Schemenauer’s Random Thoughts: Playoff Time

My random thoughts…

What a week it was to end the NLL season.  Foolish me thought that I could get to work on my final exam on Sunday afternoon because the game was probably going to mean nothing.  Oops.

I apologize this week’s Random Thoughts came out late.  It was my final for all the school I was taking, a lengthy case study where finite details mattered.  I’ll say this, a number of people asked how I could go through all those possibilities and figure it all out.  I had lots of practice the last six months.  The regulations in place for sustainability reporting are far more complex than putting together any set of tiebreaker scenarios.  Now that the final is submitted, back to focusing on lacrosse.

This week we learned to never give up and a number of teams thinking what could have been.  Where was that one thing that went wrong that they’re on the outside looking in.

The Clock Strikes Midnight

For some time as I began the process of looking at potential tiebreaks, I began with the premise that I wasn’t going to consider the Warriors (the first few weeks) because the odds of them making the playoffs were so remote.  There was no way I, or pretty much any analyst, could have possibly thought a 2-8 team would go on a 6-1 run and get themselves into a position to make the playoffs.

Unfortunately for the Warriors, the clock struck midnight and they had to leave the ball in a 16-9 loss to the Seals.  Part of the misfortune that the Warriors faced was that the Seals laid an egg playing in Saskatchewan the week before, which somewhat forced their hand to field their top lineup and get things back on track as a two-game losing streak going into the playoffs would have been demoralizing for the Seals.

The turning point came soon after Vancouver made a comeback to tie the game at 5 with just over 2 minutes to go into the half.  If Vancouver could have gotten to the dressing room with that momentum, the game may have played out differently.  But three goals in the last two minutes for the Seals followed by two goals for the Seals in the opening two minutes of the second half ultimately spelled the demise for Vancouver.

When you look at what ifs for the Warriors, it comes down to two games in overtime.  One where a goal was disallowed in overtime on a very tight, but correctly overturned call for a crease violation, and another very controversial finish in Georgia where the camera angle just wasn’t available to tell the referees when the shot clock hit zero.  It was probably not a goal, but it wasn’t conclusive in the timeframe the referees had to review it.  If either of those situations change, the Warriors either are in, or have another chance to win that extra game they ultimately needed.

Despite this, there has to be a lot of positive vibes coming out of Vancouver this season.  The Warriors and the Stealth before them were a team that made the playoffs once in the last decade, and most of those seasons, they weren’t close to making it.  The momentum they’re carrying forward, the youth injection they have and that Aden Walsh is a goalie they can reasonably rely upon for the first time in a while.  Plus, the attendance is way up this year.  Surprisingly it was on the way up when the team was in their losing streak.

With the increased revenue, we shall see if the pocketbook is a little more open once free agency begins.  There’s a number of west coast free agents that will be available this offseason.  More on that in a bit, but things are looking up for the Warriors.

Curtain Call in Nassau

With the Warriors’ loss, the odds catapulted for the Riptide.  It wasn’t win and you’re in, but it was close. Playing your last game in New York (unless you make it to the semi-finals) against an Albany team that lost five straight, you had to like the Riptide’s odds.  Unfortunately, when your back is against the wall, against a team that is on a losing streak with something to prove and needing a win for a home playoff game, simply put, you need to start on time.  The Riptide were down 5-0 in the opening quarter and the game was never close after that.

Oddly enough New York was kept alive that night with wins by Toronto and Calgary, but Rochester would shut the door on their playoff hopes on Sunday afternoon.

This Riptide team now becomes the Black Bears in Ottawa for a new future.  That future will be an interesting one.  On one hand, you go into Ottawa with Jeff Teat who will be the best player in the league for years to come and you have the opportunity to bring in some free agents that are from the Ottawa region that would love the opportunity to get the team up and running on a positive note.  But you still have a team with goaltending question marks.  

Come December, we will “bear witness” to see what the Black Bears’ future looks like.

Not In A Rush

Going into this season, there still weren’t high hopes for the Rush.  They knew it was a work in progress while their relatively young team built for the future.  Keeping in mind they have Levi Anderson and Josh Zawada on the draft list, the expectation this year was to hopefully make the playoffs but expect bigger results in the next few years.

Yet the Rush found themselves in a situation where they knew by opening faceoff that if they could beat the Toronto Rock, they were in the playoffs.  One of the question marks was whether the Rock would rest bodies in preparation for the playoffs, but they did no such thing, hoping to carry forward the momentum of the regular season into the playoffs.  The Rush would fall just short 12-11 on a game winner by former Rush superstar, Mark Matthews with just over 5 minutes remaining.

