Category Archives: Toronto Rock

Pre-season game report: Edmonton 12 Toronto 8

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The NLL is back! After seven months of NLL withdrawal, NLL fans were treated to three pre-season games on Saturday night as the teams get ready for the 2013 season. Only one of the three games actually took place in an NLL venue, as the Rochester Knighthawks held off the Minnesota Swarm 11-10 at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester. The NLL returned to the Vancouver area for the second straight year as the Calgary Roughnecks beat the Colorado Mammoth 20-11 in a high-scoring affair, while the Toronto Rock hosted the Edmonton Rush at the new Toronto Rock Athletic Centre in Oakville. This was pretty convenient for me, as the TRAC is about halfway to the ACC from where I live.

Edmonton took an early 2-0 lead before the Rock got their first goal, but 2-1 was as close as the Rock would get as the Rush led the rest of the way, winning 12-8. Considering this was the first game of the pre-season, both teams played pretty well with a few missed or dropped passes but no obvious signs of rust. None of the goalies were spectacular but all played well. The Rush defense, unsurprisingly, was the star of the game, frustrating the Rock offense by not letting them get good looks. Blaine Manning looked really good, and Josh Sanderson got back on defense a couple of times, which surprisingly did not make me cringe. If there’s one thing that future Hall of Fame lock Sanderson is not known for, it’s his defense but he seemed to be playing with a new intensity – and even got a penalty while he and Leblanc were preventing an attempted incursion into Rock territory. Great to see.

This game was the NLL debut of Edmonton’s first-overall draft pick Mark Matthews, and he certainly did not disappoint. I don’t have any stats on the game, but Matthews picked up at least three goals and a few assists as well. Matthews looked comfortable on the floor, and seemed poised to take control of the Edmonton offense, similar to the way Cody Jamieson did with the Knighthawks a couple of years ago. The Rock were without many of their big offensive players, with Colin Doyle, Garrett Billings, Dan Carey, Kasey Biernes, and Phil Sanderson all sitting out. There were a bunch of new names (Belton, Andrews, Caravello, Ivey) as well, though a couple of notable absences were draft pick Bradley Kri and the newest Rock Scott Evans. As is frequently done in the pre-season, some of the Rock players only played the first half (Nick Inch, Cam Woods, Chris White) while others only played the second (Damon Edwards, Stephen Hoar), and both teams swapped goalies a couple of times.

Aaron Bold started against Nick Rose – at least I’m pretty sure it was Bold; Edmonton must have forgotten their Twitter handle jerseys at home and played with practice jerseys with no names. Edmonton brought out Brodie MacDonald (who didn’t even get a practice jersey – his was just plain gray with no number or logo or anything) to start the 3rd quarter while the Rock countered with rookie Zac Boychuk. Rose came back in the fourth, and another rookie, Dave Marrese, finished the game for the Rush.

Part of the reason for these pre-season games is to give the rookies time to show their skills, and both Kyle Belton and Dustin Caravello took full advantage of this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Caravello played more minutes than Leblanc. I was pretty impressed with both but especially Belton, who looked like a Josh Sanderson-type “floor general”, controlling the offense and setting up plays. Caravello, on the other hand, was more of a Kasey Biernes type, sneaking around (or through) the defense to get shots from in close. I’m pretty sure Stephan Leblanc did not score, though I think he had an assist or two. I wouldn’t say he looked lost, but I didn’t see the improvement in play that I was hoping for. He seemed to have a lack of confidence last year, and I saw that again here.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the venue itself. This was my first visit to the Toronto Rock Athletic Centre, and it was pretty impressive. There are two rinks, one with turf and one without. The turf one has bench seating for about 700 along one side, similar to your local hockey rink. There are also offices upstairs. Make no mistake though, this is not a hockey arena where you can play lacrosse once the ice is removed – I confirmed (with a security guard who seemed to know what he was talking about) that there is no ice-making equipment – this is a lacrosse facility.

Other game notes:

  • It was very cool to see Bob Watson at the game. I heard some guys a couple of rows behind me talking shortly after Whipper walked by, and one said “I will always have time for Bob Watson. As good a goalie as Watson was, he was a better person.” I have never met the man personally, but this is consistent with everything I’ve ever heard about him.
  • My son and I were sitting right next to the Edmonton dressing room – you can see us during Derek Keenan’s interview before the game. My son (green baseball cap) waves at the camera. I noticed Chris Corbeil standing around before the game while the rest of the team was practicing, but it wasn’t until much later that I noticed the cast on his right foot. No idea how serious his injury is.
  • Watching the Calgary-Colorado game, there were five or six “illegal equipment” calls because of loose chin straps. This is apparently something they’re going to be calling more this season, but obviously nobody told the refs at the Toronto-Edmonton game. Edmonton players lost their helmets at least three times.
  • They also did stick checks during the second quarter, and I believe Jeremy Thompson was caught. The ref handed his stick to a Rush trainer, and then signaled to either Thompson or Derek Keenan that there was a problem, though this was on the other side of the floor so I couldn’t tell what he was saying. Thompson immediately left the bench, ran to the dressing room, and returned a minute later with a new stick. There was no penalty assessed.
  • The first goal of the night was scored by Edmonton, but announced as “Jesse Gamble from Mike Hobbins and Brendan Thenhaus” all of whom are Rock players. Someone was looking at the wrong list. The rest of the goals were fine, but there was no correction on the first one.
  • Phil Sanderson, Garrett Billings, and Colin Doyle were up in the “owner’s box” with Jamie Dawick, except for halftime when Billings and Sanderson were on the floor taking shots. Terry Sanderson, usually behind the bench, was also up in the box.
  • Overheard: “The Rock goalie, what’s his name? Pete Rose?”
  • While Brodie MacDonald was in net, someone near me was yelling “five hole!” every time the Rock had the ball in the offensive zone. Sure enough, MacDonald’s five hole was half the net. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re 6’7″.
  • One lesson I learned from this game is not to tweet updates constantly on my phone. More than once I was tweeting about one goal only to miss the next one. If I had had my laptop with me it would have been easier, but I feel that I missed half the game because I was tweeting about the other half.

