities in his defense are more than offset, so his playing time will likely not be affected. But what about the good-but-not-superstar forwards who have weak defensive skills? I’m sure there are plenty of guys in the league who are decent offensively but can’t play D. (I tried to come up with some examples, (“What about the Kasey Beirneses, Zack Greers, and Daryl Veltmans of the league?”), but in the current NLL, these guys play defense so infrequently that I have no idea if they’re good on D or not.) They made the NLL and managed to stay there because of their offense, and since they didn’t need to play D anyway, their lack of defensive skill wasn’t a liability. Also, the fact that they never played on D means that their already-limited defensive skills have atrophied. With these new rules, these guys might find themselves warming the bench more often than in previous years.

Given the choice between a defender who prevents goals but can’t score and a forward who can score but is a defensive liability, I wouldn’t be surprised if coaches start to opt for the former more often than the latter.

Different lacrosse leagues: Why can’t we all just get along?

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Dan Richardson, the GM of the WLA’s New Westminster Salmonbellies, posted some thoughts on the NLL, NALL, and CLax the other day on Twitter. His comments:

Anyone else checked out the NALL single ticket prices I mean lowest I think was $18.00 top $49.00 for Sr. C players ,refs and Uni,s LMFAO (link)

Nice to see the NALL has hired school aged children to design their Uniform’s that’s a nice touch. #bushleague (link)

The Major Series,WLA and the NLL are great lacrosse the other two leagues wont last with that product and those prices (link)

At Least CLAX have coaches that have played the indoor game, the NALL has 2 maybe 3 indoor guys , the rest are field. It wont work. #BUSH (link)

I agree the NLL has missed the boat on the majority of their new look jerseys from Reebok…some are just pathetic. (link)

I must apologize , I thought the NALL Logo’s, jerseys were horrendous, I just spent 5 min on the CLAX site, yikes i just barfed in my mouth (link)

Six teams playing out of three arena’s what a concept.#bushleague Reggie..Who owns the Chiefs? (link)

If it aint broke dont fix it. My only question is , which one folds, disbands, suspends operations, chapter 11, bankrupts first? #whocares (link)

Not too tough to see where he stands. I posted a sarcastic reply saying “Nice to see the lacrosse community working together for the good of the sport”, and then got into a short conversation with someone who agreed with Mr. Richardson. But quite honestly, what he said was not what I was arguing about, it was (a) how he said it, and (b) the fact that he said it at all.

Are the NALL or CLax good for the sport of lacrosse in North America? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s not my issue. Mr. Richardson is certainly entitled to his opinion. He is not required to support all other lacrosse leagues just because they play lacrosse. But when your twitter handle is “BelliesGM”, you are speaking on behalf of the team and to some extent the WLA. In my opinion, if you’re speaking with that kind of authority, you need to be careful what opinions you post. I’m going to guess that Mr. Richardson has been around the sport of lacrosse for a long time, so I’m sure he has all kinds of constructive criticism he could give the NALL and CLax, but openly and publicly mocking them with comments like “your logos make me barf” is hardly constructive. If you don’t like what they’re doing, you don’t have to post anything.

This paragraph is going to piss some people off, but there’s also the irony of someone working for a team called the Salmonbellies calling some other league “bush”. I know about and respect the history of the team, which has been around for well over 100 years and has won more Mann Cups than any other team. But if you ask any sports fan who doesn’t follow lacrosse, Salmonbellies would rank right up there with the Banana Slugs in the list of “bush league” team names.

Something that has always confused me as a lacrosse outsider is that there are a number of different lacrosse leagues, but they don’t work together. When the MLL came to Toronto in the form of the Toronto Nationals, there were Nationals ads at Rock games. But when I went to my first Nationals game, there was no mention of the NLL at all. I knew that in the past these leagues basically ignored each other, but it never made sense to me and I thought that maybe this was the beginning of a new era in both leagues. But since that first Nationals season, there has been no mention of the MLL or the Nationals (now based down the road in Hamilton) at Rock games at all. Why doesn’t the MLL look at each NLL game as “10,000 lacrosse fans trapped in an arena and forced to look at whatever advertising we want to show them”? They could have ads in every NLL arena with an MLL team nearby near the end of the season saying “NLL season is almost over – if you love lacrosse and want to see more, come on out to games in the summer and see your favourite NLL players!” The NLL could do the same at MLL games. Give season ticket holders of one team discounts on the tickets for the other, and everyone’s happy.

