A light week in the NLL with only four games, and all ended up fairly close. The Swarm took out the Rock in OT, the Seals came back to beat the Wings by two, Vancouver led 10–3 in the second until Ottawa surged but couldn’t get closer than three back, and Oshawa got within two with a few minutes left in the fourth before Colorado had a couple of Owen goals (Rahn and Down) to put it away.
Category Archives: Toronto Rock
2026 NLL Week 8
We’re about a third of the way through the 2026 NLL season. A bunch of teams are playing as well as expected or even better: Saskatchewan, Rochester, Colorado, Ottawa, Las Vegas, and arguably Georgia. Others are struggling: Calgary, San Diego, Philadelphia, Oshawa, Halifax. I wouldn’t say Buffalo is struggling exactly but maybe not playing as well as the Bandits of the last few years.
2026 NLL Week 7
There was so much awesome this week that I cut down on the commentary for each entry a little bit. Otherwise this article would be five times as long as my normal articles.
2026 NLL week 5
Happy holidays to everyone who are or were celebrating this week or last! I was doing some family stuff last weekend so I managed to watch the Rock/Desert Dogs game replay on Sunday afternoon and then Bandits/Roughnecks on Sunday evening, but nothing else. Then we’re going away for New Years so I may not be able to watch much next weekend either.
2026 NLL Week 3
After a busy week, all teams have played at least one game now. Halifax is 2–0, Rochester and Philly 1–0, Oshawa 1–2, Calgary 0–2, and Las Vegas 0–1. Everyone else – eight different teams – is 1–1, and four of those also have zero goal differentials. Things will almost certainly open up a bit more as the season progresses, but just as early season stats are fun, early season standings can be fun as well.
The new place: TD Coliseum
On Saturday night, the Toronto Rock returned home to Hamilton (man, that’s a weird sentence) and the Rock faithful were finally able to see the extent of the renovations that forced the team to play in Mississauga last season. I had been looking forward to this for a while. The First Ontario Centre (formerly Copps Coliseum) was opened in the 80’s and was looking a little worn, so having a brand new state-of-the-art facility in downtown Hamilton was going to be exciting. But I have to say that the results were… underwhelming.
2026 NLL Week 1
The NLL is back! The 2026 season began last Friday with the first-ever game in Oshawa, followed by three games on Saturday in Buffalo, Ottawa, and Vancouver. Buffalo won their game, which surprised pretty much nobody, Colorado beat the heavily favoured Vancouver Warriors in an upset, and the other two games were kind of in the middle in terms of surprising results.
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 Preview: Part II
Here’s part II of my pre-season preview; part I was here. For each team (alphabetically from Ottawa through Vancouver), I’ll share where I think they will end up, and who might have a breakout year.
As I did last year, I’m not going to make specific standings predictions. I’ll break things up into groups: Top 4, Middle 4 (i.e. #5-8), and Miss Playoffs (#9-14).
NLL 2026: Who’s in, who’s out
Here it is: a complete summary of all the roster changes for each team, all in one place. I will update this article as things change, up until the beginning of the season.
Just to be clear, “In” means that the player is part of the announced roster for the 2026 season and was not on the active roster during the team’s last game of the season in 2025. “Out” means just the opposite: they were on the roster for the last game last year, but are not on the active roster as of now. So a player who was injured at the time of the last game last year but is back now is “In”, while a player who is currently injured might be “Out”.
Not all teams have announced who’s on their IR, PUP, or holdout lists so take an empty list with a grain of salt. Also most teams don’t have (or didn’t announce) a Protected or Draft list, but a few did.
NLL Chatter 