The books are closed on the 2026 NLL season, as the Toronto Rock defeated the Halifax Thunderbirds in the Nest to take game two. The Rock won their seventh Championship, but first since 2011. Challen Rogers was 17 when the Rock last won it all. CJ Kirst was eight. The Thunderbirds lost their first trip to the Finals since 2018 when they were the old Rochester Knighthawks. Of course that predates their move to Halifax, so the vast majority of Thunderbirds fans will consider that their first trip to the dance.
Category Archives: Toronto Rock
2026 NLL Finals, game one
Game one of the finals was close, back-and-forth, and exciting with some great goaltending, exceptional defense, and a big comeback. But unlike the quarterfinals, it wasn’t the Halifax Thunderbirds staging the big comeback.
NLL Experience of GMs & Coaches
During the semi-finals, I noticed that all of the people listed on San Diego’s “Coaching staff” web page were very high NLL draft picks. I posted that to X and someone suggested that I do that for all the teams. I decided to add some additional information – when they played in the NLL if at all, whether they are in the Hall of Fame, and what awards they had won.
Continue reading2026 NLL Semi-Finals, week 2
Good news: The Finals are here! We’re this close to determining the 2026 NLL Champion!
Bad news: There are at most three games left in the NLL season.
2026 NLL Semi-Finals – Week 1
The unexpected results from round one continued this weekend. The higher-seeded Rock won game one of their battle with the Seals on Friday night, but Sunday saw the Seals battle back to tie the series – with their backup goalie in net, a man who’s seen less than 180 minutes of action this entire season, and only 38 minutes (all last weekend) since early January. Meanwhile, the eight-seed Halifax Thunderbirds dominated their game against the Swarm and now have two chances at home to clinch their first-ever trip to the NLL Finals.
Game report: Semi finals game 1, San Diego @ Toronto
The Rock played their first home playoff game in just over two years on Friday night, and what a game it was. It started off looking like it would be very physical, but that sort of calmed down a bit. But the end-to-end action never did, and literally right to the end of regulation time, it was anybody’s game.
2026 NLL Quarterfinals
It’s the playoffs! We had four exciting games this past weekend, and of the eight teams who made the playoffs, four of them are out. The crazy thing is that the #1, #2, and #3 seeded teams are all out thanks to getting beat by the #6, #7, and #8 teams. There are an awful lotta brackets that have been destroyed.
For the playoffs, I will skip the Awesome / Not Awesome format and just look at the games that happened. With one exception.
2026 NLL Week 21
The 2026 NLL regular season has come to an end. The standings are final and the playoff bracket is set. You’ve probably seen the matchups in other places but just in case, next weekend we’ll have Vancouver hosting Halifax at 10:00 (all times Eastern) on Friday night, and three games on Saturday: Georgia hosting Buffalo at 7:30 and Colorado hosting San Diego and Saskatchewan hosting Toronto, both at 9:00.
2026 saw a couple of records set in terms of “best season of all time”, both by Brett Dobson. His save percentage of 84.7% beat Doug Jamieson’s 82.9% in 2020. His GAA of 7.86 is almost a full point better than second place Aaron Bold’s 8.73 in 2014. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just witnessed the best season by a goaltender, statistically, in NLL history.
2026 NLL Week 20
The regular season is almost over and the last two playoff positions are not only down to the wire, but both will be decided in the best way possible: head-to-head.
2026 NLL Week 18
A couple more playoff decisions have been made, as Calgary and Oshawa are now out. Nobody else clinched so right now, we’re at three in and three out. We have a 10–5 team (Georgia) and a 6–9 team (Halifax) and with only three weeks left in the season, it’s still possible for Halifax to finish ahead of Georgia*.
After I scheduled this article but before it got published, we got the worst kind of news about the future of the Philadelphia Wings. Unfortunately, long-time NLL fans are used to it. I’ve added a second entry under Not Awesome.
NLL Chatter 