Instead of the usual Awesome / Not Awesome format, I’m doing this just as mini (or not so mini) game reports. Since my Bandits @ Rock report was quite long, and then the game two reports got long as well, I split the semi-finals up into two articles, one for the Game Ones (Games One?) and one for the Game Twos.

Bandits vs Rock, Game 1

As a Rock fan, I can’t say this game was great. Not the game itself, not the noisy Bandits fans, not the final result, nothing, really. Even the traffic getting there wasn’t great. Well, Nick Rose was pretty good, and the Rock defense as a whole wasn’t bad, but compared to most of the rest of this season, even that wasn’t great.

But as an overall NLL fan, it was incredible. I have never seen so many jerseys from the visiting team in any sporting event I’ve ever been to. The percentage of Bandits fans in the crowd was at least 30%, and probably closer to to 50%. There were definitely sections (more than one) that were >75% Bandits fans, but it seemed that every section had at least a few rows or a couple of small groups. And they were LOUD. It was roughly as loud when the Bandits scored as when the Rock scored, though the latter had a pretty small sample size.

They had their jerseys, their hats, their flags, their signs, their B-O-X boxes on their heads, and of course, their chants. We heard them counting goals. They did the “B-O-X” chant when the Rock took a penalty. There was a lot of “Let’s go Bandits”. Rock fans chant “You can’t do that” when the opposing team takes a penalty, and the Bandits fans started doing that themselves when the Rock took penalties.

And they had a lot to cheer for. I thought the Bandits defense was the star of the show, even more than Matt Vinc himself. Not that Vinc wasn’t great, but many of his saves were on the types of shots he wanted to see, and many of the shots that he didn’t face were ones that were blocked or prevented entirely by the defense in front of him. The Bandits combined for 11 blocked shots in this game, compared to the Rock’s three. When you can keep the Rock offense to ZERO goals in the first half, you are not just doing something right, you’re doing everything right.

Combine that with a generally sloppy Rock offense, and you have a recipe for a low-scoring affair, on the Rock side of things, anyway. A lot of shots missed the net entirely. Mark Matthews has impressed me a lot this season, with his ability to effortlessly make no-look passes to teammates in front of him, behind him, or anywhere on the floor. But those passes were missing their targets a lot on Friday, and I don’t know if that’s Matthews just not being as accurate as usual or if it’s the Rock players not being where Matthews expected them to be.

Sam La Roue (#12) and Stephen Keogh (#28) from 2023

Kudos to Nick Rose and the Rock defense though, they did a pretty good job of keeping Dhane and Josh in check, at least as much as you can expect to. Byrne was kept to 1+4 while Smith had 1+3 but as per usual, when those guys are kept to relatively pedestrian numbers, the rest of the Bandits offense takes up the slack. Buchanan, Cloutier, MacKay, BRobinson, Fraser, and Weiss all had two or more points.

If I were to list a specific “Not Awesome” for this game, it would be in the second quarter when Tom Schreiber scored but as the crowd rejoiced that the Rock had finally scored, the refs (correctly) waved the goal off because of a Rock player with his toes in the crease. Play continued but before the crowd had really figured out that the goal didn’t count, Chris Cloutier had scored at the other end. Rather than the Rock getting on the board and cutting the lead to 2, they were still being shut out and now down by four. That play prevented a huge momentum shift and the Bandits just kept rolling from there.

FireWolves vs Seals, Game 1

Remember when the FireWolves started the season 6-0 and we all thought “damn, this team is for real!” and then they lost five straight near the end of the season and we seemed to forget? I have to admit that I kinda forgot, anyway. They did beat Halifax, but Doug Jamieson just stole that one, right? Well, if you forgot as I did, game one of the semis reminded you that the FireWolves are for real. They may not be a powerhouse “My god, this team is incredible” sort of team like the 2024 Rock, 2022-2024 Bandits, or 2014-2018 Rush, but if you underestimate them because of that, they will very likely beat you.

I wasn’t able to watch all of this game so I don’t have a lot to say about it. After his incredible performance last weekend, Doug Jamieson did fall back to earth a bit but he was certainly good enough. Alex Simmons continues to do amazing things because he’s too young to realize that they’re difficult. San Diego’s powerful offense was kept to only 39 shots on goal and after a back-and-forth first quarter, the Seals were only able to get back within one twice – and Albany scored within thirty seconds each time.

The scheduling of games one and two is interesting – the Seals and FireWolves played game 1 after the Bandits played in Hamilton and game 2 before the Rock played in Buffalo, but they had to travel over 4,600 km between the two while the eastern teams have to travel maybe 100 km.