Photo Credit: NLL

Note:

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…

Week 3 is in the books and not only did we get to see every team play, we got a Saturday night jam packed with action.  Lyle Thompson showed us why he’s Lyle Thompson and Brennan O’Neill showed everyone that he belongs.  The Bandits dominated again and both the Rock and Desert Dogs fell to 0-3. Zach Manns put his team on his back for an improbable late sock trick, and even that wasn’t the best performance of the week.  And a Dane Dobbie set in-game milestones most people won’t forget for a long time…

… and cost me a Who Ya Gott win in the process.

The playoffs aren’t determined in December, but close losses before Christmas can ultimately make the difference when you’re looking at a unified standings, how many wins you need to get to make the playoffs, or even head-to-head wins that can make the difference between making and not making the playoffs.  Keep in mind last year, four teams were one win away from making the playoffs.

The Rush stand at 2-0, with two overtime wins.  Both times they were down heading into the 4th quarter.  They’re two bad bounces away from being 0-2 and we’re talking about a very different season.  But these two early overtime wins are a huge catalyst that will make their lives easier come April.

On the flipside, you have Albany who are 1-2 with two overtime losses.  Once again, those close losses can make the difference of being in the playoffs or needing to win down the stretch to get in.

Speaking of the game in Albany, there are many articles out there already about Dane Dobbie’s heroics, scoring 8 straight goals for the Roughnecks in 15:16 that I can’t expand upon much.  But the feat is something to admire.  Many of us will recall Callum Crawford scoring 8 for Panther City last year in 30:31. That was a crazy feat in itself.  For Dobbie to do that in half the time, in which three of them were game tying goals, one with 49 seconds remaining that ties the game and then the OT winner is something else. 

Photo Credit: NLL

The goals Dobbie was scoring though were nothing new. If you were watching game tape on Dobbie, these are the things you’re looking for.  The transition pass off the bench in the 4th quarter…  The off-ball cut to the top of the crease on his off-hand side… The pick to give himself space from his top right from 20 feet.  These are things that Albany is going to regret after this game because its fundamentally what you watch for when playing Dobbie.

Players will tell you that sometimes the ball just goes, but for Dobbie, it went a lot more often than not only he, but anyone could expect. I don’t think we will ever see anyone drop 8 goals that quickly ever again.  

Zach Attack

What transpired in the 4th quarter at the SaskTel Centre on Saturday night in the last 12 minutes of the game is something that Rush fans aren’t used to the last several years.  A comeback when the Rush offense had been almost non-existent all night.  The ball was being turned over on offense at will.  The Thunderbirds’ defense was not allowing many high percentage shots and when they did get through, Warren Hill was on top of his game (for the first 48 minutes that is). 

Up to this point, the only highlight for Rush fans was a 1st quarter Mike Messenger hit on Thomas Hoggarth that sent Hoggarth flying backwards.  Hoggarth might have got as much flight time off that hit as Logan Schuss did back in 2020.

Then with 12 minutes remaining, the tide turned, and fast.  The Thunderbirds were up 8-3.  Within 6 minutes, the game was tied.  Manns put up four in a row followed by Levi Anderson scoring his first career goal, finally cracking the lineup after being a healthy scratch in the season opener.  The most shocking thing about watching these goals back is how the Halifax defence fails to pick up Manns on every single one of them. 

Manns’ 5th goal which brought the Rush to within one, there are two defenders in his vicinity and neither puts a body or a stick on him, allowing Manns to just step back and fire.  Oddly enough Warren Hill has other big stops in the 4th quarter which slowed the pace of the comeback.

Despite there being nearly 6 minutes left in regulation in a tied game, if you know the history between these two teams, you knew it was going to overtime.  These two teams have played 6 times since the Thunderbirds moved to Halifax, and three have gone to overtime.  Perhaps the most memorable of this lot was the first matchup back in 2020 when the Rush were up 12-3, Halifax comes all the way back in the 18 minutes of the game to go to overtime, and two goals being disallowed after lengthy reviews in overtime before Mike Messenger finally ended it.

While the overtime frame went on for 7:17, there weren’t many good chances until Manns won it on the powerplay.  One key to this goal, watch what Austin Shanks does before he fires the pass to Manns for the winner.  Shanks holds onto the ball for a couple of crucial seconds.  The defender top right has to collapse back with Shanks to avoid him going straight to the net and Shanks makes it so deep, the defender top left has to also collapse to avoid the skip pass.  Once both defenders have collapsed that far, Manns has all the space in the world to fire to the wide open top shelf.

