Many teams play music in the dressing room to get ready for games, and I imagine every team makes different choices.
Here are the favourite musical selections for each NLL team in 2015.
Buffalo Bandits
Calgary Roughnecks
Colorado Mammoth
Edmonton Rush
Minnesota Swarm
New England Black Wolves
Rochester Knighthawks
Toronto Rock
Vancouver Stealth
I’ve been a Toronto Rock fan since 2001, and have watched them win Championships live (2003, 2005, 2011) and on TV (2002), and have also watched them lose Championships live (2001) and on TV (2010 and now 2015). Obviously I’m disappointed in the outcome of the series, but part of me is glad the Rush won.
As much as I’d love to have seen the Rock win the Championship in memory of Terry Sanderson, I’m glad the Rush were able to win in memory of Wendy Keenan. The fact that both of these teams could have suffered such a devastating loss just before the season started and still make the finals speaks volumes to the feeling of family among them. And that Edmonton family was dealt another difficult blow when Aaron Bold’s girlfriend Michelle Fines was diagnosed with breast cancer. Instead of playing the season for Wendy, now they were playing for both Wendy and Michelle.
The team obviously has a ton of talented players and one of the best coaches in the league, so their success is not a big surprise. But doesn’t it seem that the Rush players were playing with just a little extra spark or something, particularly in Game 2 of the Finals? It’s probably the 20:20 hindsight talking, and if I knew nothing about their off-floor hardships I might not have noticed anything. But perhaps that extra motivation, plus the sound of 12,000+ Rush fans, was just enough to power the Rush to the Championship.
There’s also the fact that in sports, many teams have periods where they are strong contenders and periods where they’re not. The Oilers and Islanders were great in the 80’s and won several Cups each, but ended up near the bottom of the league later on. Even the Leafs went to the conference semifinals five out of six straight years (and the conference finals twice) in the early 2000’s, but have been terrible ever since. I remember the years when the Ottawa Senators were great and made it to the Stanley Cup finals once, but never won a Cup. Their window closed before they could achieve that goal. The Rush haven’t just been a very good team over the past two seasons, they have been amazing, having put together a 29-7 regular season record. But I’m sure the players will tell you that being the best team in the regular season means nothing if you don’t win the Championship. I’m glad they were able to achieve the ultimate success in the NLL before their window closed – not that that closure is imminent. This team could be very good for many years to come.
And I’m glad they were able to win it at home. Hopefully those 12,000+ fans can be an inspiration to Rush owner Bruce Urban. Urban said only a couple of weeks ago that it’s not unlikely that the Rush will be moving during the off-season because he couldn’t get a new arena deal in Edmonton. Maybe a bunch of the fans who showed up to that game will want to come back next year and watch this team defend its Championship. Maybe the turnout at Game 2 will be enough to prove to Urban and the city and the Oilers (who own Rexall Place) that pro lacrosse can work in Edmonton, and a deal can get worked out so the Rush don’t have to move.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still sad that my team lost. And I don’t want to take anything away from the Rock, they played really well. Brandon Miller played a fantastic game, the Rock D wasn’t quite as strong as Game 2 against Rochester but still played very well, and the offense played well too. Colin Doyle looked like the Doyle of old, Rob Hellyer scored a couple of beauties, and I’m liking Kevin Crowley’s additions to the team more and more – he’s not going to pull in the points that Billings did, but he plays well off the ball as well as defensively.
But the Rush defense was as stifling as ever, and Aaron Bold was excellent, as always. Mark Matthews played like the guy the Rush hoped they’d get when they drafted him almost three years ago. Not that he’s been a disappointment up until now, far from it. But he really stepped up his game this season and went from one of the best offensive players on the team to one of the best in the league. I made the bold (pun intended) prediction on twitter that he’ll be in the top 3 of MVP voting for the next ten years.
So I’m glad the Rush won for Derek and Wendy. For Aaron and Michelle. For Bruce. And for the Rush faithful who turned out strong to watch their team achieve the goal they had been chasing for ten years. Who knows – Wendy, Michelle, the fans, and the Championship might even have saved the franchise.
My most sincere congratulations to the 2015 Edmonton Rush.