Offseason Report #3: Trade frenzy

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Just nine days after the NLL and the NLLPA agreed to a deal that will allow the 2013 season to go forward with the same CBA as 2012, there have been all kinds of moves involving every team in the league. The Bandits named Steve Dietrich their new GM, the Stealth re-signed head coach Chris Hall and signed a five-year lease with Comcast Arena, the Roughnecks and Mammoth announced a pre-season game in Langley BC,  the Rush re-signed GM and coach Derek Keenan, and there were no less than five trades involving seven teams in only two days.

The first trade was the Rock sending holdout Aaron Pascas to the Roughnecks for a third round draft pick. This is one of those deals that looks worse than it is – in an ideal world, Pascas is worth more than a 3rd round pick. But he’s a BC boy who has already missed an entire season due to work commitments, and so perhaps the Rock decided that getting a pick was better than the nothing they may get if he can’t play in 2013 either. The Roughnecks get a scorer for the left side who is young and yet has won a Championship. If Pascas has scheduling issues with his job as a firefighter, it’s more likely that he’ll be able to make games in Calgary than in Toronto, so it’s a good deal for him as well.

Jarrett DavisA few hours after the Pascas deal, the Swarm sent forward Kevin Ross to Philadelphia for a first round pick way off in 2015. Swarm owner John Arlotta said that Ross will “get the chance to play closer to home”. Home for Ross is London Ontario, which is nine hours from Philadelphia and fourteen from St. Paul. (Note that I am Canadian, and in Canada we measure distances not in miles or kilometres, but in driving time.) Cutting down your commute from 14 hours to 9 is not much of an advantage, really. Perhaps the flights from southern Ontario to Philly are shorter than to Minnesota, though I can’t imagine it’s much of a difference there either. Anyway, Philly is pretty happy with the trade, especially when you consider that Ross scored 9 points against them in one game and 5 in another last season. Swarm fans were less thrilled since they lose Ross’s 59 points and get nothing in return for over three years.

A day later, three trades rocked the NLL, as the Edmonton Rush finally made the trade that everyone has been waiting for since February, sending Paul Rabil to Rochester for Jarrett Davis. The Rush finally have something to show for Brodie Merrill – but the whole Merrill / Iannucci / Rabil drama has been done to death so I won’t give all the details again. Davis is a very good player even if he’s no Merrill or Rabil, so at first blush it would seem that the Knighthawks clearly win this trade. Adding someone of Rabil’s calibre makes the reigning Champions a far better team, and that’s not something that Rock, Bandits, or Wings fans want to hear. But then again, Davis may actually put on a Rush uniform at some point, which is more than Rabil ever did, so the Rush are up one transition player and down nothing. This is a pretty good deal for both teams.

Well, in that trade they’re down nothing. Associate captain Shawn Williams will not be returning to the Rush, so they are down a scorer as well. The Rush traded Williams, who was a few days away from becoming an unrestricted free agent, to the Minnesota Swarm for draft picks. But Williams’s career as a member of the Swarm was just as long in terms of games played as that of Anthony Cosmo or Josh Sanderson, as he was immediately shuffled off to Buffalo along with Brendan Doran and more draft picks for Buffalo’s first round pick this year. The Swarm now have the #2, #3, and #4 picks in this year’s entry draft. The Bandits pick up Doran, a “young gritty defenseman” says Steve Dietrich, as well as the veteran Williams. Willy is fresh off a season in which he reached the finals, scored his 1,000th NLL point, and set an NLL record for most consecutive games played (190+ and counting). The move reunites the 38-year-old Williams with 43-year-old John Tavares, who played together in Buffalo in 2000 and 2001, and gives the Bandits another legitimate scoring threat. I wouldn’t say the move immediately propels the Bandits into first place in my 2013 NLL East division rankings, but it certainly raises some eyebrows for anyone looking at how the Bandits might recover from the 2012 season, which was terrible disastrous horrific less successful than they might have liked.

So all of those trades happened in just two days. The 2013 NLL season doesn’t start for over five months. It could be a busy summer.

Team summaries and projected changes: East division

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Now that the 2012 season is behind us, each team will be looking to 2013 and trying to decide what changes need to be made. Let’s look over each team and see what changes may be in store. We’ll start with the East division, and get to the West in a few days.

Buffalo Bandits

There will be lots of changes coming for the Bandits this offseason, if you believe what Darris Kilgour said a number of times during the season. I don’t know how much of that was said in the heat of the moment, but I don’t imagine his strategy for 2013 will be “Hope everyone plays better”.

