My random thoughts…
After the opening week of the playoffs, we have the Bandits locked into the finals and the Rush have two opportunities at home this coming weekend to try to meet them.
It’s a crazy stat that John Tavares, who hasn’t been the head coach of Buffalo that long compared to most head coaches in the NLL, is already second all time in playoff wins as a head coach, only behind Derek Keenan. With the expanded playoffs, it now takes 5 games to win the cup as opposed to 2 or 3, but still its impressive.
Buffalo has the week off while the other semi-final wraps up. The question is, is this an advantage? On one hand, extra rest is extra rest, especially when you have a team with a lot of players in their 30’s. On the other hand, a week off can ruin your momentum quickly. Only time will tell. But five straight appearances in the NLL finals for the Bandits is very impressive. Are they a dynasty? It’s a tough call. If they win this year, or even next year, there’s no doubt. But let’s judge whether there’s a dynasty once we know the full history that will ultimately play out.
Bandits Sweep Vancouver
Coming into this playoff series, Vancouver had won 7 games in a row. The question was, could they keep this streak going, or would it eventually break? It broke in the toughest way possible with a pair of losses to the Bandits this weekend, a 9-3 loss in Buffalo on Friday night and an 11-9 loss on Sunday night in Vancouver.
I think even Christian Del Bianco would admit that the bottom half of the 2nd quarter in game 1 wasn’t his finest. Shots squeaked in that we would normally expect to be easy saves for someone his quality. But to hang this loss on Del Bianco in any way would be the wrong direction to look. When you allow 9 goals, you’ve given your team every opportunity to win.
One person mentioned that the early Owen Grant major was the difference when the Bandits scored twice on the powerplay. It might have given the Bandits some early momentum, but that’s not the biggest reason. Simply put, you can’t win a lacrosse game scoring 3 goals, and you can’t win a lacrosse game when you don’t score a single 5 on 5 goal all game long.
We’ll discuss the goaltending effort of Matt Vinc later on, but there were several posts about defenders acting like goaltenders and whether defensive goaltending in the crease should be allowed. I get the point of this. Between the size of the nets and the size of the goaltending equipment, there isn’t much room to shoot on to begin with, let alone add a few defenders doing the same thing. Part of this is a special situation though. The Bandits have Paul Dawson, who came into the NLL as a goaltender. If there’s any defender in this league that’s the least afraid of the ball, its Dawson. Also, if you’re willing to sit there and take lumps from blocking shots, all the power to you.
But one fan had an idea I rather liked. If a defender blocks a shot while inside the crease, there is a reset the same as if the goalie made a save. Besides, the error that the Warriors were making on Friday night was simply not swinging the ball east-west to make the defenders packing it in less effective and to draw them out. Buffalo’s defense all night was not giving the Warriors much for quality chances and it made all the difference. When you only give up 38 shots on goal, you don’t lose too often.
In game two, the Warriors seemed to have corrected their mistakes from game 1. They were getting the Bandits’ defence spread out. They were swinging the ball east-west. They were getting the inside feeds. For 36 minutes, the strategy was working well and it looked like we were heading to a game 3. And then the wheels fell off. Just one goal in the final 24 minutes for the Warriors. The Bandits didn’t lose focus. Chase Fraser scored a ridiculous between the legs shot that I have no clue where he even had the thought when he’s one on the goalie. And soon enough the season was over for the Warriors. Once again, just 38 shots on goal for the Warriors.
It was the series of Ian MacKay, who had 7 goals for the Bandits over the two games. The Warriors managed to shut Josh Byrne down the entire series with just one goal. But the Bandits have too much firepower and when you shut one guy down, someone else is bound to pick things up. That’s part of what makes the Bandits offence so dangerous.
It will be an interesting offseason for the Warriors to see which direction they take. They have a decent young core developing, but there will be the temptation of free agents out there with the likes of Curtis Dickson and Jesse King, among others. Which direction will Curt Malawsky take? We’ll have to wait and see.
Key Road Rush Win
Last week on OTCB, they had interviews with broadcasters in the four markets of the four semi-finalists. A question that was asked to each of them was “your team wins if…” The common answer was getting out to a quick start. I thought about it for the Rush-Thunderbirds series and came up with a totally different answer. The Rush win if they can frustrate the Thunderbirds into taking unnecessary penalties.
Mission accomplished in game one.
Halifax’s biggest crutch over the last several years was playing undisciplined lacrosse from time to time and those man-down situations ruining their chances. In the regular season alone, Halifax had 281 penalty minutes as a team. Perhaps its their reputation as I was certain they had the most in the league, but no, Buffalo, Vegas and Toronto all had more.
In 2024, Halifax was by far the most penalized team in the league with 345 PM’s (second place was Buffalo with 265). On the other hand, Saskatchewan was the lowest penalized team in the league this season with just 140 PM’s.