On the Addicted to Lacrosse show this week, I picked the Rock to win Saturday night’s game because of what I saw last weekend. When the Rock hosted the Knighthawks in the division finals, they came out fired up in game 2, slowed down a touch in the second half, but then came out fired up again in the tiebreaker. They got to Matt Vinc, one of the best goaltenders anywhere, scored a bunch against one of the best defenses in the league, and kept Dan Dawson off the scoreboard (i.e. 0 goals). Any team that can do that, and has the motivation that the Rock has, will be hard to beat in the finals, especially at home. So they should win game 1.
Great logic, except it didn’t happen.
I don’t know what was said in the Rock dressing room before the Rochester game that got them so fired up (presumably it was more than just “let’s win it for T!”), but it didn’t work on Saturday night. They did come out looking pretty strong, scoring the first two goals and keeping the Rush offense from getting many decent shots, but the first two goals were the only ones in the quarter for the Rock. After Mark Matthews scored on the power play, the Rush were kept off the board for another 5 minutes before scoring 3 in under two minutes to take the lead. A fifth with under a minute left gave them a 3 goal lead at the end of the first quarter. I tweeted that the Rush were leading 7-3 at the end of the first quarter last week, and they lost. But last week they stopped playing as well as they did in the first, and the Calgary D stepped up. Neither of those things happened in this one.
The Rock weren’t terrible, mostly, but certainly not as strong as we saw last week. Miller was OK but wasn’t seeing the ball well. Rose replaced him in the second and again in the fourth and was better. The Rock D in general was also OK but had some serious lapses in judgement here and there. The Rush D, on the other hand, was stifling, and Aaron Bold was great. He was stopping almost everything from way out (that didn’t get blocked by a defender), and the Rush D wouldn’t let the Rock forwards get in close, so there was basically no way to score on him.
The Rock offense had their moments, some crisp passing and nice goals, but for the most part they were shut down by the Edmonton D. Continuing the trend that Rochester started in the semifinals, the Rush blocked an awful lot of shots. Edmonton’s forwards were generally good but holy cow, Mark Matthews was outstanding. The guy was everywhere – plowing through defenders like they weren’t there, and firing bullets at Miller or Rose. Robert Church had a good night, but I thought Jarrett Davis was very good as well. Davis was the Kasey Beirnes of the Rush: getting into the middle, setting picks, and getting pounded pretty good so that the big O guys (Matthews, Church, Greer, McIntosh) could get better looks at the net.
But the difference in the game was the transition. I couldn’t count the number of times the Rock would get a transition chance that turned into a 5 second possession after a bad shot through two defenders. Basically the Rush defense got out there so fast that the “chance” wasn’t much of a chance once they got near the net. Similarly, Rock forwards got caught on defense a lot because the Rush transition was so fast that there wasn’t time to change. Crowley isn’t bad on defense for a forward, and Josh Sanderson is a better defender at 38 than he used to be, but he’s still not great. But one of the Rush goals in the second half was scored with Sanderson, Hellyer, and Leblanc as three of the defenders. That’s just not their thing.
Game 2 goes next Friday in Edmonton and if the Rock play then like they played on Saturday, this one’s over and congrats to the Rush. But if they play like they played last week, then we’ll have a series.
Other game notes:
I almost feel like I have to apologize to the Toronto Rock. I did pick them to win this series and head to the Champions Cup final, but not with much confidence, and I actually changed my pick since I originally had Rochester. (Note that the IL Indoor “NLL staff Picks: Division Finals Game 2 and 3” page has my picks listed incorrectly – I picked Toronto to win both game 2 and the mini-game. I also picked Calgary to win game 2 and Edmonton to win the mini-game. 4 for 4, baby.) But the way Toronto played on Saturday, there was almost no doubt from the opening whistle that Toronto was the better team.
The game started with something odd – rather than announcing each player one by one like they always do, they simply said “Here’s the Toronto Rock!” and the whole team ran out at once. Maybe they decided that they wanted to be viewed as a team rather than a collection of individuals and so they dispensed with the introductions.
The Rock came out on fire. They scored on their first two shots (both by Brett Hickey) and then Stephan Leblanc scored to make it 3-0 just over 3 minutes in. The Knighthawks got on the board then and the Rock calmed down a little, but the Rock had possession down in the Knighthawk end for the majority of the first quarter. In the second, Rochester seemed to get frustrated and got into a bit of penalty trouble, leading to two Rock power play goals. Stephen Keogh scored his second of the night with just a couple of seconds left in the half to cut the lead to 8-3, but it was clear the Rock was in control.
