Random Thoughts: Lets Talk About the CBA

My random thoughts…

Another week of NLL action is in the books and we are now less than a week from the trade deadline.  There hasn’t beeb the flurry of action we perhaps expected since last Wednesday, although there remains several irons in the fire.  Rumors persist on Brad Kri, Corey Small and Tom Schreiber.  But perhaps we need to wait for the results of this weekend to start getting some last-minute trade action.

One of four things could happen.  One is that we could once again see a relatively quiet trade deadline.  The second is that one of the teams in the mix at 5-6 loses again and opts to shop out some assets for future picks.  The third is that one team realizes they don’t quite have what it takes and agrees to pay more than they might have last week to get the player they’re looking for.  The fourth is that a contender has a player go down with a season ending injury and they need to replace him in quick order.

But before we get there, we have a slate of games this weekend, all of which have playoff consequences.  Its at that point in the season where we can start looking ahead at the remaining schedules and start to see where teams have opportunities and/or disadvantages.

And in case you aren’t following me on Twitter, yes, the streak is finally over.  I won this week’s Who Ya Gott contest.  It took long enough and far too many second place finishes to get across the finish line.  When Jake Elliott asked for my Who Ya Gott soundbite, I couldn’t just give him a 2 second drop, it had to be something far flashier.  So I enlisted AI to create the ultimate celebratory sound byte and learn my voice to pull it off.  Well, you’ll have to tune into this week’s Lacrosse Classified to see what it came up with.

The Battle For First

As big of a wagon as Buffalo has been this year, think about what the formula would be to beat them. 

Prevent Dhane Smith from scoring. Check. 

Hold Buffalo to single digit goals. Check. 

Hold Buffalo to under 50 shots on goal. Check. 

Only take one penalty and hold Buffalo without a powerplay goal. Check. 

Beat Connor Farrell at the faceoff battle. Check. 

Have your goaltender stand on his head most of the game. Check. 

Defensively and in goal, Saskatchewan played the near perfect game to beat the Bandits.

I was John Gurtler’s guest at halftime on the Bandits’ radio broadcast and you could see the near frustration John had late in the first half with the number of missed opportunities and the quality of saves that Frank Scigliano was making.  Scigliano ended the evening with a 0.822 save percentage.  Against the Bandits, that needs to be high enough to win.  And yet, the Rush lost.

Give a lot of credit to the Bandits’ defence and Matt Vinc here.  In the second half, they really packed it in and stopped giving the Rush the opportunity to get into the middle while limiting transition opportunities.  And sure, the Rush offence was missing perhaps their biggest weapon in Robert Church who was at home awaiting the birth of his child, but that still can’t be an excuse.  The Rush have won games earlier this season without Church.  In the final 42 minutes of this game, the Rush scored just twice, and one of those was inside the last minute of the game when the result was not in doubt.

Here’s where I have to question the Rush in this one, its in their offensive strategy.  During that 42-minute stretch, the Rush offence was focusing hard on trying to beat Vinc low or with bouncers.  Yet the goals that were going early were either short side or over Vinc’s left shoulder.  Its mind boggling that the Rush continued to insist on trying to beat Vinc low for that long when it wasn’t working. 

The Rush offence also wasn’t good enough on the powerplay, only scoring once on five attempts, and it took a 5 on 3 for that one to go.  They had a chance up 4-2 at the start of the second quarter, with Steve Priolo in the box for 4 minutes and Tehoka Nanticoke following him soon after to put this game to rest.  But just 1 goal on three powerplay attempts gave Buffalo the window they needed to stay in the game.

The win virtually locks up first place overall for Buffalo.  Their one loss to the Rush’s three, and the Bandits having the tiebreak as the two teams don’t play one another again this season, means that Buffalo has to lose at least 3 of their last 8, and likely more than that, to not finish first overall. 

As for the Rush, at 9-3, they’re now pushed back into a pack closer to Georgia and Halifax.  They play Georgia down south this weekend, a place the Rush haven’t performed well in historically, and likely without Robert Church once again.  For the Rush to take second place and ensure themselves home floor advantage through the first two rounds of the playoffs, the next two weeks are critical.  A loss to Georgia and the Swarm almost catches up to the Rush, and they would have the tiebreaker.  The following weekend the Rush play in Halifax.  A Rush win puts some distance between them and the Thunderbirds, and gives the Rush the tiebreaker, but a loss evens the season series and an ugly common games tiebreak would come into play if the two teams are still tied at the end of the season.

