The incident happened a little over twelve hours ago as I write this, and there are already tons of posts all over social media talking about it. Many are condemning the hit, others saying it was a legal hit blown out of proportion, and still others saying we need more of it in the game. Sorry folks, but this will be #1 in that list. It started out as a Not Awesome on my weekly report but quickly got long enough that I felt it deserved its own article.
Category Archives: Rules
Goalies in the Sin Bin
In last Saturday night’s Georgia/Buffalo game, Swarm goaltender Brett Dobson took a major penalty for high-sticking. It’s a bit unusual for a goalie to take a major penalty but that was less unusual than what happened next: Dobson was sent to the penalty box to serve his own penalty. Social media went bananas with people wondering if a rule had changed or if this was par for the course in the NLL. The answers are no and no.
2026 NLL Rule changes
Every year, some tweaks are made to the NLL Rule book. There aren’t that many this year but Rule 67.16, the so-called “Bandits rule”, could significantly affect the defensive strategies of not only the Bandits but other teams as well – the Knighthawks come to mind.
NLL Tiebreakers
One of the more confusing parts of watching the standings during the March to May is dealing with tiebreakers. If two or more teams are tied, how do we break that tie and decide on the position of each team in the standings? During the season, it doesn’t really matter much, but if teams are tied at the end of the season, it matters very much. The tiebreakers can decide everything from who a team plays to where a team plays to if a team plays.
Here’s a summary of the NLL’s tiebreakers and how they are applied.
2025 NLL Rule changes
Every year, the NLL makes small modifications to the rule book. Most of the time, these changes are clarifying existing rules or adding slight variations, and every now and again there are fairly major changes or new rules. For the 2025 season, there are no major rule changes. The only one that is likely to affect actual game play is 17.81, which is a change to coaches’ challenges. Here’s a summary of the changes for 2025.
2024 rule changes
Every year, the NLL makes some changes to the rules. Some of them are significant while others are fairly minor, and a few changes are more clarifications than changes. For the 2024 season, there are a couple of brand new rules, some changes to existing rules (one quite significant), and a couple of clarifications. Here they are:
17.95 – MAJOR, GAME MISCONDUCT, MATCH PENALTY AUTOMATIC OFFICIAL REVIEW
This is a new rule. All major, game misconduct, or match penalties (except fighting and roughing) will be reviewed by the crew chief immediately. The crew chief can confirm the call, modify it to a less severe penalty, or rescind it.
32.6 – STICK CHECK MEASUREMENT REQUEST PROCEDURE
The only change here is that the Gait D and Gait D2 stick heads are explicitly listed as being illegal.
33.1 – REQUIRED EQUIPMENT LIST
In addition to the gloves, shoulder pads, and rib pads previously required, players must now also wear a chest/heart protection pad. Sounds like a good idea to me.
35.2 – APPROVED EQUIPMENT
A sentence was added indicating that goalies are allowed to wear 2022-2023 shin pads.
37.6 – COINCIDENTAL PENALTIES
This is the significant one I mentioned. When coincident minor penalties are given, the teams will now play 4 on 4, and the players can leave the box as soon as their penalties are over. Previously, the teams would play 5 on 5 and the players had to stay in the box until the next non-technical stoppage after the penalties expired. That’s still the case for coincident major penalties.
67.5 – NON-SHOOTER IN CREASE WHEN TEAMMATE SHOOTS
No change to this rule, just a clarification saying that no part of the player’s body may be touching the crease prior to the ball crossing the plane of the goal in order for the goal to count.
69.8 – CONTACT INITIATED BY DEFENDER ON ATTACKER INTO THE CREASE
This rule now explicitly applies to the non-shooter. If a non-shooter is illegally checked into the crease and doesn’t “use his best efforts to immediately vacate the crease”, any goal scored will not count. Also, if a non-shooter is legally checked into the crease but the defender impedes him from leaving the crease, the defender gets a holding penalty and any goal scored will count. The change to this rule is to use the term “non-shooter” rather than “attacking player” to make sure the goal-scorer is not included.