As much as I was enjoying the lead and the intensity with which the team was playing, I had to keep my enthusiasm in check. I have seen enough lacrosse to know that being up by 5 at the half is no guarantee of a win. Not to mention that even if they wiped the floor with the Knighthawks in game 2, there was still the mini-game to play. Momentum (and penalties) might carry over, but the score would not.
In the second half, the Rock seemed to let their foot off the gas. They still seemed in control for the most part, but Vinc played a lot better and the Knighthawks started to get back into the game. By a minute into the 4th, they were only down by two. I don’t know about other fans, but I started to get a little nervous. But then the D clamped down again and the Rock got a couple more by Vinc. I thought the Knighthawks were going to pull their top players to rest them up for the mini-game, but they didn’t; they seemed to continue playing for the comeback win, even when it got to the point of needing four goals in 3 minutes or so.
Brandon Miller was playing very well but I thought the defense in front of him was outstanding. I also thought that Rochester wasn’t making the most of their possessions; they’d frequently shoot when there was more than 10 seconds left on the shot clock. Matt Vinc had an uncharacteristically bad game. He was better in the second half than the first, but he was giving up goals that he normally wouldn’t. It wasn’t that he wasn’t making the “holy crap” saves that he usually does, he wasn’t even making the “normal” saves that most goalies usually do.
Stephen Keogh came to play, scoring 6 of Rochester’s 8 goals and really looking good. He took a penalty right at the end of the game, which carried over into the mini-game, though I don’t think he knew that. He came out of the box after game 2 ended, and was told by the refs to go back. Some folks on twitter suggested the Knighthawks should have scored on their own net before game 2 ended to negate the penalty, but apparently there was a memo from the league before the playoffs saying that this would result in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, as it should.
I was a little worried about the mini-game, since (a) Toronto had only scored 3 goals in the second half, and (b) Matt Vinc was looking much more like the Matt Vinc we expected to see. But the mini-game looked more like the first quarter, as the Rock came out on fire once again. I did not vote for John Lovell as Coach of the Year (well, I put him on the ballot but at #3 or 4), but now I think he should have been higher. They scored 7 goals on 8 shots in less than 7 minutes and completely deflated the Knighthawks. Vinc was finally pulled in favour of Angus Goodleaf but the damage was done by then.
So there have been 5 mini-games in the league in the past 2 years, and I’ve seen two of them. Have to say they’re very exciting to watch, but are they a good idea in general? That I’m not so sure of, but I may get to that in a future article. We’re now down to 2 teams and the first best-of-3 series since 1998. The Rush will be visiting the ACC next weekend, and I am looking forward to it.
Other game notes:
On Saturday night, we saw a goal scored by the Toronto Rock that shouldn’t have counted. Brett Hickey’s buzzer-beater at the end of the second quarter seemed to have gone in a split-second after the buzzer, but the referees who reviewed it couldn’t find definitive proof that the call was wrong, so they had to allow the goal. I don’t fault the refs for this call since they didn’t have sufficient information to call off the goal. But I have a proposed solution to that problem. Quite honestly, this seems like a fairly obvious solution, so there may be a perfectly good explanation for this that I am not aware of, or some huge drawback that I’m missing.
During the last 30 seconds of each quarter of an NLL game, any reset of the shot clock causes it to be disabled. Usually it’s set to 30 but does not run. I have heard countless broadcast announcers mention this: “With fifteen seconds left in the quarter, the shot clock is off.” But this has two significant drawbacks:
I propose that when a shot clock reset is signaled by the refs within the last 30 seconds of a quarter, the shot clock should become synchronized with the game clock. For example, if the referee signals that the shot clock should be reset when there are 17.3 seconds left in the quarter, the shot clock would start counting down from 17.3, exactly in time with the game clock. This eliminates both of the problems I described above:
This would require no extra work on the parts of the referees or the shot-clock operator. The software could be programmed so that when a shot-clock reset is indicated and less than 30 seconds remain in the quarter, the shot clock would be set to the current remaining time on the game clock.
Alternatively, a light could be installed behind the net, next to the goal lights, that is set to come on as soon as the game clock reaches 0. If in the replay, that light is on before the ball goes in the net, the goal does not count. Oddly, there does appear to be a green light behind the net in Rochester that came on once the time reached 0. This light was either ignored or not seen by the officials, as it clearly came on before the ball entered the net. Note the picture below (tweeted shortly after the game by Brad MacArthur, though I added the red circles) showing the light on and the ball not yet in the net.
