Overview:
Evan Schemenauer is a Saskatoon based NLL writer. Random thoughts is a weekly column which outlines a wide variety of thoughts that Evan has on the NLL and lacrosse world!
The opinions in this column are Evan's personal thoughts. They do not reflect the opinions of other members of the LC Daily Staff.
My random thoughts…
Bandits Repeat
After a shaky start to the regular season which had many Bandits fans in disbelief, the Bandits can honestly say they were the best team in both the second half of the season and the playoffs when it counted the most. They swept the final over the Albany Firewolves winning 12-8 on Friday night and 15-13 on Saturday to win back-to-back NLL Cups.
There’s a lot of performances you can talk about this offseason, but there’s one name that I don’t think is getting enough attention is Chase Fraser. Here’s a guy that steps it up when it counts the most. Its easy for him to get lost in the shuffle with all of the offensive firepower that the Bandits have and he often draws the lesser matchups on defense. But does he ever take advantage of this when the spotlight is on. His five goals in game 2, including an underhand beauty that had Pat Gregoire calling him an absolute sicko propelled the Bandits to victory.
But this isn’t the first time that’s happened. Go back to the 2021 PLL final. Here you have a situation where Josh Bryne, Dhane Smith, Wes Berg and company are going to draw the top matchups, and Fraser simply knew where to be at the right time to bury. He had four goals that game, and pretty much all of them, he was left all alone. That’s just awareness of where to be when the defence has their attention elsewhere.
Then you have to keep in mind the play of Connor Farrell and Paul Dawson, two pickups later in the season that seemed to turn the tide for the Bandits. Farrell’s stats won’t blow your mind, but the key was he kept things relatively even at the dot against top talent. That was key for the Bandits in their turnaround. They were getting slaughtered early in the season at the dot, and when they had that many fewer possessions, it was harder to win tight games. Dawson simply gave the Bandits a big body on the back end that could neutralize in tight. If you let Matt Vinc see shots from distance, he’s going to have an easy time.
You also can’t say enough about Dhane Smith and his performance in game 1, where he had 11 points. The only Bandits goal he didn’t get a point on was the empty netter at the end. Josh Byrne was Josh Byrne, although I will say I was a little surprised he was the MVP given Smith’s performance in game 1 and Matt Vinc’s performance all playoffs long.
Speaking of Vinc, I was disappointed by the post-game interview where twice the reporter tried to ask Vinc if that was his last game or he was coming back for one more, and twice Vinc didn’t take the bait. Vinc might be in his forties, but he’s still on top of his game. Its his right to decide when its enough, and to decide that just minutes after winning another title is not going to happen. There’s been no question for some time that he’s the greatest goaltender in the history of the NLL. But the shocking stat that remains, he’s played 18 seasons in this league and been to the finals 9 times. Just amazing.
As for Albany, you can’t be too disappointed when you go from a 3-win season to the finals in one year. Keep in mind, they have Dyson Williams coming next year too to give that team even more firepower. The fact was Albany needed to win these games in the 9-8 range and they just couldn’t stop the onslaught. The 12-8 scoreline in game 1 is perhaps a little slanted in that it was a 9-7 game with under 5 minutes to go.
If there’s one guy in these finals who optimized giving it his all, its John Wagner. What a late season acquisition he was. He twisted his ankle badly in the first half of game 1, and still managed to get out on the floor about 30 minutes later, sacrificing his body any way he could. Then game 2, he made a leap to block a shot, and ended up getting hit in the back of the neck. What a warrior.
There’s been talk about a Bandits dynasty, and I’m not quite ready to go there yet. To me, a team needs to win 3 or 4 titles in a short stretch to be a dynasty. But if Matt Vinc returns, the Bandits will be the odds on favourite to three-peat come November.
Lacrosse After the NLL Season
Now that the NLL season is over, I’ll have to find ways to get my fix elsewhere while we wait for November for the NLL training camps to get back underway. Being in Saskatchewan, you have fewer options to get your fix. There is still the NCAA tournament, but that ends on Monday. I do try to watch at least one PLL matchup per week.
Even as I write this on a Monday night, we got to see a free webcast of the MSL season opener between Six Nations and Owen Sound. Yes, the game became a blowout halfway through the second period. Yes, the internet feed froze up several times. Yes, the commentators got North Stars and Northmen confused several times. But you know what, we still got to see a free broadcast of high-level box lacrosse. And that’s more than we can say about most leagues.
Vasyli and I managed to take in the final two games of the Saskatchewan SWAT vs Calgary Mounties Jr A triple header. The Mounties got the three-game sweep on the weekend, with 8-4, 11-8 and 11-9. Its not an ideal start for the SWAT, but let’s put things into perspective. Last year games like this were lost by 10+. On Sunday night, they came out flat in the opening period. They were down 7-1 and while the scoreboard said they had seven shots on goal, I counted three. But they didn’t give up and if they had another 5 minutes, they might have just caught up.
