My random thoughts…
The regular season is over and now it’s time for the show. It’s fitting though that in a year where so many teams were still in the playoff race that it came down to the final game between Calgary and Colorado to determine the final team in the playoffs. Ottawa was still alive when they took to the floor Saturday night, but were eliminated about halfway through the second quarter.
The unified standings are 2/2 in creating maximum drama.
How We Got From 256 Scenarios to 1
If you’ve been reading my articles over the past month, its all been about playoff scenarios and tiebreakers and what each team needed to do. But with an analytical mind like mine, even the last week was still about tying up all the pathways and how one game affected the next. Here’s how it went down.
The first game of the weekend was Friday night in Mississauga with Halifax playing Toronto. Toronto had little to play for other than pride. A loss would ensure that they had the top two draft picks in September. As for Halifax, they could still finish anywhere from the #3 seed to the #6 seed. A win meant they assured themselves of the #3 seed and that home playoff game. A loss and that home playoff game was out of their hands. Halifax got out to a hot start and held a decent lead through the opening half until an 18-minute stretch without a goal allowed Toronto to tie the game up late in the 4th quarter. Halifax couldn’t be blowing this home playoff game, could they?
In the end, it was a no. Halifax went on an 8-1 run in the final 16 minutes to win 16-9. Halifax is the #3 seed. That win also meant that Calgary couldn’t finish better than the #6 seed, so Vancouver and Rochester would face one another in the 4-5 game, with the host to be determined on Saturday.
Following this game, two games started within minutes of one another. Calgary played in Vegas and Albany played in San Diego. The first halves of these games set what appeared to be at the time a fairly clear path. Albany was up 4, Calgary was up 6. If that had held, Calgary would have been in the playoffs and Albany would be in with a Georgia loss. A bit anti-climactic right?
Well no. All of a sudden both San Diego and Vegas come roaring back. Halfway through the 4th quarter and Calgary’s lead is narrowed to one. In San Diego, the Seals have come back and now the teams are busy in the middle of the 4th quarter going back and forth, one goal leads at a time. Now what seemed to be two fairly simple paths forward is in chaos.
Calgary holds on with two late goals to win 12-9. But San Diego stopped a number of late Albany chances to hold on for an 11-10 win. San Diego reached 9 wins and is in the playoffs. It’s a heartbreaking finish for the FireWolves, who started the season 2-9 and end up just one game short of making the dance.
Calgary also reached 9 wins, but their tiebreakers weren’t as strong as San Diego’s. A Seals loss would have guaranteed the Roughnecks a playoff spot on Friday. Instead, the Roughnecks had to face an early morning flight home for another game that would determine their fate. Also with Calgary’s win, Philadelphia’s slim hopes of making the playoffs are eliminated.
The early game Saturday night is Toronto playing in Rochester. This was a wrap up for the Rock. Even draft position wouldn’t change with the result of this game. A final let down loss wouldn’t be unexpected. Besides, Rochester had something to play for. A home playoff game if they could win and Vancouver lose later in the night. But give it to Toronto who would play spoiler with an 11-10 win. This meant that Rochester was embedded in the 5th seed and would go to Vancouver for the quarterfinals. It also meant that the Vancouver vs Philadelphia game would have zero impact on the final standings outside of draft position.
That game did occur later with Vancouver winning 11-5. Vancouver has yet to lose with Christian Del Bianco in net, which has to be unsettling for the Bandits who would play Vancouver in the semi-finals should both advance this weekend. The Philadelphia loss now ensured that Toronto had the first three picks of this September’s draft.
After the conclusion of the game in Rochester, Georgia hosted Buffalo. For the Swarm, their scenario had shifted only slightly from the games before. Now, with a win, Georgia was guaranteed to be the #7 seed and head to Saskatchewan. A loss and they were out. I’ll discuss Buffalo’s situation later on because it fits better with what their and Saskatchewan’s strategies were going into this weekend. This game has other implications for the games after it. A Georgia win and Calgary vs Colorado becomes a win and you’re in game and the Ottawa vs Saskatchewan game only impacts whether Colorado and San Diego finish 6th or 8th with a Colorado win. A Georgia loss, and chaos ensues with Calgary, Colorado and Ottawa for those last two spots.
When the two late games in Saskatchewan and Calgary start, Georgia is behind 10-6. This had to give Ottawa a lot of fire instantly as they’re in a win and you’re in situation if that result in Georgia holds. Ottawa goes up 4-0 quickly mostly due to the natural hat trick from Jeff Teat, one of the fastest in league history in under 5 minutes into the game. Those in SaskTel Centre were left thinking if Teat might score ten the way he was going. But as Brett Dobson shut the door and Georgia scores 8 of the last 9 goals, they’re in and Ottawa’s season is over as they’re on the floor, still ahead 5-4 on the Rush. Now its just up to Calgary and Colorado to settle things.
In the end, Calgary wins easily 11-5, ending Colorado’s season. It has to be disappointing as at 8-5, the Mammoth seemed to be a shoo-in for the playoffs, but too many injuries and the departure of Eli McLaughlin ultimately doomed them to a five-game losing streak to end the year.