For the record, I am a fan of the Toronto Rock. This is not an angry Knighthawk fan saying Toronto’s goal shouldn’t have counted. (This is actually a Toronto fan saying that Toronto’s goal shouldn’t have counted.) I am making this proposal not as a Rock fan but as a lacrosse fan, in the hopes that we can make it easier to get the calls right as often as possible.
As I said, there may be a perfectly good reason why this is not possible. But as far as I can see, this is a fairly simple solution that solves two problems, makes things easier for players; officials; and fans, and has no drawbacks that I am aware of.
As many sports bloggers do, I made predictions at the beginning of the season. But as many sports bloggers don’t do, I’m going to go back and see what they were and how I did. I covered some of these on last week’s Addicted to Lacrosse show. I recently had to submit my votes for the IL Indoor annual awards, so for each of the awards below, I’ve listed my pre-season prediction as well as my post-season votes.
East
West
Three correct out of nine. I wasn’t nearly as optimistic with the Rock as I should have been. I was also far too optimistic with the Roughnecks, but so was everybody else.
Prediction: Dan Dawson, Cody Jamieson, Ryan Benesch
Vote: Shawn Evans, Mark Matthews, Ryan Benesch
Jamieson and Dawson had very good years, but not MVP-worthy. Benesch was great, especially down the stretch. But Evans was outstanding.
Prediction: Aaron Bold, Matt Vinc, Mike Poulin
Vote: Matt Vinc, Aaron Bold, Frankie Scigliano
No surprises from the first two, and I really struggled to decide who got the top vote. And I got the wrong Calgary goalie.
Prediction: Kyle Rubisch, Chris Corbeil, Brock Sorensen
Vote: Kyle Rubisch, Chris Corbeil, Sid Smith
I did vote Sorensen fourth.
Prediction: Jeremy Thompson, Geoff Snider, Karsen Leung, Jordan Hall
Vote: Joey Cupido, Karsen Leung, Jay Thorimbert
Hall didn’t play transition this year, and Thompson had another very good season but Cupido stole the show.
Rookie of the YearPrediction: Miles Thompson, Ben McIntosh, Chris Attwood
Vote: Ben McIntosh, Jeremy Noble, Miles Thompson
Attwood didn’t even make the Knighthawks, so that was totally wrong. Miles Thompson had a good rookie season but McIntosh was better. Didn’t have Noble on the list at the beginning since it seemed unlikely he’d play at all.
Prediction: Curt Malawsky, Mike Hasen, Troy Cordingley, John Lovell
Vote: Derek Keenan, Mike Hasen, Curt Malawsky, John Lovell, Troy Cordingley
No idea how I missed Keenan at the beginning of the year.
Prediction: Terry Sanderson, Curt Styres, Steve Govett, Chris Seinko
Vote: Terry Sanderson, Curt Styres, Steve Govett, Derek Keenan.
Nailed the top three on this one. I even voted Seinko fifth since I thought he did pretty well at the trade deadline. Getting Billings, one of the top two players in the league over the last few seasons, for Crowley was a good deal and grabbing Suitor from the Swarm was good too. It was just too late in the season to turn things around, and the fact that Suitor got hurt again didn’t help.
For each team, I made a “Look out for” prediction – a player who I thought would have a great season. Some of them I nailed, others I didn’t quite get right, and in one case, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Buffalo: Dhane Smith. Nailed this one. Smith went from 59 points in 18 games last year to 107 this year.
Minnesota: Miles Thompson. Not a bad choice, though Shayne Jackson might have been a better one.
New England: Kevin Buchanan. Again, not a bad season. Pat Saunders would have been the breakout player for the Black Wolves.
Rochester: Chris Attwood. Didn’t even make the team. We’ll call that a “miss”. I don’t know who I’d pick from the Knighthawks as having had a breakout season since everyone on the team played at or near what I expected. Maybe Craig Point, since he hadn’t played 15 games in a season since 2011.
Toronto: Brock Sorensen. I thought Sorensen had a very solid year with the Rock and even put him on my list for Defender of the Year. But you might be able to make an argument for Brett Hickey here.
