Random Thoughts: Veterans Available, Calgary’s Summer and Rush Social

Its another NLL season and fans can start to get excited about seeing the best box lacrosse players in the world take to the floor again.  I’ll be honest, I was in a bit of a lull since the Mann Cup with evens in my life away from lacrosse, but watching the Toronto vs Philly exhibition game on Saturday night got me excited again. Welcome back to Random Thoughts.

The NLL enters a year where they lost our first team in over a decade in the Panther City Lacrosse Club, the New York Riptide moved to become the Ottawa Black Bears and Las Vegas moves to a different arena in Henderson.  Because of all the changes, the dispersal draft, two draft classes and a number of other items, this will be potentially a year to expect the unexpected.

Editors Note: If you are new to Random Thoughts, find the rest of them here.

Player Releases

As the training camp process plays out, there are always a few surprises on players getting cut.  Sometimes the cut players land on their feet somewhere else.  Sometimes they’re a street free agent for a while until a team has too many injuries.  And sometimes you just never get to see the player step on an NLL floor again.

There is a collision of issues this year that means that more veterans than normal were cut and rookies found it difficult to make their way onto a roster.  There are two big issues this season.  First is the dispersal draft.  With PCLC ceasing operations, every team has one or two extra players that they picked up in the dispersal draft.  That might not seem like much, but when you’re a veteran or rookie that is near the cut line, having those one or two extra players fighting for your job means its going to be that much more difficult to make the cut.

The other issue that rises this year is we are in the end game of players in the NCAA that have an extra year of eligibility.  For those not familiar, the 2020 NCAA season was cancelled due to COVID, the 2021 Ivy League season was also cancelled, and players had an extra year of eligibility beyond their normal four years.  When you’re offered an extra year of school, especially when you’re on a scholarship, most players opted for the extra year in the NCAA.  Players were still draft eligible after 4 years separated from high school, so you had numerous draft picks that wouldn’t be available until a year later ever since.  What makes this year different is if you started college in 2020 or 2021, your four years of eligibility expired in May, so you have both the freshmen classes of 2020 and 2021 coming into the NLL at the same time.

All of these extra players created a situation where teams will be moving on from some veterans to develop their young draft players, and some higher draft picks being released.  A perfect example is the Saskatchewan Rush, who normally only have 27 players in camp, having well in excess of thirty.  They have so many young players that they’ve opted to release Laine Hruska and go without a practice roster goaltender just so they can hold onto one additional rookie.  You have also seen a larger-than-normal number of players starting the season on the injured reserve, for which they have to be injured to be placed there, but any player on the IR doesn’t count towards your 25 player roster for the time being.

We have already seen Steve Fryer, Dan Lomas, Dan Taylor, Mitch Wilde, Josh Currier, Anthony Joaquim, Anthony Kalinich, and many others being released.  Multiple 2^nd round draft picks were also released.

The one pattern that appears to be consistent with the cuts so far is that teams are either holding onto their rookies more than their veterans.

More than ever, there will be a good crop of street free agents for teams to contact when inevitably players either get injured or simply just don’t work out and are released.

Calgary Holdouts

There’s no question that the team with the most changes to their lineup is the Calgary Roughnecks.  This shouldn’t be surprising given that just shy of half the Roughnecks roster from last year were eligible for free agency.  But what has happened has a lot of Roughneck fans worried.

The situation that developed started with the Roughnecks trading the rights to Zach Currier, along with a 1^st and 2^nd round draft pick for Curtis Dickson and a 4^th round pick.  The situation with Currier was that with Calgary needing the franchise tag to protect Christian Del Bianco, they couldn’t franchise Currier as well.  Had Calgary not made the trade, Currier would have been a UFA and Calgary would have potentially received a late 1^st round pick as compensation.

Then Del Bianco posted on Instagram that he had informed the Roughnecks that he wouldn’t sign with them this offseason.  Del Bianco is an interesting case in that because he started playing in the NLL when he was 19 years old, he had put in 8 years of service and was eligible to become a UFA.  Clearly any team is going to apply the franchise tag to a former NLL MVP.  But Del Bianco made it clear that between getting married and running his own business, he wanted to be closer to home. Del Bianco is self-employed with a contracting business that performs home renovations.  Being away from home is very real in that every day he misses while travelling to games is lost revenue for his business.

While a trade to Vancouver makes the most sense based on Del Bianco’s reasoning, it comes with a few problems.  First is that Vancouver doesn’t have the quality starting goaltender that Calgary would want as part of the return on Del Bianco.  Also, Vancouver is a team likely to be battling with Calgary for a playoff spot.  The return Calgary receives needs to make sense.  On the flipside, for Vancouver to give up multiple draft picks to get Del Bianco is something they won’t do.  Vancouver had a history of trading away all but one first round picks from 2009-2019, which led to depth issues and years spent outside the playoffs.