Goaltending is not a problem assuming Cosmo stays in Buffalo, and I have no reason to believe he won’t. As good as John Tavares was this year, surely he has to slow down sometime, doesn’t he? Maybe, but I’ve been asking that question for five years. Tracey Kelusky has said that he was pretty unhappy with his own play in the 2011 season, and his point total dropped by half in 2012. Considering the impact he’s had on the league over the last ten years, it would be kind of sad to see a sure-fire hall-of-famer like TK retire after two such lacklustre seasons, but I’m not sure I can see the Bandits taking another chance on him.

In a nutshell, the Bandits need to get younger – though ironically, the Bandit least likely to be traded is 43-year-old John Tavares. They have one first round pick (third overall) in the next entry draft thanks to the Chris Corbeil trade, but their own pick – second overall – was sent to Minnesota for Anthony Cosmo. Their first round pick next year belongs to the Swarm as well. I’d look for a number of players to be moved out for draft picks.

Philadelphia Wings

I’m not sure what to think about the Wings. They had periods where they played really well, and periods where they played really badly. Their defense played well against the Rock in Toronto, allowing 8 and 10 goals in two games, and then allowed 13 or more in five of six straight games (and 12 in the sixth). They were in first place in mid-March and then collapsed, losing their last five.

Dan Dawson was obviously not the problem here. Dawson had yet another great season, but in the NLL one player cannot pull a LeBron and lift a team to greatness pretty much by himself. A quick glance at the individual numbers seemed fine, with Dawson over 100 points and Crowley, Mundorf, Westervelt, and Hominuck all over 50. By comparison, the champion Knighthawks only had four players over 50 points, and the Bandits only had three. But after that, things drop off significantly. Brodie Merrill had 32 points, and Siebald and Crotty had 14 each. Nobody else had more than 8. Of their nine losses, they scored fewer than ten goals in five of them (and exactly ten in two more). Only the Edmonton Rush scored fewer goals than the Wings.

And nobody gave up more goals than the Wings. It seemed that for the most part, when the defense had a bad night, they had a bad night. The Wings gave up 15 or more goals six times, though they won one of those six. This seems odd considering there were people voting for both Merrill and Paul Dawson for Defensive Player of the Year. Brandon Miller didn’t have his best season ever, and yet Kurtis Wagar and Steve Fryer played only 71 minutes combined all season.

The decade-long rebuild of the Wings continues. I’m sure Dawson isn’t going anywhere, nor are Crowley or Merrill. But you gotta wonder if anyone else’s job is safe. Considering the Wings don’t have any first round draft picks for the next couple of years, their best hope for improvement is through trades and free agency. They made a big move last off-season to bring in Merrill, and then had Crowley and Dawson dropped in their laps. I’ve thought all along that Philadelphia would be a good fit for Paul Rabil (can you imagine transition studs Rabil and Merrill on one team?) so it wouldn’t surprise me to see another big trade with Edmonton this off-season. Perhaps the Wings should start looking into what players on their team might consider playing out west. Interestingly, Kevin Crowley is from BC.

Rochester Knighthawks

They won the damned championship, so the Knighthawks obviously don’t need an overhaul. They have a mix of young and veteran talent up front, lots of veterans and a couple of kids on D, and an outstanding goalie with many good playing years in front of him. So what are they in desperate need of? Nothing. What could they use? My only thought here might be to get a little younger on the defense. It’s not like their defense is old and creaky, but McCready, Laverty, and Cousins have all been around for a while, and they also have Campbell, Travis Hill, Smith, and Glaves. The only real young players on the D are Dylan Evans, Tyler Burton, and Mike Kirk.

But I don’t think this is a huge hole that really needs filling. If someone offers the Knighthawks a trade, that may be where they want to focus, but if they do nothing at all, Rochester will be poised for more successful seasons to come.

Toronto Rock

Jamie Dawick said that Nick Rose is their goalie of the future, though Dawick also had nothing but good things to say about Matt Roik – right up until he was released. That said, I’d be surprised if Rose wasn’t the starting goalie for the Rock in 2013. It has been implied that Pat Campbell may hang ’em up, in which case the Rock need a new backup goaltender. Dawick also said that Phil Sanderson may have to retire after the concussion he suffered this season. That would be a huge loss for the D.

The offense looks set, except for one position where there was a bit of a problem. That would be the “Stephen Leblanc” position. The guy playing there had some good nights, but wasn’t nearly as effective overall as in 2010 or 2011, so that needs to improve. Dan Carey didn’t have a huge impact on the offense but like Flip, he suffered a season-ending concussion. Seeing as this was the second time in his career he’s missed significant time because of a concussion, Carey may have to walk away as well.

I think they could use a little more size and toughness from their defense. Considering the firepower up front, could the Rock send one of their O guys off for a big D guy and backup goalie? Doyle and Sanderson aren’t going anywhere, and they’re not likely to trade Billings after the season he just had. Could one of Manning, Leblanc or Beirnes be on their way out? Or will the Rock look to the free agent market to shore up the back end?

