Shemenauer’s Random Thoughts: Game of the Year and Deadline Breakdown

My random thoughts…

Another week of action in the NLL, and man was it a week.  Three overtime games.  Perhaps the game of the year.  A bunch of results that got us no closer to figuring out who’s making the playoffs.  And while it wasn’t a huge trade deadline, there was more movement than in many years.  Where do we begin?

Game of the Year?

There are many ways one can judge the game of the year, but to me, that game of the year came this weekend in Buffalo’s 15-14 overtime win over Saskatchewan. Despite 29 goals being scored, neither team had a lead of bigger than 1 the entire game.  I haven’t asked Graeme Perrow if that’s ever happened to that extent before, but I doubt it has. 

Six times in the second half alone, the team that got scored on tied it within the next minute. If you expand that a bit, all but one lead change was caught up in less than 2 minutes.

Then when you thought you would have an overtime that would be over within a minute or two, we had more than five minutes of overtime, with some great saves, some bad possessions and one really bad shot choice by Patrick Dodds, with over 20 on the shot clock, no offensive help on the floor and a shot straight in the middle of Matt Vinc’s chest.

On top of this, you had two highlight goals from Chris Cloutier and Josh Byrne in the first half, back to back, one of which was the #1 play in the SportsCenter Top 10.  All 14 Rush goals were scored at even strength or 6 on 5.

And you had Connor Farrell’s debut at the dot for the Bandits.  Bandit fans, used to Max Adler’s performances the last several years, were screaming for a faceoff specialist.  Farrell went 27 of 33 and not only had a significant impact on the game, but his faceoff wins were celebrated by Bandits fans louder than I’ve ever heard faceoff wins being celebrated.

It’s a tough loss for the Rush, but they shouldn’t look down on it for too long.  A young team went blow for blow with the defending champs.  That should be a call to action to keep that type of performance going.

For the Bandits, it’s a huge confidence win, but, the defensive and goaltending concerns remain.  Not too many teams can rely on getting scored on 14 times and hope to win.  The only team I can recall having success with that is the 2017 Swarm.

Oddly enough, the Roughnecks and Swarm were playing at the same time in a fantastic game in which the Swarm came from behind for a 13-12 win in OT, off a late goal from Andrew Kew to tie things with under a minute to go and a Zack Miller goal 4 minutes into OT to win it.

Its crazy to think that if the ball bounces Calgary’s way, the two of them are a game apart and Calgary has the tiebreak.  Instead, Georgia is becoming more likely to wrap up a playoff spot and Calgary needs to quickly turn things around before their playoff chances disappear.

Then there was the Sunday Funday between Panther City and Philly.  Full transparency, I didn’t see the first three quarters of this one as my sone was playing in his soccer city finals.  I was shocked to see a scoreline of 5-2 Panther City when I turned it on late in the 3^rd.  Twice Panther City appeared to be pulling away with 3 goal leads and twice Philly caught them, including two goals in the final 64 seconds to tie things up.  You have to give it to the goalies though for putting on one heck of a show. 

I felt terrible for Zach Higgins who came up with massive save after massive save in overtime only to take the loss off a Phil Caputo rebound 4:31 into OT.  

By the way, the shocking ending to Who Ya Gott this week was amazing.  Going into the Sunday game, 18 players were all 7-0 in their picks, and all 18 picked Philly in the final game.  I don’t know how that happened, but just wow.

The Trade Deadline

I know NLL fans were hoping for a trade deadline in which numerous trades occur like they do in the NHL and MLB.  It just never happens in the NLL, mostly because of what I discussed last week, compensatory draft picks.  It was also in part because of a few results last weekend which kept some teams’ hopes alive.  While the sources I spoke with said there were more deals being thrown around, the asking prices were just too high in many cases.

One of the interesting aspects we saw was the Rush re-signing Robert Church for another year.  To be honest, this one surprised me because I would have guessed with near certainty that he was headed for free agency and that Vancouver would be making a major push to sign him.  There were two reasons why Robert Church was never traded.  

First is that the Rush are only a half game out of the playoffs at the moment, and they play the Riptide, who are in 8^th place at the moment, twice in the next two weeks.  The second is that any team wanting to get Church would need to offer Derek Keenan something better than the #16 pick of the 2025 draft (the compensatory pick the Rush would have received if Church left in the offseason).

Instead, the Rush signed Church to an extension before the trade deadline, which gives Keenan the assurances that Church is indeed coming back and he doesn’t need to entertain offers.

What we did see instead was two trades which involved younger players nowhere near UFA status and two trades involving players that may or may not have warranted a 2^nd round compensatory pick if they signed elsewhere in August.