Video Credit: NLL+

I mentioned this a few weeks ago about the impact Jake Naso had in the game against Albany.  He won 35% of his draws, but those wins came at critical times, against Joe Nardella, and its gave the Rush a huge boost.  The question was how he would handle Jake Withers.  I don’t believe anyone would have guessed that Naso, in only his second career NLL game, would have beat Withers at the dot, 12-9.  Naso was smart in that he didn’t try to win the draws clean, he knew he probably didn’t have enough time for that, but he was popping the draw to Jake Boudreau most of the night. 

According to Graeme Perrow, its only the 5th time in Withers’ career that he’s lost the faceoff battle in a game in 106 career games.  Naso has more head-to-head wins against Withers than both TD Ierlan and Nardella, which is stunning.  According to one report, Naso went 6 for 7 in the crucial 4th quarter, including one beauty where Naso and Withers went at it for a whopping 32 seconds, starting at 9:47 remaining in the 4th quarter.

Photo Credit: NLL

For a fan base that has been frustrated with its performance at the dot for many years, Naso’s win off that draw drew one of the biggest rounds of applause of the night.  For anyone still in the faceoffs don’t matter camp, I’ll argue that without Jake Naso, the Rush are 0-2 to start the season.

One sidenote on this game.  In overtime, a whistle was blown for an apparent injury on Warren Hill. It was a Halifax possession after the whistle and Hill takes his sweet time down on the floor, going to the bench, taking multiple swigs of water, before finally heading back to the bench.  It’s a tough call for any official to make in overtime, but it was clear to me that Halifax was manufacturing a timeout in overtime by doing this.  One of two things should have happened here, either a delay of game penalty needs to be assessed, or Hill needs to come out of the game.  Perhaps its something the league needs to review and issue guidance on before it becomes a common strategy.

If there’s a concern for the Rush, its that the Rush are only scoring at the rate of 8.47 goals per 60 minutes.  That’s not going to win you lacrosse games on a regular basis.  And without Robert Church for at least a few weeks, possibly more, improving upon that won’t be easy for them.  One fun fact, both Rush OT winners came 7:17 into overtime.

For the Thunderbirds, the 0-2 start might be demoralizing.  They held huge leads in both games.  Even after they blew the lead in week one, they re-established a 3 goal lead only to lose.  In Saskatchewan, they shouldn’t have lost this one either.  On the OTCB podcast, it was mentioned by one of the hosts that they felt that Halifax would have a hard time holding leads late, and two games in, that prediction is 2 for 2.  Halifax is a team that historically has performed very well early in the season and held on for dear life to get into the playoffs in the latter half. 

I had on my prediction list at the start of the season that I didn’t think Halifax would make the playoffs, and come April, these two blown leads are likely to make that hill to climb to get into the playoffs that much steeper.  Its even more unfortunate that the 4 goal performance of Dawson Theede, who was finding open space on the back door all first half long, goes for not.

Team Struggles

I have already dug into the struggles of the Thunderbirds, but there are two other winless teams at this point in Las Vegas and Toronto, both of whom are 0-3.

I discussed my concerns with Toronto in last week’s edition, and while the offense improved in Georgia, it certainly didn’t improve enough.  Scoring 9 times is only going to win you a game approximately 20% of the time (the Rush coincidently winning with 9 this week).  Rock fans might feel ripped off because of the failed challenge late in the game, but I can’t fault the officials there.  The rule is clear evidence, not more likely than not that the player is outside the crease when the call on the floor is no goal.  Ty Merrow does an excellent job in his post-game article of showing why there is enough reasonable doubt to make the review inconclusive.

In the updated Rock stats, interestingly enough, the RF have 67 shots on goal compared to 62 for the LF, but are outscoring them 10-4, in a lefty strong offence.

Mark Matthews still doesn’t have a goal.  A year ago, most Rush fans were in disbelief about Matthews being traded.  There’s no concerns any longer.  Its fairly obvious who won the trade that sent Matthews to the Rock when Zach Manns has 10 goals through 2 games on his own, not counting Adam Jay or Levi Anderson.  I’m not about to call Matthews on the decline because that’s exactly when he’ll put up a ton of goals, but he’s struggling.  The team as a whole is an aging team that is trying to insert some new faces.  Technically their next game after Christmas at home against Ottawa isn’t a must win, but its about as close to a must win as they can get.  A team that starts 0-4 likely has to go 9-5 to make the playoffs the rest of the way.