Calgary: Karsen Leung. I thought Leung had another solid season and I voted for him as Transition player of the year. But for a breakout season, I’d have to go with Frankie Scigliano, who grabbed the starting goalie job from the struggling Mike Poulin a few weeks into the season and never gave it back.
Colorado: Dillon Ward. Ward didn’t have a great season, but good enough to grab second in the west. Breakout player on the Mammoth would be Jeremy Noble, Eli McLaughlin, or Alex Buque.
Edmonton: Corey Small. Mostly right, except for the team. Small only lasted 2 games with the Rush before being traded to the Stealth, where he had his best season ever. For the Rush, a better choice would have been Zack Greer, who beat his career best points/game average by almost a full point.
Vancouver: Joel McCready. Nailed it. I even said the Powless experiment wouldn’t be the huge success the Stealth were hoping for. We’ll call that a 2-for-1, which offsets the Rochester failure.
Overall, this was a pretty entertaining game and not just because my team won. There were a bunch of interesting moments in this game, as well as a few frustrating ones, one scary one, and for me, one that was terrifying.
The Black Wolves have shown a number of times this season that they can play with the big boys. In their first two games they were not only good but dominant – beating the Bandits and crushing the Knighthawks. Then they lost 8 of their next 9 but other than a couple when they got smoked, they looked pretty good even in most of the losses. They certainly put up a good fight in this one as well, and if making the Rock fans nervous in the last few minutes of the 4th quarter was their goal, then mission accomplished.
But that’s not to say that they kept up with the Rock’s level of play throughout the game. Far from it. The Black Wolves actually outplayed the Rock for most of the first half, despite holding a lead for less than six minutes. Their defense was stifling, and Toronto had trouble getting shots off. Many Rock possessions ended with the ball being harmlessly tossed into the corner or just put on the ground since there was no chance of even a desperation shot. The Rock did get a few goals, but all of them from special teams. The Rock’s first seven goals of the game consisted of 4 power-play goals and 3 shorthanded ones. Their first 5-on-5 goal happened five minutes into the third quarter, and in the end only five of their fifteen goals were 5-on-5. When both teams were at even strength, the Rock were simply outmatched. If New England’s power play wasn’t so terrible on Friday, things might have been different. I was almost waiting for the Rock to start chopping at people to get penalized since they were playing better with only 4 players than with 5.
My terrifying moment came during the second quarter when the Black Wolves tied it at 4 and I realized that not only were the 12-4 Rock getting outplayed by a 4-9 team, but that the Rock were 3-3 in their last 6 games and other than against Vancouver, haven’t looked as dominant as they did in the first part of the season. I remembered Melissa asking on a recent Addicted to Lacrosse show whether the Rock had peaked early and would head into the playoffs on a downside slide – the terrifying moment was when I thought that she might have been right.
And then we got to the second half.
The Rock’s offense was better in the second half than in the first, but still wasn’t clicking as well as earlier in the year. I wondered if they were really missing Rob Hellyer, but it could also have been the strong play of the New England defense. (I also wondered if the distraction of learning they might get Colin Doyle back and then finding out just before game time that they wouldn’t might have been a factor, but I don’t think that was it.) I didn’t think the Rock D played great in the second half (I remember two plays when Jeff Gilbert got beat 1-on-1), but Brandon Miller stepped his game up a few notches. He was not fantastic in the first half, but good enough to keep his team in it. In the second half though, he was lights-out and was much of the difference in the game. This seems backwards since the Black Wolves scored 4 in the first half and 8 in the second half, but they also took seventy shots on the night. Seventy.
Brett Hickey had a great game. His 3G 5A brought him to a league-leading 46 goals (tied with Curtis Dickson) and he’s now in 12th with 76 points. Stephan Leblanc’s 1+7 bumped him into a tie for 4th with 86 points, but I have to give kudos to Leblanc for his work ethic. At least twice I watched him fighting in the corner for a loose ball near the end of a Rock possession, while 2 or 3 defenders were pounding on him and most of his teammates were already heading towards the bench. One of these times led directly to a New England penalty, and the Rock scored on the ensuing power play. Nice job Steph.
Anyway, let’s move onto the interesting moments:
The frustrating moment:
The scary moment:
Other game notes:
With four and a half weeks left in the 2015 season, the playoff scenarios are just starting to be decided. We know Toronto and Colorado are in. We know a couple of other teams (Edmonton, Rochester) are on the cusp and can clinch a playoff spot with a single win. We know that Toronto can finish no worse than third because they can’t have more than 7 losses and New England and Minnesota already have 8.