The Paul Dawson trade makes a ton of sense, in which Dawson and a 3^rd round pick were sent by Colorado to Buffalo in exchange for two second round picks. Colorado’s playoff hopes are effectively extinguished, and had Dawson left, they wouldn’t have received any compensatory pick because Dawson wasn’t there for 2 years.  On Buffalo’s end, they pick up a lot of toughness on defense that is one of their weaknesses, and it comes at the cost of a little draft capital, which Steve Dietrich has a lot of in the next two years.

The Chris Wardle trade is a bit of a head scratcher.  I suspected Wardle would be traded, but two things surprise me here.  One is that San Diego wanted him when they have a ton of offensive talent on the books already.  The second is that the Mammoth only received a conditional 3^rd round pick for him.  I’m not aware of what the condition is, and whether that pick upgrades or downgrades based on certain factors.

Albany acquired John Wagner and a 4^th round pick from Vegas in exchange for Cam Badour and a 1^st round pick.  Albany was looking to pick up a few pieces at the deadline and was fairly active and the 26-year-old Wagner will be a good fit for them.  For Vegas, who like Colorado has slim to no chance of making the playoffs, they pick up a 1^st round draft pick, which is important because Vegas doesn’t have a 1^st round pick in 2024 or 2025 (both sent to Toronto for Rob Hellyer).

The final trade surprised many of us in which Philly traded Taggart Clark and a 2^nd round pick (originally the Seals pick) to New York for a 1^st round pick (originally belonging to Colorado) and a 3^rd round pick.  

The naming convention did confuse some fans, so perhaps a quick explanation.  Colorado and San Diego weren’t involved in the trade.  New York owned Colorado’s 1^st round pick this offseason as a part of the trade that sent Tyson Gibson to the Mammoth previously.  The San Diego second rounder that Philly sent to New York is an interesting one in that its been traded for the fourth time.  San Diego had originally sent it to Philly to acquire Brett Hickey.  Philly then traded it to Vancouver as a part of the Mitch Jones trade.  Vancouver sent it back to Philly as a part of a pick swap between the teams at the 2023 draft.  And now Philly has sent it to New York.

Rich Lisk must have a lot of faith in Taggart’s abilities and what he has seen so far because Taggart was selected with the last pick of the opening round (#23) in 2022.  The pick the Riptide are surrendering is Colorado’s pick, which at the moment appears to be a top 5 pick, although its possible this could land anywhere from #1 to #7.  Keeping in mind that Taggart will be closer to home when the Riptide move to Ottawa next year and I won’t be surprised to see the Black Bears pick up more guys from the Ottawa region in the offseason.  For Philly, the first round draft pick is a huge score.  According to Adam Levi, Paul Day didn’t want to part with Clark, but the first round pick was too enticing to say no.

Speaking of the Black Bears, this weekend one of the guys in the group chat reminded me that the initials of the Black Bears are OBB.  Now I can’t get Naughty By Nature out of my head.  “You down with OBB?”

The Playoff Race

There are still 6 weeks to go in the NLL season and a lot has still to be decided, but we can now start to group teams into a handful of buckets, barring any major winning or losing streaks.

You have your top 3 who are all pretty much guaranteed to be in the playoffs, and barring a massive setback, are hosting a first-round playoff game.  Those three are Toronto at 11-2, Albany at 10-3 and San Diego at 9-4.  There are scenarios where Toronto will clinch a playoff spot next weekend.  Georgia is getting close to being in this group at 8-6, but there’s a large pack behind them that can catch the Swarm.  Toronto’s resilience though is to be admired given that they keep on winning despite an IR list so long, Jamie Dawick should consider adding a rehab clinic to the TRAC to save time.

You have a group of four at the bottom that are effectively eliminated from the playoffs barring a miracle in Philly at 4-7, Vegas at 4-8, Colorado at 4-9 and Vancouver at 3-9.  Its tough to think that if Philly had beaten Panther City in overtime this past weekend, they’re probably changing from being a seller to being a buyer at the trade deadline.

Then there’s the pack in the middle, who are going to be battling it out for four, possibly five playoff spots if the Swarm start to slide.  Halifax (7-6), Buffalo (6-6), Panther City (6-6), New York (6-7), Rochester (5-6), Calgary (5-7) and Saskatchewan (4-6).  You have to keep the Rush in this group because they still have 8 games remaining.  Their next 6 games are New York back to back, Georgia, Philly and Calgary back to back, so they truly have their own destiny in their hands.

Just in the upcoming week alone, Sask plays New York, Panther City plays Halifax and Philly plays Georgia.  With all of these teams so compact in the standings, every game is important, but these head-to-head games are doubly important.

The benefit of the unified standings is right there.  In the “March to May”, you have 7 teams battling for four spots, and its going to be beautiful (until I have to figure out all the tiebreak scenarios).

Until next time…