I was also asked by a few fans on the Desert Dogs’ fan page about their struggles.  Its fairly obvious that its defence and goaltending that are hurting right now.  In goal, the one thing that is missing is Justin Geddie.  He has been on the PUP list all season long, and its his lack of presence that is critical here.  Shawn Williams made the trade with Albany this summer to acquire Geddie so that there would be a battle for the starting position between Geddie and Landon Kells and this battle would motivate both guys.  With Geddie out, not only is that battle not present, but its tough to pull Kells from a game where he’s struggling, even for a few minutes to let him reset.

Expansion teams in Vegas, regardless of what sport they’re in, will be forever measured against the success that the Vegas Golden Knights had in their first season.  Its not a realistic measuring stick for any expansion team anywhere to be measured against, but we’ll see this measuring stick being used again when the NBA expands to Vegas in the near future, and in part, it’s a measuring stick being used for the Desert Dogs.  The key difference, VGK’s expansion draft trades worked out so well, they went to the Stanley Cup finals in year one. 

The Desert Dogs’ expansion draft trades didn’t.  Most notably, the best player available in the draft, Connor Fields, could not play in Vegas due to work commitments so he was drafted simply to be traded to Rochester, with a number of other players and picks involved.  The main player that Vegas received in return, Charlie Betrand, didn’t deliver the impact that Shawn Williams was hoping for and Connor Fields became the NLL player we know him to be today after his arrival in Rochester.  Expansion draft trades involving Frank Scigliano and Jeff Cornwall also didn’t work out as expected and a trade for Rob Hellyer was a definite win for the Toronto Rock in the two draft picks they acquired.

If you want to look at a bright spot for Vegas though is that the team is ridiculously young and if the players can develop the way they should, Vegas could develop quickly into the next Panther City or Albany.  Jonathan Donville, Jack Hannah, Sean Westley, Adam Poitras, Dylan Watson, Marshal King, Connor Kirst, Justin Geddie and Landon Kells are all 26 years old or younger.  None of them will be an unrestricted free agent for several years, so if Vegas keeps them together, they’ll have the time to grow together.

We also have to keep in mind that both Geddie and Kells are 22 years old.  Goalies in the NLL take a lot longer to polish and make them shine.  You get the odd exception to that rule such as Christian Del Bianco or Chris Origlieri, but that’s the exception, not the expectation.  There is only one goaltender you could make a trade for that would be a massive impact goaltender, that’s for Del Bianco, and the price you would pay to get him would set you back significantly elsewhere.  Vegas is going to be far better off developing the talent it has rather than making trades.  You never know when that switch will turn on, it could be next week and it could be next year.

But like Toronto, the Desert Dogs’ home game this weekend is almost must-win territory.  If for nothing than to get a win to give their fan base the hope they need that this season is promising.

Tucker Out Lymphoma Cup

The NLL, Albany, Vegas and Buffalo all announced a new inter-season challenge cup called the Tucker Out Lymphoma Cup, on the 10th anniversary of Tucker Williams’ passing.  The Cup will feature all of the head-to-head games between teams tied to the Williams’ family, Vegas where Shawn Williams is the head coach and general manager, Albany where Dyson Williams plays and Buffalo where Shawn Williams was playing when Tucker’s diagnosis came about and were the originators of the Tucker Out Lymphoma Night to raise money for lymphoma research.

The games that will count towards the cup are the two head-to-head battles between Albany and Buffalo, both teams’ games against Las Vegas, and to balance out the number of games for each team, Vegas’ Tucker Out Lymphoma Night against Georgia in early February will also count.

This is a great idea as its not necessarily winning the cup that is the critical aspect here, its continuing to raise awareness for lymphoma research throughout the season every year and expanding it beyond the previous fundraising nights in Buffalo and Vegas and the recently announced expansion of the Tucker Out Lymphoma Night in Albany.  While there are many great fundraising nights across the league, the Tucker Out Lymphoma nights are certainly the biggest and most visible across the league.  Expanding the number of games where this will be the focus from two to five is a great step forward.

The main fundraising nights this season will be January 4th in Albany against Vegas and on February 1 in both Buffalo (vs Albany) and Vegas (vs Georgia).  If you wish to contribute, keep your eyes on these teams’ social media pages for ways to donate or participate in the jersey auctions.

Until next time…

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