Random Thoughts: Rock Struggles, Attendance, and The Bionda

My random thoughts…

Week two of the NLL was perhaps a bit more of the expected than the unexpected, but you’re always in to see some surprises.  We had OT fun in Georgia, the debut of the NLL in Henderson, Nevada, Albany showing who we thought they were, Toronto’s offense disappearing even further, a shootout in Halifax and Buffalo losing one huge lead only to go on a huge run to get a lopsided win in Rochester.

Struggles In Mississauga

When the season began, the Toronto Rock were second on the odds board to win the NLL Cup.  They had the core of their team back.  Latrell Harris was coming back after a year on the IR.  Nick Rose was coming off his best season ever.  Things should have been looking up.  But even with Challen Rogers, Brad Kri and TD Ierlan on the IR for the first two games of the season, many expected two better results than we have seen from the Rock offence.

Following an 11-5 defeat to the Black Bears in week one, things weren’t looking up when it was announced that Harris and Tom Schreiber were going on the IR for week two.  On the odds board, the line shifted from Albany +150 to Albany +117 in a matter of two hours.  Expecting Albany to be a potential favourite in this game shouldn’t be surprising, but the Rock getting demolished 15-4 was not on anyone’s radar.

Perhaps the most shocking stat of all through two games, Toronto’s lefty forwards, in a lefty strong offence, have scored a combined 1 goal in two games.  Bonus points of you if you knew that lefty was Brian Cameron.  Corey Small has 1 point in two games.  Mark Matthews has has just 3 points.  That’s not the kind of production that Jamie Dawick had in mind when he traded Zach Manns, Adam Jay and the draft pick that became Levi Anderson to get Matthews a year ago.  Dan Craig doesn’t have a point yet.

Just like last week, Doug Jamieson robbed Mark Matthews from in close on Toronto’s first full-strength offensive possession, and you wonder whether a different result that early creates a momentum change that kickstats something. 

But also keep in mind that this possession doesn’t happen until 3.5 minutes into the game (due to Rock penalties).  On their 3^rd offensive possession, Chris Boushy hits the crossbar.  

The shots on goal were actually pretty close, 52-48 for Albany, but the key is where those shots were coming from.  Albany was getting to the inside all night.  Nick Rose faced a number of shots from the top of the crease.  Doug Jamieson faced very few.  Albany wasn’t worried about taking lumps in the middle.  Toronto was using the fire everything from deep strategy.  Its not working, and if you look at the few goals they got, they came from getting to the inside.  When you’re facing Jamieson, he’ll need a bad night for the long ball to work against him.

But there’s one thing that is critical.  If you’ve read Random Thoughts for years, you’ll know how much I fretted when the Rush played lefty strong back in the day.  The key reason I fretted that is that Mark Matthews doesn’t play well in a lefty strong setup.  You shouldn’t expect success when you put him back into that scenario.  The Rock need at least one righty, possibly two if Schreiber is out for a while.  Stephen Keogh, Josh Currier and Callum Crawford are all available.  Crawford doesn’t help your tendency to shoot from range, but Keogh should be getting a call quick to help turn things around.  There’s still 16 games left for the Rock to turn things around, but they need to act now to get the changes made in time to have a big enough impact.

As for the Firewolves, it’s a great bounce back win after a disappointing OT loss to the Rush in week 1.  Sam Firth led the way with 5 goals, but it was an overall good team effort.  They get another chance to expand on this momentum at home against the Roughnecks this coming weekend.

Eastern Shootout

For some odd reason I caught a glimpse of a stat in the Calgary vs Halifax game as I was watching it on TSN, and it stuck with me for the next hour.  With 4:47 remaining in the 2^nd quarter, and Halifax up 11-4, the shots on goal were 30-19 Halifax.  By the end of the quarter, they were 31-28 and Calgary had narrowed the gap to 11-8.  By the time that Calgary ties the game up with 6:43 to go in the 3^rd quarter, the SOG are now 35-34 Calgary.  In that 13 minute stretch that Calgary needed to eliminate its 7 goal deficit, Halifax had just 4 shots on goal.  As much as Calgary’s defense wasn’t good for most of Saturday, they came up big when their team needed a run.

One of the big questions with the Roughnecks was how Cam MacLeod would react as the team’s new starting goaltender, while Christian Del Bianco was building a bench with his uncle.  MacLeod struggled in the game, and it was pretty obvious that the Thunderbirds knew to exploit him down low.  This is where I wondered how the shift to the NLL game would affect MacLeod as he does fairly well at the President’s Cup with the CLA rules. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that with a wider net and no woody, MacLeod is going to be exposed in that spot.  Its something he’ll have to fix quickly so the next team can’t exploit it just as easily.  The concern for the Roughnecks will continue to be on the defense and goaltending, as you can’t expect that type of offensive output every night.

I’ll admit I was as stunned as others were with both Dickson and Dobbie putting up 5 goals each.  Just like father time hasn’t caught up with Ryan Benesch just yet, it hasn’t caught up with these two either.  The highlight of the bunch being Dickson’s Bionda goal in the 2^nd quarter. 