The SWAT actually had a lead for a short while in the game on Monday afternoon which made many nervous, but a 6-0 Mounties run in the 2nd was the ultimate difference. There’s still a lot the SWAT have to work on, namely, turnovers. On Monday alone, they had a turnover to shot ratio in excess of 2 to 1 and they were outshot badly, just like they were on Sunday night, with the bulk of both games the Mounties SOG being double that of the SWAT.
So why the tight games? At times the Mounties played down to their opponent. But also, there was the play of Crosby Ratt. He’s a 16-year-old rookie goaltender that was stealing the show and keeping the SWAT in the games at times single handed. A 16-year-old Sask goalie that has the ability to steal games…. sound familiar?
Let’s not anoint Ratt as the next great thing out of Saskatchewan after three games, but if he keeps up playing the way he did this weekend, he has the ability to keep the SWAT in games and let them play spoiler. The RMLL website has his save percentage for the weekend at 0.916 (he was not in goal for the opening period on Sunday night but came in relief late in the 1st).
Unfortunately, the SWAT only have two home weekends left, and the next one isn’t until late June, so watching live lacrosse that doesn’t involve Vasyli will be tough to find.
If your answer is there’s Sr B to watch in Saskatoon, I’m just going to avoid that mess. You may have seen the social media post from Jeff Shattler which had many scrambling to see what was happening. The short of it is that some teams in the Prairie Gold Lacrosse League, Saskatchewan’s Sr B league, are taking exception to Standing Buffalo bringing in NLL players, to the point where there’s been threats to goon games up. It unfortunately led to Standing Buffalo trying to bring in protection of their own and everything is a mess.
As much as you might hate that there’s NLL players in the league, that under no circumstances should be any reason to take liberties and drive players and fans away from the league. Its also not an excuse to try to bring additional protection in and make things even worse.
The reality is that Saskatchewan has had no representation at the President’s Cup for several years now and that won’t change if teams keep the status quo. Oddly enough, Standing Buffalo only holds a half game lead in the standings at the moment. Assuming they win the league title, the chances that Standing Buffalo gets into the semi-finals at the President’s Cup are slim. But they’re not going to get blown out like previous Saskatchewan teams have. Some might be angry that a new team might win the league.
But for everyone’s sake, things need to improve as a whole.
What’s on the Calendar
The next several weeks are one of the rare times that NLL GM’s can take a few weeks off and refresh before a number of things start to kick in. Yes, training camps don’t begin until late October, but quite a bit happens between now and then.
First up is free agency. GM’s will have to begin the process in late June or early July of getting large portions of their rosters re-signed. Players that are restricted free agents aren’t super critical to get re-signed, but you never know when another team will sign an RFA to an offer sheet and things get exciting quickly. If an RFA gets signed to an offer sheet by another team, his current team has 72 hours to match the offer sheet, which almost always happens, so little action normally takes place. But you never know when you’ll see an attempt similar to what we saw when Curt Styres tried to poach Doug Jamieson from the then New England Black Wolves with an offer sheet.
Prior to July 31, you’ll hear some UFA’s re-sign with their existing team and a handful of players being franchised so they can’t go anywhere. Each team has one franchise tag, and if its offered to any player that’s 33 or older, the player can reject the franchise tag. This is normally a great tool for GM’s, but when you look at Calgary with two big name UFA’s this offseason in Del Bianco and Currier, they need to sign one of them early so they have the franchise tag for the other.
Come August 1st, we get into the thick of free agency and we’ll all be tied close to our phones to see who is on the move to where.
Then in September we have the entry draft. Perhaps the big pre-draft news we’ll all be looking to hear about is whether Brennan O’Neill will play in the NLL. If he does decide to do so, it will be a big disruption to the draft. He hasn’t played much box lacrosse, but his power game is so well designed to play the box game. The question then becomes as to which GM with an early draft pick is willing to take the gamble on him. I guarantee that many GM’s will be making the phone call to O’Neill to get a gauge on his interest.
If there’s a best-case scenario for O’Neill, it might be Toronto. He gets to play alongside Tom Schreiber who can help guide him from being a field player to a box player. He gets to learn under Mark Matthews and Corey Small (assuming both are back next year) and develop to eventually take over once one of them retires. If he lives in market, he has access to the TRAC to train whenever he wants and a whole slough of top talent and coaches to learn from. I won’t be shocked if O’Neill decides he wants to give the NLL a try, its Jamie Dawick with the #2 overall pick that takes him.
And then on top of WLA, MSL, the Minto, Founders, Presidents and Mann Cups to watch, we get the bonus of watching the world championships in Utica, and also, the first ever women’s world championship.
As for me, I’m going to take some time off until we get closer to NLL free agency and also celebrate finishing school for a bit. I shall see you then.
Until next time…