Here are a few playoff scenarios that are still technically possible, though the odds of some are exceedingly remote. I will update this posting after tonight’s games as things change.
Update: I’ve updated these scenarios in red after the games of April 4.
Edmonton loses the rest of their games, Calgary wins all of theirs, and Vancouver wins all of theirs except the one against the Roughnecks. Then the west would be:
Colorado 10-8
Vancouver 9-9
Calgary 8-10
Edmonton 8-10
Edmonton is 1-1 against Calgary and in this scenario, they will lose two more. Calgary ends up third and in the playoffs and Edmonton is out.
With their win against Vancouver, Edmonton can finish with no more than 9 losses. Vancouver has 9 losses now but Edmonton holds the tie-breaker, and Calgary already has 10.
New England wins out, Rochester loses out, and Minnesota loses one other game (against Buffalo, Calgary, or Edmonton). Then NE ends up at 10-8, Rochester is 8-10, and Minnesota and Buffalo are no better than 9-9.
Minnesota wins out, New England loses to Toronto, Buffalo loses one to Minnesota and one other, Rochester loses two to Minnesota and two others. Then Minnesota is 10-8, Rochester is no better than 10-8 but loses the tie-breaker, and Buffalo and New England have 9 losses.
Minnesota wins out, Rochester loses out, Buffalo loses one to Minnesota and two others, and New England loses twice. Then Minnesota is 9-9 and tied with Rochester, but they own the tie-breaker. Buffalo and NE have 10 losses.
Toronto loses out, Buffalo wins out, and Rochester wins any 3 games. Toronto ends up at 11-7, Rochester is at least 11-7 and owns the tie-breaker, and the Bandits are 12-6.
The worst Toronto can finish is 11-7 while the best Buffalo can finish is 11-7. Toronto owns the tie-breaker, so Toronto can’t finish lower than second.
Rochester loses out. New England wins one against Rochester and four others. Minnesota wins two against Rochester and one other. Buffalo wins two against anyone. Then Rochester is 8-10, Buffalo is at worst 9-9, and Minnesota and New England are also at worst 8-10. In this scenario, New England and Minnesota will have the tie-breaker against Rochester so they’re out.
Not sure about this one. If Rochester loses out, New England loses to Buffalo but wins the rest of their games, Minnesota beats Buffalo, Edmonton, and Calgary, and Buffalo beats New England and Vancouver, we’ll have a 4-way tie for second with everyone but Toronto at 9-9. I have no idea how that tie-breaker would be solved.
Calgary wins out. Edmonton loses out. Vancouver loses to Calgary and twice to Eastern opponents. Calgary and Edmonton will both be 8-10 but Calgary has the tie-breaker. Vancouver has 11 losses and Colorado wins the west with Calgary in second.
Calgary can finish no better than 8-10, Edmonton no worse than 9-9. In that scenario, Colorado has at least 10 wins so both Colorado and Edmonton are ahead of Calgary.
A week after getting smoked by the Edmonton Rush 16-3, the Knighthawks were in Toronto looking for redemption. And they got it in spades. They matched their total from the previous game at 6:21 of the first quarter, coincidentally almost the same time (6:26) as last week’s game-winner. But then they kept going, eventually scoring 11 on route to an 11-7 win over the Rock. It wasn’t a rout, and the Rock were still in it until the last couple of minutes, but the Knighthawks definitely dominated every aspect of the game. Kevin Crowley made his Rock debut, and Joe Resetarits did the same for the Knighthawks. Each of them scored in their first game, with Resetarits striking first.
Brandon Miller started the game in net for the Rock and he was not sharp, allowing 5 Rochester goals in 13 minutes before being pulled. Nick Rose finished and had a much better game than Miller. He allowed three goals in 2½ minutes early in the second but then only three more over the rest of the game. Matt Vinc, on the other hand, started off strong and got better. But I think the story of this game was the Knighthawks defense. The Rock weren’t getting great looks at all and when they finally could see the net, all they could see (or hit) was Vinc’s chest. The Rochester D was just overpowering and on the few occasions that a Rock forward managed to get through them or get open somehow, Vinc was there to shut the door.