Instead, it seems that the MLL views the NLL as “that cute li’l indoor league where players go in the winter to keep their skills sharp for the next MLL season”, and vice versa for the NLL. It’s the same with the WLA / MSL and the NLL. The NLL seems to view themselves as the “major league” and both the WLA and MSL as the “minor leagues” though if you ask any Canadian lacrosse player, many of them will tell you that given the choice, they’d rather win a Mann Cup than an NLL championship. These leagues seem to want nothing to do with each other. Why is it so difficult for these leagues to work together for mutual benefit? If they don’t want to work together, fine but why can’t they each at least acknowledge the other’s existence? The NLL and WLA/MSL don’t compete, and the NLL and the MLL don’t compete – their seasons don’t overlap at all and there are many NLL players who play in one of the other leagues in the summer. I can see the WLA/MSL and the MLL not having any kind of relationship with each other because their seasons do overlap so there is some competition for players. But other than the Hamilton Nationals, there’s no geographic overlap between them anyway so there’s no competition for fans.

There’s no geographic overlap between the WLA and CLax or between the WLA and the NALL, so it’s unlikely that these leagues will form partnerships anyway. But with Mr. Richardson’s comments, it looks like the WLA is openly hostile towards these other leagues. The lacrosse community is already broken in two – field people and box people. Now we seem to be fragmenting the box lacrosse community itself into disparate groups that want nothing to do with one another, and I don’t see how that can be good for lacrosse in general.

The Twitter experiment

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It was “announced” on twitter yesterday that the Philly Wings will be trying an interesting PR move during a game this season: having the players’ twitter handles on the back of their jerseys rather than their names. This hasn’t been officially announced anywhere, but it seems to have been confirmed by a number of players. Judging from the reaction on twitter, there are a few people who like the idea, but the majority are unconvinced that this is a good idea. OK, that’s generous – most people who tweeted about it hate the idea, including players such as Andrew McBride and Jeff Zywicki. I was in that camp as well – at first. I have to say that the idea is growing on me. I still can’t say that I love it but if done right, it could have a net positive effect.

The NLL is likely doing this not only as a way to get the team and the league some press, but as another move to prove to fans that the players are more accessible than many other professional athletes. There are NHL players on twitter as well, but if you tweet “Hey @ovi8, great game last night!” you are unlikely to get a reply from Alex Ovechkin, since your tweet will get lost in the thousands of other tweets he likely gets from his 270,000+ followers. But if you tweet “Hey @bigdaws02, great game last night!” you are much more likely to get a reply from Paul Dawson. Of course, they’ll need to talk to the players first to make sure of the following:

  1. Which players are on twitter, and what to do about those who aren’t
  2. Those on twitter are behaving themselves
  3. They don’t mind actually logging in from time to time and responding to fans
  4. The handles are appropriate – if 6’10” Richard Morgan were to use “BigDick” as his twitter handle, don’t expect the Swarm to follow suit
  5. It’s at least somewhat easy to tell who the player is from his handle. Stealth owner Denise Watkins uses the twitter handle @drgnqwn which may make sense to her, but I have no idea what it means, and if I saw something like that on the back of a jersey, it wouldn’t be obvious who it is.

Is this the kind of thing the NHL or MLB would do? No. But the NLL isn’t the NHL, as much as people would like to think it is, or could be. Maybe someday it will be and maybe not but either way, we ain’t there yet. Trying to get there requires getting more exposure, and this should help. Is it completely positive exposure? I’d have to say no considering the number of negative comments I saw on twitter, but this issue was compared to the infamous Boston lap dance competition a couple of years ago, and I don’t think this is the same. That was completely inappropriate and should have been flagged as a bad decision right away. This isn’t inappropriate, just… unusual. It may also turn out to be a bad decision, but we won’t really know until it happens. Some have said that any exposure is good exposure and I think the lap dance thing disproved that notion to some extent, but even if you think this is a silly idea, it’s not likely to make you decide to stop bringing your kids to the games. Even if it’s a complete flop, it’s only for one game.

The Wings should thank their lucky stars that Drew Westervelt didn’t do like I did and just use his full name on twitter. @Dwesty1426 may not be as obvious, but @DrewWestervelt might not even fit on the back of the jersey.