"Call @SportsCenter. This is DISGUSTING." – @PGreggy

"Superman" Curtis Dickson with an INSANE one-handed-behind-the-back goal! #SCtop10 pic.twitter.com/v5dfTrrLvF

— NLL (@NLL) December 7, 2024

For those not familiar with the term, when Dickson started scoring his one-handed, behind both legs, sub-shot bouncer, the shot needed a name because that description above was way too long, and Jake Elliott started referring to it as a Bionda, after lacrosse legend Jack Bionda, who also incorporated that shot into his repertoire many decades ago. Ironically, Bionda’s grandson, Jason Knox, was playing in the game for Halifax. 

In this instance, from the perfect camera angle we have to see it, you pretty much saw this shot coming, especially when Dickson goes for a split second from his strong side to his weak side to shoot it.  Pretty soon we’ll have to start calling this shot the Dickson instead, but for those that might think he’s hot dogging the shot, he’s not.  By shooting a Bionda, Dickson is actually a) giving Warren Hill a shot that Hill and his defense aren’t expecting and b) improving his shooting angle by going with the Bionda.  Many years ago, John Grant Jr. was asked why he shot so many BTB’s, and his answer was that he’s improving his shooting angle.

As for the Thunderbirds, and what went wrong, well its not one thing.  Warren Hill struggled obviously, but you can’t put the blame squarely on Hill.  Mike Accursi left Hill in the entire game.  When your goaltender is struggling that badly, the fact that we never saw Hutchison in the game, even if temporarily to get Hill some relief, puts the focus of the issue on Accursi. 

Clearly not having Jake Withers due to a suspension that he picked up at the end of last season didn’t help matters, and Calgary convincingly winning the faceoff battle helped the Roughnecks out, the Thunderbirds were up huge just before half time.  The complete collapse, whether its goaltending, defence, or the offence putting up 4 SOG in a quarter, that’s on the head coach.  Calgary effectively used goaltending changes throughout the game to help change their momentum and Halifax didn’t.

And for those wondering about Calgary’s 12^th goal late in the 3^rd quarter, especially after reading about how you can’t bat the ball into the net last week, Ian Garrison had it right on the floor and Pat Gregoire had it correct on the broadcast, rule 55.11 only prevents a goal from being batted in when the ball is loose in the crease.  Dickson clearly bats the ball into the net from outside the crease, so the goal is legal.

Early Attendance

When you look at NLL attendance numbers for week two, the numbers aren’t great.  The announced attendance for the five games this weekend averaged 5,312 per game.  There are a number of factors in play.  The first factor is that one of these games is at the Paramount Fine Foods Centre in Mississauga, the Toronto Rock’s temporary home.  The maximum seating capacity for this arena is 5,420.  If the Rock had access to the First Ontario Centre in Hamilton, the attendance number would have been higher for that game.  And before people get too angry about the Rock’s temporary home, keep in mind that both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas A’s will both be playing in minor league baseball stadiums for the next few years. These situations are more common than you think.

The second effect to this week’s attendance was the effect of NCAA football in two markets.  In Georgia, the Georgia Bulldogs were playing in the SEC conference final at the time that the Swarm game was taking place.  When you’re building a schedule months ahead of time, there is the possibility that UGA could be playing at that time, but there’s no guarantee, and when you have limited home dates available, you can’t book around maybe’s.

The same thing happened in Vegas on Friday night as the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels were playing in the Mountain West conference championship game against Boise State at the same time the Desert Dogs’ game was beginning.  In UNLV’s case, it was a shock to almost everyone that UNLV was not only in that game, but that a win in that game meant that UNLV, who has never been a college football powerhouse, would be in the college football playoff series.  Perhaps fortunately, Boise St scored a late first half touchdown to put them up 21-0 and it appeared that within 20-30 minutes from that touchdown that Lee’s Family Forum starts to fill in for the NLL game.  To make matters worse for the Desert Dogs, they were up against the Vegas Golden Knights who were also playing at home that night.

Rochester had a larger-than-normal attendance on Saturday night, but in large part because the crowd was dominated by Bandits fans who had made the trip down the I-90 to see the game.  The announced attendance was 6,454, which is 1,700 less people than a year ago when these two met in Rochester.

Then there was Halifax, with an announced attendance of 5,652, which is one of their lowest attendances where COVID restrictions weren’t in place.

These numbers aren’t good, but they’re tough to judge at this point in the season.  Games before Christmas are always a tough sell.  People have Christmas parties to attend.  Others are focusing their spending on gifts and Christmas activities.  We have always seen an attendance uptick in the days and weeks following Christmas Day.

Don’t get too worked up about attendance just yet.  It’s a bigger concern if these trends continue into January.  

NLL+

Now that I’ve had a few weeks to take in NLL+, for the most part I have positive reviews of it.  One of the features I found myself using this week was to utilize the Condensed Game highlight feature that they have made available.  There is still the highlights version, which for the most part is replays of every goal, but I find the condensed game version far better as it gives me the key moments of the game into a 20 minute package.  If you want to see what happened in a game that you missed, but don’t have the 2+ hours to watch a replay, the condensed version is the better way to go.  You will get to see more key saves, good defensive plays, and see a bit more of what led to some of the critical items that came into each game.

There are some upgrades I would like to see with time.  The items on my wish list are for an app to be available and to have the ability to cast games to my Apple TV or my Firestick.  Also, I think NLL+ would benefit from a platform host to help bring people in on more content, similar to NLLTV’s past success when Tyson Geick hosted the platform.  But keep in mind that the platform is new and the bells and whistles will come with time.

Until next time…