The only other team that makes any sense for Del Bianco to be traded to is San Diego.  San Diego is a further flight than Calgary, but it comes with a few key elements.  First, the Seals have a quality starter in Chris Origlieri.  Second, the Seals have the ability to sign Del Bianco to a deal that makes financial sense.  Until that happens, Del Bianco will be staying in game shape by playing for the Grizzlies in the ALL West.

If all this movement wasn’t enough, we then find out that Tyler Pace is also holding out, and It appears that like Del Bianco, this holdout is permanent.  Unlike Del Bianco, Pace is an RFA, which means that Calgary can match any offer he receives.

While Del Bianco has publicly stated that he will sit out the season if necessary and it appears that Pace will do the same, we have seen this happen before with Wes Berg.  Mike Board isn’t afraid to let players sit on the holdout or protected list for a full season.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen because having Del Bianco and Pace actively playing in the NLL is in the fans’ and the league’s best interest.

All of this likely won’t be settled soon.  In the meantime, the Roughnecks go forward with a 35 year-old Curtis Dickson, a 36 year-old Dane Dobbie, Jesse King, Haiden Dickson, Tanner Cook and Mathieu Gautier.  Their offense is better with Pace in the lineup, but they have depth if he isn’t around.  As for goaltending, the Roughnecks picked up Cam MacLeod in the dispersal draft, who was PCLC’s backup last season.  MacLeod is an interesting case in that he is coming off two fantastic performances at the 2023 and 2024 President’s Cup, but he only has 108 minutes of NLL experience.  If MacLeod can be the goalie he has been at the Prezzy, Calgary will be fine, but we just don’t have enough time in the NLL to evaluate whether that can translate just yet.

Social Media Headaches

There’s no doubt as to how critical a team’s social media strategy is for a team’s success.  In a league where revenue is highly dependent on ticket and merchandise sales, and where you have 6 months of the year with no games, keeping fans, even casual fans engaged, is important to continuing the revenue stream flowing.

We have seen teams that have been very engaged on social media and others where you have only a few posts per month during the offseason.  One of the teams that has high levels of posts is the Saskatchewan Rush.  

Let’s be very fair here.  There is a lot of content that the Rush produce that is very good, and especially when you want to know what’s happening with players in the offseason, or putting together videos of new draft picks, or having a final roster posted that those of us who care about who is active and who is on the practice roster spelled out quite easily, they do put out a lot of good content.  Cody Janzen, who handles the player and team related content, should be commended for the content he puts out.

However, in the social media world, its often the things you get wrong that get the most attention.  Unfortunately, the Rush had far too much negative publicity with their social media over the last year.  You will recall that when they rebranded a year ago, they held a contest to name their new mascot, with “Horny” being one of the options.  Doing that is one thing, but then when the name clearly wins, and then you try to find an alternate way not to name the mascot the winning name, its not good publicity.

This year there has been some significant errors made in their strategy the last little while.  The first mistake was producing a schedule announcement video in which college-aged young adults, who were clearly intoxicated, were asked to read out the games from letters on shot glasses, even going so far as one of the announcements coming from a women’s bathroom stall.  It was their attempt at putting a spin on the Tennessee Titans schedule announcement, and it failed miserably with both their core fans and with the community.

Then this past Sunday, they put out a video stating that they were “leaking” the team roster, only for their mascot Rowdy to go outside in the snow, drink a couple cans of beer, and pee in the snowbank.  It was a literal “what the hell.”  To make matters worse, after over a hundred negative comments on their Facebook page about the video, they doubled down the next day bragging about the star of the production.  It has become a social media team that has become tone deaf to its fan base.  Keep in mind, Saskatchewan has the highest rate of drunk driving per capita in Canada.

Leaking the roster pic.twitter.com/6aQvG9rzIS

— Saskatchewan Rush (@SaskRushLAX) November 24, 2024

If they think that shock posts get people engaged and it will sell tickets, its dead wrong.  The humour is aimed at very small demographic.  What it does is further alienate a season ticket base that has been continually declining for several years now.  If you need any evidence as to how ticket sales are going, one only needs to look as far as the seat map for any upcoming game.  My family’s season tickets are in the platinum level seats in Section T, straight across from the Rush bench.  The platinum seats in that section (rows 2 to 10), which are the most visible on the television feeds, are only 21% sold for the home opener as of the date I’m writing this.