Game Report: Rochester 17 @ Toronto 13

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The Toronto Rock 2012 season came to a crashing halt on Saturday while the Rochester Knighthawks will now host the Championship game. Long story short: the Knighthawks came to play, literally bringing busloads of fans with them, and destroyed the Rock 17-13, in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score might indicate.

The early part of the game was back-and-forth, with the Knighthawks taking leads three times before the Rock tied it up again. Rochester managed to grab a two-goal lead by the end of the first half, but the Rock were definitely still in it at that point. The Rock were frustrated by the Knighthawks defense, who just weren’t giving them any shots. Now and again they’d get a look from way outside, and a few times they seemed to get a lane right up the middle, but the only thing to shoot at was Vinc’s chest, which they hit on a number of occasions.

Rock fans were hoping the team would be fired up to start the second half and tie the game up quickly, but it just didn’t happen. Instead the Knighthawks scored three within 4½ minutes to start the third, and then three within 2½ minutes to start the fourth. But by that beginning of the fourth, we knew it was effectively all over but the crying, and the Rochester goal-scoring. The Rock offense just couldn’t solve the Rochester defense and when they did, Matt Vinc was there. Vinc played a great game while at the other end, Nick Rose didn’t have his strongest outing. I didn’t think he was terrible and I wouldn’t pin the loss on him, but he certainly wasn’t as strong as last weekend. The Rock defense hung him out to dry on a number of occasions, and he let in a few softies as well. In the third, Stephen Keogh ran right through a pair of Rock defenders like they weren’t there and scored, and that was the game in a nutshell. The Rock D did pick up in the second half of the third quarter, when the Rock were only down by 4. It looked like they were trying to pull the same comeback thing they pulled last week. But then the Knighthawks had another run and Toronto just couldn’t get back into it.

If I have one complaint about Nick Rose it’s that he allows too many rebounds. Many times he came up big and made a huge save but gave up a huge rebound at the same time, and the Knighthawks would bury the rebound as Rose was recovering. I first noticed that tendency in Rose’s first game in Buffalo, though in that game as well as the one last week, he made a lot of the second saves as well. On Saturday, not so much.

As per usual, Garrett Billings was tops on the Rock scoring list, with Doyle and Sanderson right behind him. Also as per usual (this year), Stephen Leblanc got a few points but was mostly invisible. Toronto’s transition played pretty well – damn, it’s nice to have Rob Marshall back – but the loss of Damon Edwards didn’t help. Something that not only didn’t help but actually made things worse was the addition of rookie goon Scott Johnston. In the fourth quarter, with Pat Campbell in net (he and Rose swapped on almost every shift for a while late in the game), Campbell came way out of his net to grab a loose ball and then started to run up the floor on transition. He got blocked near the centre line (!) and Pat McCready hit him into the boards. This was a weird enough play (one could argue it was a stupid play – what the hell was Campbell trying to accomplish? With his pads on he runs way slower than anyone else), but then Scott Johnston jumped McCready and tried to fight him. Both got fighting majors but Johnston was tossed and given an instigator penalty, so the Knighthawks went on the PP. Just what we needed when trying to get back into the game. And for what – to come to the aid of Pat Campbell? Who on the Rock can stand up for themselves better than Pat Campbell? This is a guy who instigated a fight with Geoff Snider earlier this year. He doesn’t need Scott Johnston to stand up for him, and he certainly doesn’t need Johnston to put his team a man down while desperately trying to come back in the fourth quarter of a playoff game. As I tweeted during the game, that might have been the dumbest play I’ve seen all year. And good god, man, lose the bad Movember ‘stache.

Other game notes:

  • The Harbour Sports Grille is apparently a popular place with lacrosse people. Not only did we see a bunch of other Rock jerseys, but Knighthawks assistant coach Paul Day was sitting with his family at the table next to us, and our waitress told us that both of the refs were there earlier – though sitting separately. They have TVs all over the place, and at one point we were watching baseball, cricket, golf, and two different highlights shows all at the same time. I assume they changed all the TVs to the Rock/Knighthawks game once that began.
  • Cory Vitarelli had a great game. Not only did he score four goals, but at one point in the second he stopped Rob Marshall against the boards and wouldn’t let him go. It would have caused an 8-second violation but instead Marshall dropped the ball and Vitarelli picked it up. An outstanding defensive play.
  • Johnny Powless scored Rochester’s 14th goal (the game winner), and it looked to me like his foot was on the crease line. I went through the TV replay when I got home and it was indeed a good goal, but just barely. It was close enough that I’m surprised Cordingley didn’t challenge it. There was still over 12 minutes to play at that point, so I hope it wasn’t because he figured it just didn’t matter.

Division finals picks

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I was 2-2 in my first week of playoff picks. I felt relatively confident in my western picks, Calgary and Colorado, and not very confident on my eastern picks, Toronto and Rochester. The result: I totally nailed the east and totally pooched the west. But that said, who would have predicted both Edmonton and Minnesota upsets? I said last week that I could see Minnesota pulling off the upset in that game, but went with Colorado anyway. I thought that the chances of Edmonton pulling off such an upset were non-zero, but pretty darned small. Obviously, I did not give Edmonton the credit that they deserved. Apologies and huge kudos to the Rush, and kudos to the Swarm as well for their first-ever playoff win. One of these teams will advance to the Championship game, a place that neither has ever been before. This is fantastic not only for these two franchises and cities, but for the league as well.

