Schemenauer’s Random Thoughts – December 27

Week three of the NLL season is in the books, and finally we had a return to normalcy.  During week two in Who Ya Gott (my NLL picks contest), those with the most random picks won.

In week three we had 42 people go 3-0.  In fact, eight people had the tiebreak exactly correct.  I of course, continued my unlucky streak, being one goal off the tiebreak.  What to take away from this week, well, a few things that came to mind.

The Anatomy of a Trade

It has come up several times the past few weeks as to whether the Riptide should trade Jeff Teat.  There’s no doubt the Riptide are once again struggling out the gate and are now an astounding 0-11 in the month of December in their history.  While a trade for Teat still seems like a long shot, the question in my mind wasn’t should it happen, but what would it take to actually occur.  

To put it in a hockey context, you’re the Oilers, and you’re trading away Wayne Gretzky circa 1981.  Where does the asking price begin?

If we go back to the 80’s and 90’s with hockey trades, those deals amounted more to purchases, where the crux of the “trade” was a boatload of cash.  I’m going to hope that it wouldn’t be the case here, so failing that, what would a Jeff Teat trade even look like?

We first need to consider what the Riptide need, which is where the thought of a Teat trade is even possible.  The Riptide aren’t in a position where they could obtain one guy and all their problems are solved.  They need to fill a number of holes, so, you need a lot of pieces.  Trading one blockbuster player for another isn’t going to help the Riptide here.

The other issue is that unlike the NHL or MLB, you don’t have stacks and stacks of prospects that if you were to trade away multiple players, that you have guys behind them that can instantly fill in.  You might work out a trade where the Riptide obtains two good top 5 forwards or D on that team, but to go to three active top 5’s, that would be too much.  

What this means is, whomever could pull off a Teat trade would need to either have draft capital, or existing players on their draft lists.  And those draft picks have to be in the next two years.  This isn’t like when the Rush traded Corey Small for a pair of firsts back in 2015, and the Rush had so much draft capital at that time, they could afford to wait 4.5 years for the second of those picks to occur.  

The Riptide need those picks to be soon, especially because the Riptide don’t have their first, second or third round picks this September.  Buffalo owns the first two and Colorado owns their third round pick.  They do have Colorado’s first round pick and Panther City’s second.  The Riptide also don’t have their first or second round pick in 2025, although they do hold Panther City’s second that year.

The next question becomes who has enough draft capital over the next two years to pull the deal off if they wanted to.  That answer now comes down to three teams, Georgia, Buffalo and Toronto.  While these all come with problems, keep in mind, we’re simply hypothesizing here. 

Both Georgia and Buffalo have three first round picks and two second round picks in 2024.  Both have a first and two seconds in 2025.  Georgia’s firsts in 2024 are their own, Philadelphia’s and Panther City’s, plus their own and Vegas’ second.  Buffalo’s firsts in 2024 are their own, Rochester’s and New York’s, along with their own and New York’s second.  Toronto has their own and Vegas’ first round picks in both 2024 and 2025, as well as their own second in 2025.

This isn’t to say that all these teams need Teat.  For Toronto, Mark Matthews isn’t an option to trade and at Small’s age, he’s an unlikely acquisition.  But their two firsts from Vegas are certainly an attractive option.  If Buffalo acquired Teat, that’s somewhat counterintuitive because it takes away from the production of Josh Byrne.  Georgia could use Teat, but John Arlotta loves draft picks more than life itself.  Outside of these teams, I don’t see who has the capital available to take a shot at Teat.

The interesting part of the poll I put on Twitter was that 40% of voters said the Riptide shouldn’t take an offer of three firsts, a second and a proven lefty (and in one case a former 100-point scorer) for Teat.  I’m certain in the minds of those people if I said the price was 5 firsts, they would still say its not a good deal.

Now the Riptide could shock us all and beat the Rock this week and then the trade rumours or the calls for coaches to be fired go away for a few weeks.  But one comment that came around was that Teat was the only reason to go watch a Riptide game in person. 

I disagree.  The Riptide haven’t drawn well with Teat.  They need a winning team to draw.  If that means getting some ammunition to support the few positives they have, then that’s what they need.  If that’s trading their star piece to get a bunch of pieces that will help more, then that’s what they need.

Scary Moment in Rochester

Rochester’s 13-11 win over Vancouver on Saturday night left them tied with Albany for the league lead.  If anyone had these two tied for the league lead at Christmas, they’re flat out lying to you, although I did feel that Rochester was underrated coming into this season. 

Back when Vegas held their expansion draft, they made a deal for Vegas to draft Riley Hutchcraft from Toronto and then trade him to the Knighthawks.  At the time there was a huge question mark in goal for the Knighthawks.  Rylan Hartley had come off the prior season suffering from two consecutive concussions, and you never know how any player is going to come back from a concussion, especially a goalie.