At one point, Damon Edwards and Sandy Chapman came running up on transition with Billy Greer behind them. Edwards was covered and didn’t have much of a shot and so was Chapman, so he passed to Greer. Greer didn’t have a great opportunity and is not known for his scoring touch in the first place, so why wouldn’t Edwards hold it and wait for the Rock offense to get out on the floor? The Rock were already down by at least 5 at this point, so perhaps they wanted to score to get the team fired up, but I really think they should have waited and allowed the offensive specialists to do their thing.
Then again, “doing their thing” wasn’t exactly what the offense was doing all night. Part of it was the strong Rochester defense, but the Rock offense just wasn’t clicking. I don’t know if it was the addition of Kevin Crowley or being without Rob Hellyer (though they managed OK without him last week) or something else, but they just couldn’t get it together. Passes were missed or dropped, players passed instead of shooting, shot when they had no shot, and and just seemed “out of sorts”. Kevin Crowley once tried to get in close and was pushed off to the side, then made a nice (and very Billings-like) behind-the-back pass into the middle where there were no Knighthawks defenders and… no Rock offensive players either. I don’t know if he assumed that someone would be there or just hoped. I’m still trying to decide if it was a good assumption that just didn’t pan out or a dumb pass. In general I thought Crowley played pretty well, getting a bunch of shots as well as throwing some nice picks, and even playing some D when necessary. I’m liking the play of Brock Sorensen more and more every week, and I thought he had a very strong game. Brett Hickey, on the other hand, did not. Hickey was held scoreless, his first such game in a Rock uniform.
Perhaps it was the fact that Jim Veltman was in the building, but there were pass interceptions all over the place in this game. Unfortunately, Veltman inspired the wrong team. I counted at least five Rock passes that were intercepted by Knighthawk defenders. At least one was pure luck – the defender was standing three feet from the passer and just put his stick up and the ball went into it. But most were cross-floor passes that were just caught by a defender in between.
Despite being outplayed for much of the game, the Rock were in this until the dying seconds. If not for the little Rochester scoring spree in the first quarter, the Rock might even have been able to pull a win out of this.
Other game notes:
Now that is what a trade deadline is all about.
Wow, that was fun. Every team in the league made a trade on Tuesday, some bigger than others. But you could argue that the trades made on deadline day included the best player on three different teams, as well as two captains. Below is a summary of the deals we saw on Monday and Tuesday:
To Minnesota: Joel White and a second round pick in 2016
To New England: Andrew Suitor
It’s rare for the current captain of a team to be traded. It’s even more rare for captains of two teams to be swapped. This trade confused a lot of people considering how important Suitor was to the Swarm. He was their captain, their leader in every way but scoring, the “heart and soul” of the team, and the phrase “fan favourite” doesn’t begin to cover it. But they traded him anyway which pissed off a lot of Swarm fans, judging by the comments on their Facebook post announcing the trade. In return they get another solid transition guy in Joel White, who has similar scoring numbers to Suitor but far fewer penalty minutes (Suitor has 20, White has just 2) and a lot more loose balls (117 to Suitor’s 60). Suitor is just over two months older than White so age wasn’t a concern for the Swarm, but I imagine White has a smaller salary than Suitor, which is.
Considering how much anger and questioning of the sanity of the Arlottas we’ve seen regarding this trade, you’d think that they got nothing back. Joel White is kind of on the losing end here. The Swarm are getting more loose balls and less time in the box, and though White is perhaps less of a vocal leader than Suitor, he’s still has leadership skills or the Black Wolves wouldn’t have made him the captain. Meanwhile the Wolves get a passionate guy who’ll run through walls for his teammates and is willing to fight if necessary, just in case Bill O’Brien doesn’t feel like it.
Honestly, I’m not sure of the overall advantage of this trade for the Swarm. White might put up slightly better numbers, but if you’re going to anger most of your fan base and lose season ticket holders, is it worth it?