80.18 – FIGHTING FIVE MINUTES OR LESS IN THE FOURTH QUARTER
This badly-named rule is also new this season. Any player given a fighting major with five minutes or less remaining in the fourth quarter will get an additional game misconduct, unless the player is considered an “unwilling combatant”. The rule says nothing about fights in overtime.
95.13 – UNSPORTSMANLIKE ACTIONS BY A PLAYER ON AN OPPONENT
The rule said that actions by players not on the playing surface who become involved with players on the playing surface are “deemed as more severe and shall be dealt with accordingly”. This rule now also applies to players on the playing surface who become involved with players on the opposing bench.
2019-2020 NLL Rule Changes
Every season, the NLL tweaks their rule book. Some changes are significant (eg. when they changed the 10-second clock to 8 seconds a few years ago), while others are less so. This year, the rule changes have gone under the radar – I have seen precisely no mention of them anywhere. That’s probably because most of these changes are not all that impactful, quite honestly, but there are a couple that may affect play here and there. There is one, however, that might be a very big deal.
Here are the rule changes for 2019-2020 and what they mean.
The Crawford suspension: dangerous
You probably haven’t heard much about this issue – it’s kind of flown under the radar. Well, other than being talked about by just about every lacrosse writer and fan (and many players) on social media. Of course I’m talking about Callum Crawford’s suspension.
In case you missed it, Black Wolves forward and potential MVP candidate Crawford was given a major penalty for a high hit on Toronto’s Brad Kri back on February 24. The week after the game, the penalty was upgraded to a match penalty by the league, which gives Crawford an automatic one-game suspension. He appealed, allowing him to play in New England’s next game against Colorado (in which he scored four goals and added seven assists), but the match penalty was upheld the week after that, and he sat out last weekend’s game.
Rule 41.4 in the NLL rule book is called “Repeat Offender” and states: “Any player who is assessed a second match penalty, a second Dangerous Contact to the Head penalty (Rule 77), or a combination thereof within a two year period shall be assessed an additional five (5) game suspension.“
Very clear and unambiguous. This matters because in January of 2018, Crawford was given a match penalty for a similar hit on a Roughnecks player. That’s two match penalties within two years, so Crawford gets an automatic five games, right? Not this time. The same arbitrator who was brought in to decide on the match penalty announced that he was not ruling on the extra five games until later, though nobody could figure out why. Then on Friday, the answer came down: Crawford will sit out one game rather than five.
The PLPA released a statement from the arbitrator on why, but the statement is puzzling. The arbitrator, Andrew Brandt, mentions a similar situation two years ago when Calgary’s Greg Harnett received his second match penalty in two years, and was given a five game suspension by that arbitrator, a Mr. McGuire. Brandt says “Mr. McGuire correctly concluded that the league had no other choice than to impose an additional five game penalty. However as the rule was unilaterally adopted by the league and not a part of the CBA, it was not binding on an arbitration officer.“
Why would rules in the rule book not be binding on an arbitration officer? I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that by agreeing to play games (more than half the season so far) with this rule book, the PLPA has implicitly agreed to all of the rules in the rule book. This is not a rule that was added mid-season without the PLPA’s knowledge or consent. If there are rules in there that they don’t agree with, that should have been ironed out long before the season started. And yes, I do remember that they were busy trying to make sure there was a CBA so that the season could happen, but I have not heard any complaints from the PLPA since then (before this incident) that this rule was unfair and should be changed.
Mr. Brandt also states “And in his testimony for the league, Mr. Lemon [Brian Lemon, NLL VP] explained how he did not believe the foul should result in a two-game penalty, one reserved for more severe infractions.” I agree, that one hit by itself does not deserve a multiple-game suspension. But the five game suspension is not for that one hit, it’s for the fact that there were two such hits within two years. A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.
He continues: “The decision to lessen Mr. Crawford’s additional five-game suspension in no way diminishes the league mission to eliminate reckless and endangering play, nor does it undermine the league’s authority.” In my humble opinion, wrong and wrong. The rule says that receiving two match penalties within two years will get you a suspension. It was written that way intentionally, even clarified this past off-season, to say that this behaviour will not be tolerated regardless of who the player is. The arbitrator’s decision says that this behaviour may or may not get you a suspension and thus it may or may not be tolerated, depending on… what? It’s not clear what. How long you’ve been in the league? How many points you have?
