Disclaimer:
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.
With all the craziness that can happen in an eight game week in the NLL, and a season like this where there’s been a lot of unpredictability, we ended up having, for the most part, a predictable week. Almost…
The Rush swept their back to back. Calgary won the back end of their home doubleheader. Vancouver and Ottawa both won games where they were favoured. Halifax won in a coin flip game. And then there was Buffalo. We’ll get into that in a few minutes.
What we were left with. We have two teams in Buffalo and Saskatchewan with some separation over the teams behind them. Unless there is an upset in Vancouver this coming weekend, these two will play in Saskatoon on March 1st with first place on the line (if Saskatchewan were to win, they would be even in the standings but hold the tiebreaker). The Rush are at the line where they likely have enough wins to make the playoffs and Buffalo is one away from that line..
We’re also left with a mess in the standings below them. Calgary, Colorado, Georgia, Halifax, Ottawa, Vancouver, San Diego and Philadelphia all within one game of one another. Rochester is now 1.5 games behind a tiebreak for the playoffs, Toronto is 2 games out and Vegas and Albany are both three games out. If I was writing the playoff scenario articles right now, it would need a part 2 and 3. It’s that big of a mess.
Rush Sweep
One of the things that Derek Keenan mentioned this past week was the focus the team put on fitness this past offseason. Last year the team was sluggish in the 4th quarter. This year, its their best quarter of the season, only allowing 2.11 goals on average. That fitness paid off significantly this past weekend with a pair of wins.
In the opener in Calgary, the Rush had 3 goals on the board in the opening 6 minutes, chasing Cam MacLeod from the game quickly. But what was expected to be a quick trip to the bench, was surprisingly a long stint in goal for Gowah Abrams who the Roughnecks picked up as a street free agent a few weeks ago.
Gowah’s entry initially paid off well for the Roughnecks. MacLeod and Abrams have two very different goaltending styles, so when the offence is preparing for a game, they’re going to spend most of their time on a starting goaltender’s tendencies. Bringing Gowah into the game threw the Rush’s attack for a loop. They had 3 goals in 6 minutes to start the first half and 4 in the next 24 minutes to end it.
Late in the third quarter, the Rush started to figure out Abrams and his tendencies and once they did, the flood gates opened. Scigliano kept the Roughnecks to a single powerplay goal in the third, and the Roughnecks only option to respond was to put MacLeod back in goal, which ultimately didn’t change things.
Allowing 13 goals is definitely not in the comfort range for the Rush, but since their loss to the Rock back in mid-January, they’ve averaged 15.50 goals per game since. Keenan and Quinlan’s decision to leave Scigliano in goal for the second half, when he allowed 9 goals in the opening half, paid off. I’m not too worried about Scigliano’s first half performance. He hadn’t played in nearly a month and you would expect to see some rust, plus the fact that he’s facing a team that is probably more familiar with him and his tendencies than any other team in the league.
For Calgary, despite the blowout win versus Vegas on Sunday, you have to look back at this game and think that its one of those games that if they had Christian Del Bianco, or would have traded him for someone of similar caliber, that the Roughnecks would have won this game. In a playoff race that is so tight between third and tenth right now, having such a critical asset at home, and not adding value to the team, could be the ultimate factor as to whether the Roughnecks make the playoffs.
Then it was time for the Rush’s trip home. Its its typically a 60 to 90 minute flight between Calgary and Saskatoon. The flight schedules aren’t easy to Saskatoon, and worse when only one airline flies between Calgary and Saskatoon. The last flight of the night to Saskatoon was scheduled to leave at 11:20pm. To get out of the Saddledome, head straight to the airport, get that many gear bags on the plane early enough to make your flight, and hope all those gear bags arrive, it just doesn’t work. In the morning, on Saturdays, the first flight leaving Calgary to Saskatoon doesn’t leave until 9:50am and because of the time difference, only arrives at 12:17pm. That doesn’t get you a proper rest. The solution, get on a bus and drive 7 hours, plus breaks, to get to Saskatoon in the early morning.
Its far from ideal. Can you get a proper sleep on a bus? Maybe. But at least you’re back in Saskatoon around 7am and you still have 9 hours before you have to go to the arena to get a proper rest. But still, you’re playing a Rochester team that didn’t play the night before and was arriving in Saskatoon a day before the Rush are arriving. Its not the biggest advantage I’ve ever seen, that was the Rush having to travel from San Diego, via Phoenix, to get back to Saskatoon around 4pm and head straight to the arena to play Philadelphia the next night back in 2019. But for a Rochester team on the outside looking in for a playoff spot, you need to take advantage of situations like this.