Logan Schuss for Johnny PowlessTo Vancouver: Logan Schuss
To Minnesota: Johnny Powless
While the Suitor deal raised a few eyebrows, the Swarm’s other major deal works out very well for them. Schuss had job commitments in BC that kept him out of a couple of games (though fewer than he originally expected), so this way he’s much more likely to be able to play. Both Schuss and Powless are young lefties (Schuss is 24, Powless 22). Powless just wasn’t fitting into the Stealth offense, as shown by his 7 goals in 11 games. As said in an article in the Vancouver Province, Powless had as many 0-goal games in his 11 with the Stealth (7) as he did in three full seasons with the Knighthawks. Powless wanted out of Rochester because he didn’t want to be playing behind Cody Jamieson and Dan Dawson all the time, only to be playing behind Rhys Duch, Tyler Digby, and Corey Small in Vancouver. In Minnesota, I think he’ll be alongside Callum Crawford, Miles Thompson, and Shayne Jackson rather than behind them, so this could work out very well for them.
To Colorado: Cam Flint
To Minnesota: Second and third round picks in 2016
Not much to say about this one – Flint had 2 points in 11 games with the Swarm last season but has yet to play this year. Two draft picks for a player with that little NLL experience tells you how highly the Mammoth thinks of Flint, who went to the University of Denver.
To Edmonton: Matthew Dinsdale
To Calgary: Third round pick, 2016
After Scott Ranger retired in the off-season, I remember some talk that Dinsdale was likely going to get Ranger’s spot and thus lots more playing time. I honestly don’t know if the playing time increased, but while Calgary scored 38 goals in their first three games, Dinsdale was held pointless in all three. After that, his playing time dropped and by the time this trade happened, he’d only played in 6 games and only pulled in 6 points. This is consistent with his numbers over the previous two years (24 points in 27 games). With the addition of Sean Pollock onto the Roughnecks roster, Dinsdale’s playing time wasn’t likely to increase. Maybe a change of scenery (onto a team much more likely to make the playoffs) will do him good.
To Rochester: Joe Resetarits and a third round pick in 2016
To Buffalo: Jamie Batson, second round pick in 2016, and second round pick in 2017
Resetarits had a pretty good year in 2014, with 42 points in 17 games, but his production has dropped a little this year. His 21 points in 10 games is 6th on the Bandits but would be 7th on the Knighthawks. But playing behind Jammer, Dawson, Point, Walters, Hall, Vitarelli, and Keogh, it’s not clear how much playing time will be left for Resetarits. Batson is a defender with 0 career points in 8 games, but has only played in 2 games this year.
To New England: Garrett Billings
To Toronto: Kevin Crowley
This was the biggest deal of the day and as a Rock fan, I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed at first. Billings was the MVP runner-up in each of the last 3 seasons and the only player in NLL history to score 100+ points three years in a row. Crowley has been good, sometimes great, for Philly and New England, but he’s averaged around 75% of what Billings has done. I’d say Crowley’s a great player but not an elite one like Billings, so a one-for-one trade doesn’t seem to make sense. But first, we knew that Billings was going to be traded, and likely not for what he was worth. And second, Billings is coming off of knee surgery, and may or may not still be the elite player he was. If he is, then yes, New England wins this one. Going strictly by numbers, even if Billings is only 80% of what he was, New England still wins.
But I wonder if Crowley being the #1 pick overall caused some people (myself included) to expect too much of him. He was expected to be the guy both in Philadelphia and in New England. To his credit, he’s been the top or second scorer on his team every year of his career, but hasn’t been the 90-100 point guy that I kind of expected. But in Toronto, he doesn’t need to be the guy. He can just be one of the guys. And since the guys include Hellyer, Hickey, Sanderson, and Leblanc (and hopefully Doyle next year), that’s not bad company to be around. While I’m sure he learned a lot from veteran Dan Dawson in their one year together in Philly, now he has the opportunity to learn from Sanderson and Doyle and who knows – maybe in a couple of years, he will be the guy on the Rock, but if Hellyer and Hickey keep playing the way they have been, he may not need to be.
Assuming he’s not hobbled by the surgery, Billings is an exciting player to watch and I envy the New England fans who are able to see him at every home game now. He’s known for his playmaking ability and passing (he has twice as many career assists as goals), but he can score with the best of them including lasers from way out, cross-crease dives, and behind-the-back John Grant-style beauties.
Would I prefer to have Billings back on the Rock? Yes, I have to admit that I would. But I’ve known for weeks that that would be unlikely, so I prepared myself for the likelihood that he’d be gone. Given the alternatives (the Rock lose him for nothing or scratch him for the rest of the season), I originally thought that adding Crowley would be better than nothing, but not much more than that. But I’ve warmed to the idea and similar to the Schuss-Powless deal, I think this could be good for both teams as well.
NLL Chatter 