Of this weeks picks, I feel relatively confident on one (Rock) and not at all confident on the other (Swarm). If last week is any indication, that means I’ll totally nail the west and totally pooch the east.

Record: 2-2 (.500)

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Comments

Pick
ROC @ TOR The Rock were 3-0 against the Knighthawks this year. They also have an eight game winning streak against Rochester, and have won ten of the last eleven games (we won’t talk about the previous nine, all of which the Knighthawks won) so that means the Rock will win, right? Sure. Just ask the Roughnecks.
The Knighthawks have the firepower, defense, goaltending, and veteran leadership to beat anyone. But the Rock have more of all of those things. Normally I’d rank Matt Vinc above a rookie starter who’s only started 7 games in his career, but Rose is on a roll and the team has a lot of confidence in him. I think the Rock will ride that wave right into their third straight Champion’s Cup game.		 Rock5_thumb
EDM @ MIN Wow, this might be one of the hardest picks all season. Both teams are brimming with confidence right now and both have hot goaltenders. Minnesota has had the better offense all season, but the Rush put up 19 against the Goaltender of the Year (though recovering from concussion) last weekend. But I can’t call a tie – I gotta pick someone. The Rush lost their last two games of the season and then beat the Roughnecks so that could be a fluke, while the Swarm have won five in a row now. I’m going to have to go with the Swarm. Swarm

Game Report: Buffalo 6 @ Toronto 7

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For the third straight year, the Rock have bumped the Bandits out of the playoffs. This game was very similar to the last Bandits game in Toronto, where the first half and the second half seemed like completely different games. In the first half of Saturday’s game, the Rock put forth a pretty uninspiring performance while the Bandits played solid defense and Anthony Cosmo was excellent. In the second half, the Rock finally came alive (if you can call five goals in a half “coming alive”), and the Bandits forwards were shut down by a great goaltending performance by Nick Rose. The final score was 7-6, making this game the second-lowest scoring playoff game in NLL history. The NLL later tweeted that 7 is now the lowest winning score of a playoff game in history, and ties the all-time (i.e. non-playoff) record.

The Rock were shut out entirely in the first quarter, while Buffalo scattered four goals. The second quarter wasn’t much different from the first, though the Rock did get on the scoreboard. But John Tavares scored 30 seconds after the first Rock goal and 3 minutes after the second, each time deflating the crowd and taking the wind out of the Rock’s sails. The Rock offense was starting to get some good looks though, and at one point beat Cosmo but not the posts and crossbar about four times within two minutes including three shots in a row. Cosmo never touched any of them, and may not even have seen them, but according to the rule book he’s credited with a save for each one. In general though, Cosmo played unbelievable in the first half, and only allowed five in the second half as well. Buffalo’s defenders played very well, but Cosmo was easily Buffalo’s game MVP.

At the other end, Nick Rose was good in the first quarter despite the four goals allowed. He was even better in the second – I don’t fault him for the two goals in the second quarter either, since they were both from John Tavares who was left open. No goalie can be faulted for giving up goals to Tavares when he’s open. The Bandits didn’t figure, however, that JT’s goal at 10:57 of the second was the last they’d score in the game. Rose was positively Watson-esque in the second half, and there’s no higher compliment from a Toronto Rock fan. The Bandits were held scoreless for a little over 34 minutes.

The crowd started to get into the game by the end of the third, and even when the Rock were still down by two, the volume was continually growing. Once folks realized that Rose and the defense were playing well enough to keep the Rock in the game and that they really did have a chance to win this, it got even louder. Garrett Billings scored to get the Rock within three, and then Kasey Beirnes (who’d be the Rock game MVP if it weren’t for Rose) scored a few minutes later to get the Rock within two to end the third. Beirnes scored again a couple of minutes into the third, and then completed the natural hat-trick by tying the game three minutes later. But it took until there was only 1:35 left in the game before Brenden Thenhaus scored to give the Rock the lead for the first time in the game. By this point, the crowd was going insane, possibly as loud as I’ve heard the ACC all year.

With less than ten seconds in regulation time, Bill Greer took a penalty for holding the stick, which he vehemently tried to argue but to no avail. His argument was valid… sort of. On watching the replay, Stephen Hoar knocked the stick out of Culp’s hands with a legal check, and then Greer crosschecked Culp in the back of the head. I didn’t see anyone holding anyone else’s stick. Greer certainly could have gotten two, or five, for the crosscheck though. And Stephen Hoar could have gotten two for yanking on Kelusky’s jersey a few seconds before.

At this point, there were 7.5 seconds left on the clock, and my son says “Ha! Only 7.5 seconds left! It doesn’t matter anyway!” I responded “Oh yes it does. This is lacrosse.” And sure enough, John Tavares puts one in just under 7.5 seconds later. The refs began to review the goal, as they always do with under two minutes to play, and they showed the replay on the Jumbotron. Right away Josh Sanderson and a few other Rock players ran over to Nick Rose to give him a celebratory hug. They could see on the replay that the goal wouldn’t count because Tracey Kelusky was standing fully in the crease. I’ve seen a few tweets and articles that say he was pushed in, but first off, it doesn’t matter since pushing someone into the crease isn’t illegal. Secondly, I’ve watched the replay from the TV broadcast a number of times and I see no evidence that he was pushed in. He was behind Chapman who was walking backwards, but so was Kelusky. Maybe Chapman was pushing him and maybe not but it’s impossible to tell from the replay. After a review that only took a few seconds but felt much longer, the crowd erupted as the “no goal” sign was given, thus ending a game that started off fairly boring but then became one of the most exciting lacrosse games in recent memory.