I have to admit, I was surprised that Scigliano was starting once again on Saturday night. Normally this is a workload you want to avoid with Scigliano, but having not played in nearly a month, that was the rest he needed to make this possible.
The game didn’t start well for Scigliano. In what has become a pattern for the Rush when Scigliano is playing, he allowed 5 goals in the opening quarter and the Rush were down 5-3 quickly. But the Rush stuck with Frank and it quickly paid dividends. Scigliano and the Rush defence needs time to settle into a game and see what the opponents are trying to exploit on them, but once they get that down, they shut the door quickly. The Rush would start the second quarter with a 6-0 run and go into half time with a 9-6 lead.
This is where I’m perplexed with what happened with the Knighthawks. Part of the issue this game was with Rylan Hartley. He was simply too predictable. If you play back the Rush’s goals, almost every shot was going top shelf because Hartley was predictably going down nearly every time. If the Rush were cutting through the crease, then the goals went 5-hole before Hartley could settle. But when the Rush were clearly trying to burn Hartley high, he didn’t adjust and stuck with his butterfly style goaltending he’s so accustomed to. The Rush only had 39 shots on goal, but scored 17 times. Hartley ended the night with a save percentage of 0.529 and a GAA of 18.01. I’m not sure why Mike Hasen didn’t pull Hartley sooner when he’s clearly struggling and not making the necessary adjustments.
Even more perplexing was the Knighthawks inability to out-run the tired Rush in the second half. The number of transition chances Rochester surrendered was far too high. Not only did the Rush go on that 6-0 run in the second quarter, they outscored Rochester 7-1 in the final 25 minutes. Even with the return of Dan Coates, they still surrendered 17.
Let’s give the Rush defence some credit here. Mike Messenger’s stat line was impressive. A goal, an assist, 2 blocks, 10 loose balls and 4 CTO’s. Jake Boudreau (who I put as one of my nominees for the first half of the season for TPOTY) had 13 loose balls, 2 blocks and 4 CTO’s to go along with being a transition threat most of the night.
And when it came to the battle at the dot, the Rush took an interesting strategy. They knew they couldn’t beat Mike Sisselberger to the clamp, so they did everything they could to direct where the ball was coming off the faceoff and get it to a place where they could win a 50/50 ball. A similar strategy was deployed against Justin Inacio the night before. The faceoff numbers here didn’t overly reflect reality as the Rush created a bunch of turnovers in both games soon after the faceoff was won. According to Cody Janzen on the Rush radio post-game broadcast on Friday night, Jake Naso should be available for next week in Vancouver. He was close to coming back this week but just needed a bit more time to fully heal.
The Rush have now put themselves on that magic 8 win mark that I think will be the line for getting into the playoffs, with 8 games remaining. Its now all about getting a home playoff game and possibly home floor advantage through the playoffs. As for Rochester, this is an opportunity that really got away. If they had pounced on the opportunity to take it to a tired Rush squad, they would be a half game out of the playoffs. Now they need to go on a win streak fast to try to catch the pack.
Undefeated No More
First, how great would it have been for the Rock and Bandits to have played a home and home series this weekend, especially with the way the game Friday night ended?
In what was a trend for the Bandits this weekend, they quickly fell behind 5-0 to the Rock in the opening quarter. Looking back on that opening quarter, those 5 goals aren’t reflective of Matt Vinc. When you look where they’re being scored from, it was defensive breakdowns nearly every time. Whether it was giving the lane down low to allow a crease dive or giving Josh Dawick space to shoot from 12 feet twice, Vinc didn’t have much of a chance on any of them. But on the other end, Nick Rose was making fantastic save after fantastic save. It was a little ironic to hear the building shout “Rosey” after those saves given how much several members of the core fan base have shit on Rose’s performances as of late.
For the first three quarters, Dhane Smith couldn’t buy a goal. The number of chances that kept getting saved had to be frustrating. In the second quarter, Buffalo had a 4 on 3 powerplay. Smith was wide open with the ball and just hesitated looking for the next pass instead of taking a high percentage shot. I don’t recall seeing him that hesitant ever. Smith would end the game with 16 shots on goal and it wasn’t until late that the shots started to go for him.
Few teams can down 5-0 at the end of the first but still have confidence they will come back, either Colorado or its this Bandits team are probably the only ones that do. Toronto missed a fabulous opportunity here. When you have your opponent down, but they’re a beast, you need to keep them down. A scoreless second quarter for the Rock with two powerplays, one of them being a 4 on 3, gave the Bandits the window they needed to get back into it.
