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.
Category Archives: Toronto Rock
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.
2025 Offseason report, Part II
My goodness, the second half of the off-season was crazy busy. We had the new CBA finally agreed upon and signed, and then an absolute frenzy of free agent signings. Many free agents returned to their previous team but an awful lot of them signed somewhere else. If only half of those signings result in a compensatory first round draft pick in 2026, the first round of that draft could have 25 picks in it.
Anyway, he’s a summary of what’s happened since I last rapped at ya back in September.
2025 Offseason report, Part I
It’s been a busy off-season so far, and there’s lots more to come. Because we don’t have a CBA for next season, teams aren’t allowed to sign free agents yet though they’re allowed to talk to them. I’m sure many handshake agreements have been made and once we have a new CBA and free agency opens up, all of these deals will be announced. Then we’ll see how much the NLL landscape has really changed.
Until then though, let’s take a look at some of the significant moves made so far.
Future Hall of Famers, Part II
Recently I wrote about non-players who deserve consideration for induction to the NLL Hall of Fame once their careers are over. In that article, I covered owners as well as broadcasters and today I’m going to cover GMs, coaches and officials.
Future Hall of Famers, Part I
The National Lacrosse League Hall of Fame is a very important place. It contains players, coaches, GMs, journalists, and officials that have had a significant effect on the league during their careers. However, it’s also not a place at all, in the sense that there is no specific location associated with it. You can’t go and visit the NLL Hall of Fame like you can the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame (in St. Catharine’s, Ontario), the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame (in New Westminster, BC), or the National [American] Lacrosse Hall of Fame in Sparks, MD.
It also seems to have fallen off the radar of the league itself, since only one group of people has been inducted into the Hall in the last ten years.
NLL Chatter 