The Bandits are done for the year, and the Rock will host the Knighthawks next weekend for the East division title. Since Edmonton took out Calgary, Toronto will host their second straight Championship game if they beat the Knighthawks.

Other game notes:

  • Kevin Buchanan managed to launch his stick over the glass in the first quarter and was booed when he convinced the fan (a Bandits fan, too) to toss it back to him. I expected to see Buchanan run over with an extra stick or something later on to give the guy as a thank-you, but it didn’t happen.
  • Glen Bryan’s helmet got knocked off in the third, and he made a move towards the bench but then turned around and continued play for a while. The rule book is clear – if your helmet comes off you must either put it back on or leave the floor immediately. Seeing as Bryan was defending the guy with the ball, there was no way the refs just didn’t see it. Easy call, but the refs totally blew it.
  • At the end of the first, Damon Edwards hit Ian Llord into the boards with a crosscheck from behind, and Llord suffered a separated shoulder. No call on that one either. Llord had the ball at the time, so if the refs didn’t see it, I don’t know where they were looking.
  • There were only 9400 people at the game, which I thought was quite disappointing for a playoff game against the Bandits on a Saturday night when the Leafs and Raptors are done.
  • Who was first in line for the handshakes after the game, less than a minute after the no-goal call? Darris Kilgour.

Division semi-final picks

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My overall record during the regular season was 31-41 (0.431). If I only get three of the seven playoff games right, I’m at .428, so I need to finish above .500 in the playoffs to beat my regular season record. Everyone wants to do better in the playoffs than they did in the regular season, right?

Despite what my picks for the first round look like, I did not just go with the higher ranked team. Well, I did, but I actually did think about each game.

Record: 0-0

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Comments

Pick
BUF @ TOR Of the three possible opponents for the Rock in the first round, this was my least favourite option as a Rock fan. I was hoping the Rock would face Rochester while the Wings disposed of the Bandits. Then the Rock could take out the Wings and head to the final again. It doesn’t matter how bad the Bandits were in the early (or even mid) part of this year – they played pretty well at the end, Cosmo seems to have found his stride, and the team is playing with confidence. This could be a really close game, going back and forth all night and finally solved by overtime, or it could be a blowout, one way or the other. None of those options would surprise me. Rock5
PHI @ ROC On March 23, the Wings were 7-4 and in first place in the East. Since then, they’re 0-5 and have scored 10 or fewer goals in 4 of those games. They’re outta time to turn things around – it’s now or never. The Knighthawks aren’t exactly flying into the playoffs either, having lost four of their last six. But one of those wins was against the Wings and the other was against the powerhouse Roughnecks, so things aren’t all bad. Knighthawks5
EDM @ CAL I like the Rush. Aaron Bold is my Goalie of the Year choice, Rubisch (my Defender of the Year choice) and Corbeil are two of the best defenders in the league, and Shawn Williams and Steve Toll are two of my all-time favourite players. Could they beat the Roughnecks? Could their defense and goaltending shut down the potent Calgary offense long enough for their forwards to put a few by Poulin? Sure, it could happen. But it won’t. Roughnecks
MIN @ COL I wanted to pick the Swarm, and I kind of hope I’m wrong. The Swarm have surprised and impressed me (and many others) this year, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they did pull off the upset, though I would be surprised. Sure, they beat the Mammoth last weekend, but Colorado was missing Gavin Prout and had nothing to play for in that game. Prout is back this weekend, and the Mammoth are not going to take this one lightly. Mammoth4

2012 NLL Award winners

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The IL Indoor writing staff submitted their picks this week for the major annual NLL awards. Here are the names I submitted. I also made some predictions at the beginning of the year, so let’s see how I did on those.

Offensive player of the year – John Grant, Jr.

Grant set a new scoring record and did it while playing two fewer games than anyone else. He kept up an average of 8.3 points per game, and never scored less than six points in a game. He had two games all year without a hat-trick.

It’s amazing to me that John Tavares set the scoring record of 115 points in 14 games in 2001, and in ten 16-game seasons, nobody could beat it. Then in 2012 someone finally does beat it – while only playing 14 games.

Runners-up: Garrett Billings, Dan Dawson, John Tavares, Gavin Prout

Prediction: I didn’t make a prediction for offensive player.

Transition player of the year – Geoff Snider

Runners-up: Andrew Suitor, Brodie Merrill, Jordan MacIntosh, Travis Cornwall, Jesse Gamble

Prediction: Paul Rabil. Hahahahahahahaha

Defensive player of the year – Kyle Rubisch

Runners-up: Curtis Manning, Rory Smith, Kyle Sorensen, Sandy Chapman

Prediction: Kyle Rubisch. Yay, I got one right.