I would love to know who the Rush fans were on that Matthews possession on the game winner who decided it was a good idea to start booing Matthews whenever he touched the ball on that possession.  If you notice after scoring the goal, Matthews pointed back at the crowd.  A group of fans poked the bear, and they lost.

The lucky part for the Rush is that their free agent list is awfully short.  Mike Messenger, Mike Triolo and Mike Mallory.  The Rush can franchise Messenger if necessary.  While I don’t think Triolo goes anywhere, if Triolo leaves in free agency, the players coming through the pipeline won’t put them in any major disadvantage.  One of the items that will be interesting to watch is what happens with the goaltending carousel.  Does Ottawa make a deal to pick up Tom Kiazyk?  Does Laine Hruska head elsewhere as a UFA?  As much as fans want their local hero to play at home, Laine I believe is finished university this year, has a long-time partner living in Ontario, is headed out to Ontario to play Sr A this summer again.  Perhaps Rochester or Ottawa take a stab at him.

The biggest issue off the floor for the Rush will be convincing fans to make it back to the SaskTel Centre next year after a third consecutive season missing the playoffs.  A playoff appearance would have helped that out.  They came close and you could see how exhausted the players were when the final buzzer sounded having given everything they had to try to make it to the post season.

Calgary Stampede

The Roughnecks were out of the playoff picture due to tiebreaks not going their way, but played spoiler for the Warriors in a 11-9 comeback win over Panther City after being down 7-3 at the half.  You have to appreciate that more than 10,000 fans attended the game despite being eliminated.

The reason I mention Calgary is that a tumultuous offseason awaits them.  I mentioned this back when the last CBA was signed between the NLL and NLLPA, the changes in the UFA rules were going to hurt Calgary the most.  The new rules permit anyone whose contract has expired and has played 8 seasons to become a UFA.

Calgary’s unofficial UFA list consists of Christian Del Bianco, Zach Currier, Josh Currier, Logan Schuss, Dan Taylor, Thomas Hoggarth, Shane Simpson, Jeff Cornwall and Steve Fryer.  That list alone is nearly half their active roster.  Cornwall can reject the franchise tag.  Fans can be certain that Cornwall will receive phone calls from Vancouver and San Diego come August 1^st. The Roughnecks really need to get one of Zach Currier and CDB signed before August 1^st so in the worst case scenario, they have their franchise tag for the other.

With their former head coach in Vancouver and having a lot of success under him, the big question mark this summer becomes how many guys Mike Board can convince to stay and how many Curt Malawsky can convince to come closer to home.

Rochester Rolling

With what happened this weekend for Rochester, I think back to the Royal Rumble back in the mid 90’s where Shawn Michaels won the Royal Rumble entering the ring at #1.  That’s pretty much what Rochester had to do this weekend.  They had to enter the ring first, eliminate their opponent, then stay alive for the next day while their opponents were one by one throw their opponents over the top rope, then finish their final opponent off having been in the ring the longest and considerably more tired.

If you noticed last week, Rochester was the shortest and simplest explanation.  There was only one route in.  They had to win twice and Saskatchewan, Vancouver and New York all had to lose.  Given Rochester’s slide down the stretch, as much as their chances were 3.13%, to expect Rochester to win once, let alone twice was a stretch.

I didn’t spend much time on it given all those factors, especially with the complexities of the teams above them and I didn’t expect that with a playoff spot on the line, all three of the teams above them would lose.  I should have learned better from excluding Vancouver earlier on when they still have a sliver of hope.

The clear difference this weekend was the return of Rylan Hartley.  Most games this season Rochester had to rely on scoring 15+ because their goaltending wasn’t strong enough to get them wins with just 11 goals.  I’ll say this though.  I’m not comfortable watching Hartley in net.  I fully understand that he’s been medically cleared.  But I still vividly remember him getting hit with a shot in the head in overtime and somehow being allowed to continue.  I remember the shot he took earlier this year and was instantly sick to my stomach.  Every time Georgia shot top cheddar on Friday night, I winced, hoping he wasn’t going to get hit again in the head.  I don’t know if I’ll ever feel fully feel comfortable watching him playing again, knowing what could happen.

The flipside to Rochester’s 12-3 win on Sunday was the resignation on Monday of Paul Day as head coach of the Wings.  He will stay on as the General Manager.  As I stated about a month ago, focusing on one of the two duties but not both would be beneficial for Day.  Luckily most Philly fans were very receptive to this, but some still had some sad things to say about this.  For those people, making an amazing trade at the deadline and picking up the first overall pick isn’t enough, so nothing will ever be good enough.