The first concussion Hartley suffered was outright scary, and a bit of a wake-up call for the NLL.  He took a shot off the head in overtime.  He headed to the bench but was sent back out to keep playing.  No, overtime isn’t an ideal time for your backup goalie to have to head into the game, but Hartley should have never been let back into that game. 

Around 3 weeks later, Hartley was cleared to come back, only to take another shot off the head in warmups and that was the end of his season.

We didn’t know if we would ever see him back, but the following season, there he was.  I’m not a concussion specialist, so how Hartley was feeling and how he was cleared each time isn’t for me to say whether or not it should have happened.  But there was always the uneasy feeling of could it happen again. 

And then in the third quarter on Saturday night, it happened.  Hartley went into his trademark splits anticipating a low shot and it catches him in the mask, rolls into the net and Hartley is down immediately.  Those that follow him knew immediately what this meant, and to watch him being carried off was a sad sight to see.

When the transaction wire came out today, Hartley is listed as on the IR.  Not the season ending IR just yet, but I wouldn’t expect him to be on the season ending IR even if that’s what eventually happens.  Like I said before, concussions are tricky, and to know just how bad the damage is this early is impossible.  

Have we seen the last of Rylan Hartley? Only time will tell and I don’t expect too many details to be shared readily.  What I do know is that if Hartley returns, I’m going to be scared watching him play because if this happens again, how much permanent damage will occur?

Luckily the Knighthawks have Hutchcraft to lean on, and he has all three of Rochester’s wins this season.  The insurance plan from a year and a half ago is now about to pay off.  You can be certain though that we won’t see Hartley for some time after Rochester made a trade to acquire Kevin Orleman.

Injury Woes in Colorado

When I saw the injury report for Colorado this past week, I wondered if soon enough it would be easier to list who was active for the Mammoth instead of who wasn’t available. In total, 8 players were listed on the injury report, and that doesn’t include Ryan Lee who is on the season ending IR, or Zed Williams and Jordan Gilles who were both serving suspensions. But if there was any good news, Dillon Ward was upgraded from the IR to questionable status, and in the end, was the starter on Friday night.

With this many injuries, you shouldn’t expect much out of Colorado given not only the quantity of the injuries, but the quality of the players involved. The problem though is with unified standings, as much as you’re injured, the losses still count as losses and the more that rack up, the further you’re behind with this new format.

Its even tougher when you now will not have the tiebreaker at the end of the season against Georgia, which is a team you might be battling with for one of the last playoff spots, and if it’s a multi-team tie, your 0-2 record against Georgia counts double in the tiebreaker scenarios.

Ward’s performance was concerning. He seemed to have difficulty pushing off to his left. He had a hard time going down to make stops. You have to wonder if that injury sustained in the PLL final has fully healed. If it hasn’t, was he rushed back? Ward has had stinkers in the past, but this wasn’t a stinker. This seemed to be an injury issue. The fact that Ward was in the cage until the bitter end in a 15-8 game didn’t make sense.

Granted, only scoring 8 times isn’t going to win you many games, and the offence is just as injured. But there has to be a quick turnaround for the Mammoth. They play the Warriors at home on Saturday. The Warriors are a team you have to expect to beat if you’re going to make the playoffs. If they lose this one, starting 0-3 isn’t the end of you, but you’re fighting an uphill battle for most of the season to get into the playoffs.

The Week Coming Up

There are a number of teams facing the possibility of starting the season 0-3 or 1-3 with a loss this weekend.  Saskatchewan, Vancouver, Vegas and Philly can all be 1-3.  Calgary, New York and Colorado can all start 0-3.  While Calgary and Vegas and Vancouver and Colorado play one another, if the favorites win again this weekend, you could start to see a significant divide amongst the frontrunners and those falling behind very quickly.

The Albany vs Saskatchewan game will be an interesting one.  Both teams are coming off a bye week.  For Albany that bye week couldn’t have come at a worse time when you’re on fire.  It’s a Sunday night game, on New Year’s Eve, with families being flown in to spend New Year’s with their significant others.  All of these factors could play into a range of possible outcomes that makes this game harder to predict than at first glance.

Georgia heads to Buffalo in a game where Brett Dobson has had both amazing games in net and a very disappointing game, facing a Matt Vinc that hasn’t been his normal spectacular self so far.  Rochester makes the long flight out to San Diego for what will be its first real test to see if its amongst the upper echelon in the league. 

You have a New York-Toronto game that could be the expected and time for changes, or could also be a total trap game with one team that is desperate facing one that may be overconfident (but yes, Toronto is my 9 game in Who Ya Gott).

But if we’ve learned anything, never, ever, think that any game is a certainty in this league.

Until next time…