Goaltender of the year – Aaron Bold

I was really torn here. My first thought was Bold, but I had trouble giving Goaltender of the Year to a goalie on a 6-10 team so I switched to Mike Poulin. But then I remembered that Bob Watson won it for the Rock in 2008 when they were 7-9 and missed the playoffs. Poulin had a better team in front of him so he got more wins, but that doesn’t help us compare. But while watching games and highlights and looking over game reports over the course of the year, I remember thinking “wow” just a little more often with Bold than with anyone else. So I switched back.

Runners-up: Mike Poulin, Evan Kirk, Chris Levis

Prediction: Mike Thompson. Hey, he played in the All-Star game! But so did the now-unemployed Matt Roik.

Rookie of the year – Jordan MacIntosh

Before the season started, a number of people seemed to have already decided that this award should just be given to Kevin Crowley, and Crowley certainly impressed. But even once the season began, I never had Crowley pegged as the runaway winner of this award, because Adam Jones was always right there with him. They both slowed down a little in the second half, dropping to about 5 points per game. Still excellent debut seasons, to be sure. But MacIntosh quietly amassed 51 points, only 20 less than Crowley and 25 less than Jones, as a transition player. He also played defense and took the majority of the Swarm’s face-offs. Neither Crowley nor Jones were in my Offensive Player of the Year list, but MacIntosh was in my list for Transition, and Kirk was in my list for Goaltender of the Year, so he gets the second place vote.

Runners-up: Evan Kirk, Adam Jones, Kevin Crowley, Johnny Powless, Travis Cornwall

Prediction: Kevin Crowley. Again, not a terrible pick, and I couldn’t really argue with any of my top four.

Coach of the year – Bob Hamley

Hamley took a 5-11 team with a lot of roster changes and rookies and turned them into one of the best teams in the league – second place overall, a 6-game winning streak, and the highest goals/game and PP goals/game averages in the league.

Runners-up: Joe Sullivan (and Mike Lines, if a replaced coach can win such an award), Troy Cordingley, Dave Pym

Prediction: Darris Kilgour. Talk about your polar opposite. Not that his team’s terrible (at times) play was entirely his fault, but I was not impressed with the way he handled it, calling them out (by name in some cases) as publicly as he did. Still, the team did turn it around at the end of the year.

GM of the year – Steve Govett

See the Coach of the year entry – Govett made the roster changes that allowed Hamley to do what he did.

Runner-up: Joe Sullivan John Arlotta. (Update: Sullivan is listed as “Associate GM” on Minnesota’s web site, and nobody is listed as GM. Turns out John Arlotta is the guy who makes the decisions.)

Prediction: Derek Keenan. That was before the whole Iannucci thing happened, though I did think that even without Nooch, the Rush would have been better than they were.

MVP – Garrett Billings

Garrett Billings

With respect to John Grant’s remarkable season, Billings meant more to the Rock than Grant did to the Mammoth. Grant missed two games with an injury and while he was out, the Mammoth went 1-1. When Gavin Prout missed two games near the end of the season, Grant recorded 6 points in each game (obviously not bad, but his lowest tallies of the year) and the Mammoth lost both games. For the Rock, Blaine Manning missed most of the season, Colin Doyle and Josh Sanderson missed games as well, and Stephan Leblanc had a subpar season, but Billings stepped up and became the de facto leader. He outscored everyone else on his team by almost fifty points. The Mammoth had a very good season, but without Grant, they still had two other players (Jones and Prout) who were in the top ten in scoring, and would still have been pretty good. The Rock’s second place scorer (Leblanc) was seventeenth. They did have a pretty good season (can’t argue with first in the division) but without Billings, it would have been much worse.

Runners-up: John Grant, Dan Dawson, John Tavares

Prediction: Dan Dawson.

Confession

I kind of hate the fact that my MVP list is so similar to my offensive player list, because that implies that goals and offense are the most important things. Considering my interest in statistics, it may seem that I look only at the numbers when deciding on a player’s worth: “Obviously Mike Hominuck is way better than Kyle Rubisch because he has way more points!” This is definitely not the case, but I do have to admit that it’s more difficult to evaluate defensive players when you’re not watching them all the time – and sometimes, even when you are.

I saw every Rock home game live (plus one in Buffalo), and almost all the road ones on TV or the internet. Overall, did Cam Woods play better or worse than Glen Bryan this year? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I could write a huge post on why the numbers by themselves don’t give you anywhere near the whole story when it comes to determining how important a player is to his team, but oh look, Marty O’Neill has already done that.

Anyway, there were certainly some big goaltending and defensive performances this year, but with both Grant and Billings breaking offensive records, offense was the big story.

Week 17 picks

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So this is it, the last week. I’m way under .500; best I can do is 32-40, but I could also end up 28-44. Yet another .500 week would put me at 30-42. Still, that’s not too much worse than some of the IL Indoor guys, and depending on this week’s games, it might even be better than some of them. But remember when we start the playoffs, we’re all tied at 0-0…

Record: 28-40 (.412)