It also says that some of the rules in the rule book don’t hold if someone else decides they shouldn’t. I wonder what other rules are not in the CBA and are thus of questionable value?
The PLPA did everything they could to stand up for Callum Crawford. That’s their job, to represent the players, and I get that they did not explicitly make this decision. But who stood up for Brad Kri? Who’s out there trying to make sure that these kinds of hits don’t happen again?
I love watching Callum Crawford play lacrosse. He’s fast, skilled, dynamic, and exciting. I don’t think he’s a dirty player. But he made two bad decisions resulting in two dangerous hits. Those hits were close enough together in time to trigger rule 41.4, so he should be sitting out for five games. Yes he’s a veteran and yes he’s having an MVP-type season, but suspending him anyway would have sent the message that the NLL will not accept these types of hits regardless of who you are. Now, the message they are sending is that if you are a veteran or a great player, you can get away with stuff that other players can’t.
Not only does this make the league look unprofessional, it’s a very dangerous precedent to set.
NLL Rule changes 2018
As always, the league has made a number of rule changes for the upcoming season. One affects the playoff format, and that’s kind of a big deal. The rest of the changes to the rule book are either not rule changes at all (just clarifications) or are very minor changes that nobody is ever likely to notice.
Last season, when the league released their list of changes, they released a document that contained just the changes, and they also released the entire rule book with the changes in bold text. This year, they just released the new rule book. All 134 pages of it. There was no guidance on how to find the changes (some changes were in bold, but not all), so I went through the 2018 and 2017 rule books and compared them page by page and paragraph by paragraph. This is the kind of dedication you’ll find here at NLL Chatter; I do the hard work because of my passion for giving you, dear reader, the information and analysis you demand and expect. Plus, Criminal Minds was a repeat this week. Continue reading
Illegal substitution or too many men?
A week ago, I wrote about the Crease Violation rule and a number of people told me that it clarified that rule a little. So today I’ll cover another rule that’s frequently misunderstood, Illegal Substitution.
I’ve been asked this question many times in the past: what’s the difference between “illegal substitution” and “too many men”? It came up again last weekend, and my answer was the same as it’s always been: “I dunno”. So I looked over the rule book.
Here’s the thing – according to the rule book, there is no “Too many men” penalty. There is rule 55.3 Too Many Men, but that’s not the description of the penalty, it’s one of the reasons why a goal would be disallowed. The actual rule referring to the case where a team gets this penalty is under Rule 56: Substitution.
There are three relevant sections: Rule 56.6 says that if the defensive team has too many men on the floor, a delayed penalty is called. Rule 56.7 says that if the offensive team has too many men on the floor ‘for the purpose of a “fast break”‘ then play is stopped and a penalty is given. Rule 56.8 is a little complicated but says that a penalty shot is awarded against the offending team if:
- insufficient playing time remains in the game to serve the penalty in its entirety (i.e. <2 minutes left in the 4th), OR
- at any time in overtime, OR
- the penalty can’t be served in its entirety due to penalties already imposed. I believe this means that if the offending team is already two men down, that’s a penalty shot. But if a team takes any minor penalty when they’re already two men down, that’s a penalty shot.
A violation of the substitution rule, which is Rule 56.4, says that a player entering play must wait for the person he’s replacing to have both feet in the substitution area in front of the bench. Usually if the player is pretty close and the actual play isn’t anywhere near the benches, they’ll let it go. A violation of that rule where the player coming off only has one foot in the box or is a yard away from the box would likely be called “illegal substitution”. If a player leaves the box when the player he’s replacing is twenty feet away, the ref is more likely to call it “too many men”. Anywhere in between, who knows.
So the long and the short of it is: the actual rule is called “illegal substitution”. Sometimes the refs announce the penalty as “illegal substitution” and sometimes it’s “too many men”. They’re the same thing.
NLL Chatter 