To Rest or Not to Rest
When I was asked to play along on Who Ya Gott on last week’s Lacrosse Classified, I hadn’t even looked at my picks for the week yet. And it was a tough week to figure out. Would Philly know its fate before the game takes place? For Bufalo and Saskatchewan, whose final ranking was already determined, what lineup would they even put on the floor? Do you rest players or do you use the game as a tune-up for the playoffs.
In the case of the Rush, they sat Mike Triolo the week before to get Levi Anderson another game in. Anderson is one of those players that is in a tough situation. There is still a bright NLL future ahead of him. But the Rush play far better in a righty strong offensive set. With Clark Walter playing such a critical role as the guy sacrificing his body to get everyone else open and Ryan Keenan and Zach Manns certainly being in the lineup, Anderson hasn’t had much playing time in his rookie year. But the Rush are also one injury or one life event away from Anderson being needed in the lineup.
But this past weekend, the Rush played their normal lineup. The big surprise to me, and even Vasyli for that matter, was that Frank Scigliano started on Saturday night. Scigliano has a past in which he frequently has a decline in his performance late in the regular season and especially in the playoffs. In my mind, if there is an opportunity to give Scigliano some rest, you take it. But that’s the tough call for both of these teams.
There are risks and rewards both ways. There is the reward that a player can get some much-needed rest, with the risk that you take away the momentum that was inspiring the winning behaviour to begin with. On the opposite side, you risk an unnecessary injury happening in a meaningless game with the reward of keeping that momentum going.
Its different in say the NBA or the NHL where your first round playoff series is the best of 7 games. If you have a bad game after a period of rest at the end of the season, its something you can still recover from. In the NLL where the opening round is one game, win or go home, there isn’t a game 2 through 7 to recover.
On Saturday night, we saw two very different results from playing your top lineup that night. In Saskatchewan, after being down 4-0 early, the Rush went on a huge run to win 16-7. You have to wonder at what stage the Ottawa bench knew their fate had been sealed when Georgia defeated Buffalo, which in turn eliminated Ottawa from the playoffs. But the Rush got a huge win. A huge momentum builder. Nobody got injured. Whether Scigliano could have used the rest, only time will tell, but his performance on Saturday night now has him in consideration for the Goaltender of the Year Award.
Then there is the opposite side of the strategy in what happened with Buffalo. They put their top lineup on the floor. It worked for a while. Then Cam Wyers got injured and Kiel Matisz got injured badly. I won’t be surprised if Matisz is not available this weekend. Buffalo should have had this game in the bag. Then the wheels fell off in the latter half of the third quarter. Brett Dobson started to play the way we’ve seen him play in the past. Buffalo only scored one of the last 9 goals, and none in the last 20 minutes. Whether this will act as a wakeup call for the Bandits or a confidence crusher, we’ll have to wait until Friday night to see.
KeyBank Center
A story broke last week regarding the KeyBank Center where the Bandits and Sabres play that will be an interesting one to follow this offseason. The short version of things is that the arena has a complicated ownership and operations structure. The arena is built on land owned by the City of Buffalo that was leased to Erie County to construct an arena on. The Sabres, as the main tenants are responsible for most of the repairs and renovations.
The 30-year lease that Erie County has on the land for KeyBank Center expires on October 1st and the county has stated that they do not intend to extend the lease on the land past that. The City of Buffalo certainly doesn’t want to own the arena, especially with required renovations estimated anywhere from $75 million to $200 million and the city government being in a budget crisis of its own. Plus, both levels of government and the Pegulas all having a stake in the new football stadium means that funding for KeyBank is slim pickings.
With all of the other challenges the NLL will face this offseason, this is one that I hope will be resolved quickly as the Bandits are a critical cog in the financial success of this league.
NLL Awards
Voting is underway this week for the various NLL awards. This year more than most, a lot has been made about who is on the ballot, and having the opportunity to vote, I can see why.
The NLL uses a system not to dissimilar from several non-major leagues in which teams make nominations for the various awards. For example, the CFL uses that exact same system. It’s a simple system, but one I would prefer to see be changed in the future. The year end awards do mean more to the average fan in the NLL than they do in other sports. Its because of this level of fan engagement that we do need to start looking at alternative methods.
The current system has a combination of media members and a handful of people appointed by the teams voting equally for each award, with a system of selecting your top five for each award. And by equally, I mean that each vote counts equally and there is no weighting of the votes.
I won’t disclose who I voted for this week as that’s one of the requirements of obtaining the ballot, but what I will say is that I struggled with several awards this year. In part because there wasn’t a runaway winner in several categories, but also because several times players and media members I planned to vote for weren’t on the ballot. Its that second part that is the troubling part. When you can’t vote for someone, and there isn’t a write-in option that most other leagues have, it makes for inaccurate decisions.
What I think should happen is that you have one independent media group that meets in the final weeks of the NLL season to get a list of 12-15 nominees for each award. That group doesn’t vote for the award winners, but the rest of the pool does. This way the list of nominees is independent of the league and is more likely to reflect the people that accomplished the most that year. And in the rare event they get it wrong, maintain the write-in ballot ability for each of the voters to list someone else if they feel that someone has been slighted. Plus if the NLL wants to live up to its “Next Major League” moniker, it needs to take steps like this to act like the major leagues.
But as much as there have been errors made on the voting lists, we should still look forward to some awards coming up where the winners will be toss ups and we won’t fully know until the award announcement is made.
Until next time…