NLL Unboxed

The NLL had announced the Unboxed series of “teams” near the start of the season, and outside of the neutral site game in Laval earlier this year, we really hadn’t heard much else.  The league announced that finally the Tampa program is proceeding.  I was asked a few times is this something to be celebrated or not considering how long it took to get moving.

I understand the concept at its core.  Unless you have people exposed to trying out lacrosse, its difficult to turn them into fans, especially when those people live in markets where you don’t have a team. There’s a reason you see Paul Rabil showing up in a number of cities and showing kids how to play lacrosse in an urban street or park.  But the amount of time that has lapsed between when the concept was announced and the first program to begin has lost the momentum in the minds of many existing fans.

Despite it taking time, I think this first rollout of Unboxed is missing one critical element, a face of the league people can rally around in each market.  When the PLL holds these events, Paul Rabil is normally around, and if he’s not, his players are.  Say what you will about Rabil, his personality draws attention.  If you look at Sask Lacrosse, they have their Try Lacrosse program.  A large number of these Try Lacrosse events are hosted by Jeff Shattler, not only a former Rush player, but a full-time Saskatchewan resident since soon after starting to play for the Rush and a key face with the First Nations communities in the province.  Shattler has a good social media following and is keen to highlight his trips on it.

In my opinion, the NLL needs a face in the league to get it to work the way it needs to.  The first name that comes to mind, if he’s available, is Andrew Kew, who used to live in the Tampa market.  Yes, it’s a bit of a financial investment for the league, but that financial investment is critical for the program to work.  I think if its appropriately backed with faces of the NLL in each of these markets leading the effort, the program could work.  But if its something behind the scenes, I don’t know if it has much of a chance.

Bring on the Playoffs

Now we’re down to 8 teams.  In as few as 3 weeks and as many as 5, we will have our champion.  Several fans are confused over the timing, but an email sent by the league to the media somewhat clarified how the playoff schedule will work.

This first round is one and done.  Just like the NCAA basketball and NFL playoffs, you win, you advance.  You lose, you go home.  The semifinals and finals are best of 3 series, but what is clear is that the semifinal round, games one and two will take place next week with teams travelling between cities that weekend.  Also, if both semifinal series are swept, the NLL may move the finals forward one week.  This is smart so there isn’t a loss of momentum during the playoffs with a weekend with no games.

The interesting part of this is that Panther City plays San Diego this week, and the winner of that game is playing the winner of Albany and Halifax.  That’s quite the flight in-between games in any sense, whereas on the opposite side of the draw, Toronto, Rochester and Buffalo are all within a short driving distance.

This week alone, we have the favourite Toronto Rock playing a suddenly resurgent Rochester Knighthawks.  We have a Panther City team that with be without Jonathan Donville going into San Diego, facing a Seals team that has a history of losing first round games being considerable favorites.  We have a red-hot Buffalo Bandits hosting a Georgia Swarm team that I haven’t been able to predict well all year and won’t begin to do so now.  And we have a Halifax team with Ryan Benesch still looking for his first NLL ring, heading into Albany, who while winning this weekend, lost five games in a row just before this.

And the beautiful part is the games are all spread out so you won’t need more than one device to watch them all.

Before I Go…

First, a big shout out to Bandits Mafia for showing up big time in Vegas.  They were pretty much as loud as the Desert Dogs fans and it was great to see it.  As much as some Desert Dogs fans were annoyed, the atmosphere for a game at the end of the season where the Desert Dogs were already eliminated was fantastic to see.

Also, while the playoff scenarios were playing out, Vegas announced the move to the recently renamed Lee’s Family Forum in Henderson, a neighboring city in the greater Vegas area.  It is located next to the Green Valley casino and resort so there’s still plenty of action next door.  Its not the Strip, but the move gets the Desert Dogs into a facility that is likely less to lease.  It has a capacity at 5,600 that is more likely to make the building full on a regular basis, and it avoids the Strip, which locals avoid unless its absolutely necessary.  It is a 40-minute drive each way for those fans living in Summerlin, but its still a welcome move.  It’s a very new arena and was built to house the Henderson Silver Knights, VGK’s minor league affiliate.

And finally, it was an honour to be listed on the ballot for the Tom Borrelli Award this year for NLL media person of the year.  Getting that far is an accomplishment.  I think back to when Random Thoughts was a concept of simply helping Rush fans that were new to the game to better understand things as questions were being repeated on a regular basis.  I could have never imagined it would be read by so many and that it has kept going for this long.  A big thanks to the readers that continue to digest whatever is floating around in my head each week.

Until next time…