Despite a goal from TD Ierlan off the opening faceoff, the Rock offence continued to sputter in the third quarter which ultimately allowed the Bandits to tie it up at 7 by the end of it. If there are still Nick rose haters out there, I would implore you to go onto NLL+ and rewatch the 20 minute condensed version of the game. You’ll quickly see that had it not been for Rose, the Bandits would have a significant lead going into the 4th quarter.
The turning point in this game comes from Chris Boushy’s major and the melee that ensued afterwards. That major didn’t result in a huge goal swing, Buffalo scored one on the man advantage and Toronto got one shorthanded, it was the barrage of shots that Buffalo was able to get on Nick Rose from there on out. At the point of the Boushy major, the shots on goal were 39-36 for the Bandits. By the end of the game, its 57-44. Buffalo simply was given too many chances to shoot to keep the lead from disappearing.
While Toronto got two late goals to make the ending interesting, the real interesting ending was everything that happened after the final whistle. The frustrations were everywhere. A hit after the final whistle by Buffalo. A frustrating loss for the Rock. The Bandits diving multiple times throughout the game trying to draw penalties. And these two teams just hating one another.
What Brian Lemon will have to say about it by the end of this week will be interesting, especially with Rusty Kruger grabbing Steve Dietrich by the tie after the game. Given the number of dives occurring, and one of them being called, I’m interested to see if these will be warned and/or fined. Those that have read Random Thoughts for years now know how frustrating diving is in the game for me.
Absolutely NO love between these two…
— NLL (@NLL) February 15, 2025
Happy Valentine's Day from Mississauga, Ontario 💔 pic.twitter.com/0S51pQeXww
The following night in Buffalo, the same script played out early. San Diego had a 4-0 lead just 7 minutes in. But once again, the Seals didn’t continue to keep the beast down while they had them own and by the midway point of the 2nd quarter, when Connor Farrell scored his 1st career NLL goal, the Bandits had erased the deficit.
The difference though comes down to two critical items. First, once the Seals gave up the lead at 6-6, they kept the scoring going unlike the Rock and never trailed in the game until Dhane Smith’s goal with 10 minutes remaining. The other difference, while Matt Vinc held the fort down in the final 45 seconds against the Rock despite an onslaught, he couldn’t do it against the Seals. The Bandits were fortunate that an errant step in the crease by Dylan Watson negated a goal by Wes Berg with 40 seconds to go to tie the game, but Zach Currier responded with 6 seconds to go to send it to OT, where Wes Berg won it with his 5th of the night 5 minutes into OT and the winning streak was over.
Those two goals might end up being the turning point in the Seals’ season. A few weeks ago we talked about how San Diego was in a world of trouble at 3-5 and having to face Toronto and then Buffalo back to back. A 3-game losing streak in that stretch would have certainly ended the Seals’ season. Even going 1-2 would put them in a world of trouble to make the playoffs. But now they’re in the pack. They are 9th in the standings with current tiebreakers applied, but they’re also one game out of 3rd place. These teams meet up again this weekend in San Diego with quite a bit on the line. Buffalo needs a win to assure they’ll be in 1st headed to Saskatoon for the battle for 1st place. The Seals, they’ll still be on the outside looking in of the playoffs with a loss, and with so many teams packed so tightly in the playoff race, every game is that much more critical.
Running From The Bell
A few months ago I talked about a situation in Vegas where Connor Sellars went to fight with David Brock, with his helmet on, and the second that his helmet came off, he went running to get away from the fight. Well, we had a repeat performance of sorts this week with Tommy Burke.
Burke had just been signed to the Desert Dogs’ lineup as a faceoff specialist. Granted, Burke had two tough opponents to start his NLL career with, Alec Stathakis and Justin Inaccio. But after going just 9 for 24 on his opening night, and losing the battle in the game on Sunday, Burke hit Inacio hard, from behind in a dangerous position near the boards. Clearly, and especially in a lopsided game, this was going to mean he needed to answer the bell. A melee ensued and instead of taking the shots and backing himself up, Burke fled the scene and his teammates had answer the bell for him. It was the end of his night anyways as Burke received a major and a game misconduct for the hit.
Just one week after being signed, Burke was released. There’s no doubt in my mind that a large part of Sahwn Williams’ decision had to do with running from the scene. This is one of those unwritten rules in lacrosse. Do something dangerous, to a key player, in a lopsided game, you have to stand up for what you did. Burke broke his teammates’ trust by fleeing, and that’s in large part in my opinion as to why he was released.
Vegas instead brought back to the league Tyrell Hamer-Jackson who was with the Warriors for a few years. There won’t be a repeat performance of Burke’s actions here. Anyone that has seen THJ play knows he’ll be answering the bell when needed.
Until next time…