That discrepancy in penalties would come into play in this game in a major way. Technically Saskatchewan is credited as being 4 for 12 on the powerplay, but that should be 6 for 12 because three powerplays ended early because of penalty shots and Saskatchewan connected on two of those. Halifax on the other hand was 0-4 on the man up.
Three of those came in the crucial third quarter, when the Rush extended their halftime lead and put the game to bed. Early on, Austin Shanks was burning his former team and fell just shy of matching their goal total on his own with a sock trick.
As much as the Rush struggled in the past when playing in Halifax, they made the smart move by flying guys out on Wednesday and Thursday to adjust to the three-hour time difference from Saskatchewan and four-hour time difference for the guys coming in from BC. If the Rush do advance to the final, expect them to do much of the same for the games in Buffalo.
As for that quick start, Clark Petterson scored in the opening minute for the Thunderbirds, but it wasn’t sustained as Clark Walter evened things up within seconds. Then the Thunderbirds offense went dry for 13 minutes allowing the Rush to get up to a 5-1 lead and a 6-3 lead at the end of the 1st quarter. Drew Hutchison would have loved to have the first goal back but outside of that, it was his defense letting him down, letting the Rush go inside too often and when they did pack it in, they gave the Rush too much space to unload from distance.
This game could have been different had Halifax not hit the post so often. But in those critical moments in the second quarter when Halifax had some momentum coming in from a good finish to the second quarter, they simply couldn’t keep it going. On the flipside, the Rush defense did what it has done most of the season. They kept Halifax’s chances to a minimum, gave them the shots they wanted to give up, and gave Frank Scigliano high percentage saves. The late season/playoff Scigliano of years past isn’t there this year.
At the dot, Jake Naso ended up winning the battle against Jake Withers by a single faceoff. But it was his 6-1 performance in the third quarter that was critical, where the Rush outscored the Thunderbirds 5-1. Dan Arestia mentioned on Twitter that Naso should be getting some interest from the PLL this summer and I tend to agree. But it will be difficult for him to crack a roster when there’s only 8 jobs available and very few teams carry a second faceoff specialist on their 25-man roster. But his dedication to taking the 9-10 hour flight one-way from Durham, North Carolina to Saskatchewan for home games is to be admired.
I was asked several times about the situations at the end of the game and whether there would be suspensions. First off, the referees needed to have a lot more control here. Not breaking up Nonkon Thompson’s attempts to draw Ryan Keenan into a fight should have been stopped long before anything started, let alone releasing Thompson and allowing him to fire multiple punches at Keenan.
As for the incidents, the second incident only resulted in misconducts, which are a non-issue for suspensions. The first incident though has issues for Thompson. Specifically, we have to look at two rules here, 80.18 and 40.2. 80.18 deals with fights occurring in the last 5 minutes of the game. An automatic game misconduct is added to anyone that fights in the last 5 minutes of the game UNLESS the player is an unwilling combatant. Looking at the scoresheet, Keenan was not assessed a game misconduct because he is an unwilling combatant, so he’s not in trouble here.
But Thompson is in potential trouble. He was assessed 5+GM for the fight under 80.18 and 2+GM for instigating the fight. He wasn’t assessed a 2+GM aggressor for being the only one that threw punches or for not stopping when the officials went to break it up, but its possible that Brian Lemon could tack that on. Now we look at 40.2, which states that any player that receives three game misconducts in a season is suspended for one game. Thompson has a prior game misconduct late in the regular season. Also in 40.2, if a player receives an additional game misconduct in the season, the suspension goes up by one game each time. Based on what’s on the scoresheet, unless Lemon reduces the penalties, Thompson should be suspended for one game. If the aggressor is tacked on, its three games.
That being said, most suspensions are appealed and if that’s the case and Thompson is indeed suspended, he would be allowed to play this weekend until the appeal is heard.
Year of the Goalie?
If you were to foreshadow the playoff MVP, as it stands now, the odds that a goalie wins it are pretty high. If you had to pick one player from the Bandits that’s the playoff MVP so far, its Matt Vinc by a country mile. If you’re looking at the Rush, you could make the case for Jake Boudreau, Robert Church or Austin Shanks, but in my mind by quite a bit, its Frank Scigliano. If Halifax were to come back to win it all, we have more of an open debate.
Granted, there are still several games to go and things can change, but the Goalie Union might have a legitimate protest at this stage if one of their own doesn’t win playoff MVP. Matt Vinc has a 5.33 GAA and a save percentage of 0.875. That’s beyond ridiculous, and something to keep in mind, if its not for Vinc and the defense’s heroics, Buffalo is out in the opening round. Frank Scigliano through two games has a GAA of 8.07 and a save percentage of 0.832.
The saying goes that defense and goaltending win championships. So far, the Bandits and Rush have yet to allow double digit goals, which is astounding. I would love to see a defender win the playoff MVP, but unfortunately when a defender is doing his job well, you rarely hear their name. Caused turnovers and loose balls aren’t as sexy for voters as goals and saves are.
Until next time…