Game

Comments

Pick
TOR @ EDM Toronto is playing for home floor advantage while Edmonton can’t change their playoff position. Nick Rose had a bad outing against the Mammoth but rebounded and played pretty well against the Stealth last weekend. Edmonton has the lowest-scoring offense in the league, so this might be another opportunity for Rose to bump his confidence going into the playoffs. That said, the Rush beat the Mammoth last weekend so maybe let’s not count our chickens and all that. Rock
COL @ MIN Apparently Gavin Prout will miss this weekend, although the Mammoth said that about John Grant after the weekend he missed and he played anyway. The biggest question of this game is: will it be Evan Kirk or Tyler Carlson that gives up John Grant’s 116th point of the year? Or will they say “Sorry, Mr. Grant, not on my watch”? Given the season Grant’s had, that would be rather surprising, but surprising things just keep happening in the NLL this season. Mammoth
PHI @ ROC I really wanted to pick Philly just because I can’t imagine them going into the playoffs on a five-game losing streak. But I couldn’t imagine the Bandits going on a six-game losing streak, or the Stealth missing the playoffs, or the Mammoth going from 5-11 to 11-4 in one year, or… The Knighthawks have owned the Wings this year, going 2-0 with a combined score of 33-20. Knighthawks
BUF @ WAS I know, I know, I said I was done with the Bandits, but holy crap, Anthony Cosmo was great last weekend. And the one before. The Stealth are playing for exactly nothing while the Bandits are shaping up for the playoffs. Bandits

Previous weeks:

Week 1 – 0-1
Week 2 – 2-2
Week 3 – 2-2
Week 4 – 2-4
Week 5 – 2-2
Week 6 – 1-3
Week 7 – 2-2
Week 8 – 1-3
Week 9 – 2-2
Week 10 – 2-4
Week 11 – 1-2
Week 12 – 1-5
Week 13 – 5-0
Week 14 – 2-2
Week 15 – 0-4
Week 16 – 3-2

Defense wins championships – or does it?

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Offense wins games. Defense wins championships.

I’ve heard that quote in relation to lacrosse, football, and basketball, and it’s probably been applied in other sports as well. I know that a lot of Toronto Rock fans from the early 2000’s believed it, but is it generally true? Let’s take a look at the NLL Champions from 1987 to 2011, covering 25 seasons. Don’t worry, this isn’t nearly the propeller-head stats-fest that my article on back-to-back games was.

I went through each Championship team and calculated their rank in the league that year in terms of both goals scored and goals against. Just so we’re clear, “first” in goals scored is the highest amount, while “first” in goals against is the lowest. That’s fairly basic and obvious stuff, but I wanted to spell it out to avoid any misunderstandings. I’m going to ignore the absolute value of goals for and against, mainly because a different number of games were played in different seasons. Using the rank rather than the value factors that out, as well as other differences like rule changes. I’ll look at goal scoring trends in the NLL in a future article.

The “rank” I’m using for a given team is “1 plus the number of teams that are ahead of the team in question”. So if two teams scored more goals than the team I’m looking at, they are ranked third. If another team scored the same number of goals, then the team I’m looking at was actually tied for third, but I’m ignoring that – tied or not, they still had the third-highest total.

Before we get to the general trends, here are the extremes. In the 25 years of the NLL, only once has the Championship winner been both #1 in goals scored and #1 in goals against – the 1994 Philadelphia Wings. At the other end of the spectrum, the 2003 Rock were ninth in goals scored (they scored 36 fewer goals than the #1 Bandits that year), but first in goals against. The 2007 Knighthawks were the exact opposite – first in goals scored (scoring 30 more goals than anyone else) but ninth in goals against.

If defense wins championships, then it stands to reason that most Championship teams would rank higher in goals against than they would in goals scored. But we don’t find that to be the case. Out of 25 seasons, 12 of the Champions (or 48%) ranked first in the league in goals scored, but only 8 (32%) ranked first in goals against. The average rank for goals scored is 2.6 while the average rank for goals against is 3.1. This means that on average, the Championship team is closer to the top of the league in goals scored than they are in goals against, i.e. most Championship teams are better offensively than they are defensively. Defense does not win championships.

But there was a period where it did. From 1998 to 2003, the Rock won four titles and the Wings won two. Only one of those teams – the 2001 Wings – was not first in the league in goals against, and only those same Wings were as high as third in goals scored. The Rock Championship teams in 1999-2000 and 2002-2003 were 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th respectively in goals scored. But before that period, the top defensive team had only won the Championship once, the 1994 Wings, and it’s only happened once since, the 2009 Roughnecks. On the other hand, from 1988 to 1996, every Champion except one (the 1990 Wings) was first in goals scored. It didn’t happen again until the 2005 Rock, but then it happened in five of the next seven years.

Here’s a graph of the ranks of the Championship teams in both goals scored (blue) and goals against (red). Notice how the blue line stays low until about 1997, then jumps up for a few years before dropping back down again. At the same time, the red line is higher during the 90’s, then drops down to the bottom while the blue line is high, then grows again when the blue one drops. That inversion was the Les Bartley era in Toronto.

GF-GA

Generally, the NLL Champions have been better offensively than defensively. But as we’ve seen, from about 1998 to 2003, that trend was reversed. Of those six seasons, the Toronto Rock under Les Bartley won four Championships – and lost a fifth to the Wings in a low-scoring defensive game. This is one reason Bartley was so well-respected – not only because he led the Bandits to the only undefeated season in NLL history, but because he bucked the trend and built a team that was a defensive powerhouse rather than offensive, and was exceptionally successful doing it.

This is not to say that you don’t need a good defense to win, of course you do. And it’s not to say that you can’t win with a great defense and adequate offense. It’s just happened far more often in the past the other way around.