The problems go beyond social media posts.  Gold level season tickets were deeply discounted this year, but not the platinum seats, the ones visible on camera angels.  Late last season platinum seats were sold for individual games at $25 when season ticket holders paid $60.  This pre-season, the team charged $20 to see an inter-squad game, which only a few hundred fans attended.  And the seats closest to the glass in several sections have been turned into party zones taking the fans in those sections further away from the action.

When I see core fans, those that bought season tickets all the way back in years one and two, coming to the decision that they aren’t renewing season tickets because they can’t stand the negative content that is being produced, its proof that there is such a thing as bad publicity.  Things need to turn around quickly.  I’m not expecting that we’ll see 15,000 fans in the building like we did between 2016 and 2018, but the team is at a stage where Rush games aren’t the place to be anymore.  Winning will help sales, but much more than winning is required.

Early Predictions

Here’s the way I see this season playing out (and I’ll probably get half of these wrong).

Team with the most upside – Vancouver.  The Warriors’ defence is just too good to ignore.  Dilks, Mydske, Beers, Bowering, Grant and Cornwall.  Goaltending remains a weak point, but if they work out a trade for Del Bianco, look out.  I do see the Warriors making the playoffs this year.

Team with the most downside – Calgary.  I debated this one a bit, but with Del Bianco and Pace holding out, Dickson and Dobbie not exactly young anymore, a very young defensive core that still needs to prove itself, and a starting goaltender with very little NLL experience, I think the Roughnecks are in for a rough go.

Team that most needs a big season – Las Vegas.  I almost put San Diego down here with an aging lineup that still hasn’t made the big show.  But Vegas is now in their third year.  They’ve had two rough years and are moving out to Henderson.  The team’s offence will be improved after picking Donville in the dispersal draft.  But they need more wins to keep the crowds coming back in what is quickly becoming an over-floored sports market.  At a minimum, they need to be in playoff contention near the end of the season.

My pick to win it all – Buffalo.  It might sound like a cop out pick, and yes, the third consecutive championship is always the most difficult to win, but I don’t see anyone that has improved enough to knock the Bandits off the throne.  They have the same core team.  They don’t have any weaknesses that I can see.  If father time doesn’t catch up to Matt Vinc, they’ll be just fine.

Jamie Dawick

Every year the Lacrosse Classified podcast interviews all the GM’s in the pre-season and it was my favourite time of the year when I was the co-host because almost every GM was excited about the season ahead of them.  Its more difficult to conduct those interviews during the season because half the GM’s won’t be happy with their team’s progress.

Two weeks ago, it was the last two interviews with Jamie Dawick and Curt Malawsky.  If either of them are a guest, it’s a must listen, so to have both on the podcast in the same episode, you knew there would be something spicy, but you’ll never know what.

As the interview with Jamie Dawick was wrapping up (39 minute mark), Jamie was asked about his thoughts about the upcoming CBA negotiations.  Jamie responded that he expects World War 3.  He would go on to talking about how appreciative the players should be of the owners because almost every team is losing money and fans should enjoy this season while they can.

The following week, the NLLPA was on the Lacrosse Classified podcast and Commissioner Brett Frood was on the OTCB podcast, and both of them tried to walk back Jamie’s comments to say that they both prefer not to negotiate a new CBA in public and that they were only in the exploratory sessions.

This isn’t the first time Jamie has spoken about the CBA negotiations on Lacrosse Classified.  He was the guest way back in episode 2 in 2018, where there was a work stoppage, and Jamie was the first owner to speak publicly.  Jamie was far more reserved in his comments that time, but was honest about how Average Team Revenue was a deal breaker for the owners, how the season was running on fumes and how a lost season was going to impact a lot more people that rely on the NLL for a paycheque in the front office and arena personnel.  This interview had a huge impact as the league went from a near shutdown to the guts of a new deal in place within 24 hours.

Why Jamie went down this road this early, with the CBA still a year away from expiring, perhaps its Jamie showing his truthful passion that he does so often when he speaks, and maybe it’s a negotiating tactic.  Its tough to say.  What I can say is that with a year to go before training camps and games start to get postponed and the two sides just starting to get together to negotiate a new agreement, fans shouldn’t be worried just yet.  If October 2025 rolls around and there still isn’t a new CBA, then its time to worry.

Who Ya Gott

If you haven’t already, make sure to sign up for this year’s Who Ya Gott.  Weekly prizes are provided by Coolbet Canada and Mohawk Lacrosse has provided a traditional stick for the season winner.  For those that haven’t played before, you pick the winner of each game and each week you put your confidence in that team winning (8 confidence in the team you’re the most confident in winning).  If you’re correct, your confidence becomes the number of points you earn.  At the bottom, put your tiebreak down, which is the combined score of the last game of the week.  Its free to play.  To join, click on the link below.

Until next time…