Conversation with John Gurtler

During halftime of the Saskatchewan vs Buffalo game, I joined John Gurtler up in the broadcast booth to discuss the game and a number of other things related to the NLL.  One of the things that came up was just how tight everything is in the standings for the last few playoff spots.  I joked that the playoff scenario articles in April might be seven pages long just because of how many teams are still in the race.  But take a look at the pack.  Georgia and Halifax have created some separation at 7-4, but both play the Rush in the next two weeks, both of them play the Bandits and they also play one another down the stretch.  It won’t be easy to maintain their position.

Colorado has a bit of separation as well at 7-5, but they finish their regular season against Buffalo, Saskatchewan twice and Calgary.  They need to get even more separation in their next two games against Philly and Ottawa before that nasty home stretch hits.

Calgary is at 6-6, but their next two games are against Buffalo, then they play San Diego and Saskatchewan.  They need to get a split in a rough stretch here, or they need to make it up in the last two games.

Then you have the pack a half game below 0.500.  Rochester is 6-7 and San Diego, Ottawa, Philly and Vancouver are all 5-6.  As it stands now, three of these five teams would miss the playoffs.  Philly is on a four-game losing streak.  They desperately need to put an end to that against Albany this weekend to have a shot.  Vancouver is a bit more fortunate in that in their last seven games, they play Toronto twice and Albany once. 

Rochester has just five games remaining, but, all five games are against teams with losing records at the moment.  San Diego has most of its toughest games out of the way, with the exception of a game against Halifax.  But they play Vegas in a few weeks and finish the season with two games against Albany.  Ottawa has the toughest schedule amongst this pack, but their destiny is somewhat in their own hands as they play Rochester twice, Philly once and also Halifax and Colorado, all teams within the pack.

Needless to say, the tiebreak scenarios are bound to be a bit crazy given that the teams near the bottom of the pack have easier schedules than those closer to the top of the pack.

The other thing that John brought up was the CBA.  Clearly if we want to see lacrosse next season, this is something we need to hope gets resolved.  I wouldn’t expect the NLLPA or the owners to make any announcements anytime soon unless they came to an agreement.  As to what I would expect the issues to be, while the players are of course hoping for more money, that will be tough to get beyond the standard inflationary increases given that several teams are struggling with attendance.

Where I think the NLLPA could make some strides though are in rules surrounding free agency and especially the franchise tag.  There is no doubt that the Christian Del Bianco situation needs to be dealt with and Calgary having the ability to franchise him for five years shouldn’t be allowed.  Players aren’t free agents for either 8 seasons or until they turn 30.  That’s much longer than the likes of the NHL, NBA and MLB, where those leagues max out at six seasons.  But then the ability to franchise for 3-5 years beyond that truly restricts the movement of the top players in the game.

But what to do with it?  I would like to see one of two things, or possibly both.  First, follow the lead of the WNBA, where teams can only franchise a player once.  Vegas ended up trading away Kelsey Plum because of her desire to move on from Vegas and Vegas knew they could only franchise her for this upcoming year.  The other thing I would like to see is that if a player sits out one season, then he can’t be franchised any longer.  If Calgary knew they would lose Del Bianco after this season if they didn’t trade him, or perhaps even a sign and trade deal, then this situation resolves itself much faster.

I get the point of franchising a player because without that, the teams with big pockets or those located closer to Ontario and BC would get most of the top players once they became UFA’s.  But there has to be some limitations to allow players who have put in a long tenure in the league to make those decisions later in their careers as to what their career paths look like, especially when families can lead to much different discussions later in life.

Updated Faceoff Statistics

After week 8 I had calculated the faceoff data by decile to see the effect of faceoff wins in terms of winning percentage.  While the data was only on a small sample, the data then showed that if a team won 60% or more of their faceoffs, their overall record was 21-10.  Now at the end of week 14, with nearly double the number of games, and more teams bringing in dedicated faceoff specialists, where do things stand?

Faceoff Win %	Overall Record	Win %
50.1% to 59%	12-14	46.2%
60% to 69%	17-12	58.6%
70% to 70%	9-6	66.7%
80%+	5-2	71.4%

Note that there are three games where the faceoff battle ended in a tie.  Comparing the data to last time, once a team wins 60% or more of their draws, their overall record is 31-20 for a win % of 60.8%.  It’s a lot lower than it was before.  As to why this shift happened, there’s a handful of teams to look at.  Saskatchewan went on a win streak with Jake Naso out of the lineup.  Georgia won a number of games as of late with a very poor faceoff win percentage.  Albany and Toronto have won the battle at the dot most every night but are near the bottom of the standings.

Regardless, winning 61% of the time when you win the battle at the dot by at least a 20% margin is a key number.  This season there has been an average of 27 faceoffs per game, so a 60-40% win is a 16.2 to 10.8 or greater win margin, or a win margin of at least 5.4 faceoffs.

Until next time…