Random Thoughts: What Just Happened?

My random thoughts…

We now have our participants for the 2025 NLL Finals. The Bandits who have been there 5 times in a row versus Saskatchewan who infamously beat them in the 2016 finals off a late Jeff Cornwall goal.

But how we got there this past weekend is a game many will remember for a long time.

Before the Craziness

The game started out quite settled for the Rush.  Robert Church started off the scoring with a shot top left corner on Warren Hill, something the Rush did a number of times in this game. But outside of that one goal, Hill started off the game quite settled. Frank Scigliano started quite well in the Rush net as well.

Then Mike Robinson took an undisciplined major by crosschecking Mike Messenger in the head.  The first four minutes of the power play were uneventful, but then the Rush got two goals in the last minute of the power play to go up 3 early.  After trading goals, the Rush had a let up in the final minute of the first quarter, allowing two goals, one of them with 1.2 seconds remaining.  This last second goal would repeat itself in the third quarter.

At that point, the Rush offence went silent.  Holden Garlent scored with 3:08 remaining in the first quarter.  The Rush scored just twice in the next 45 minutes, giving Halifax every opportunity to get back into the game and eventually take into the lead early in the fourth quarter.  But Halifax didn’t dominate this section of the game either.  After Thomas Hoggarth scored to tie the game early in the 2^nd quarter, Halifax scored just twice in 35 minutes themselves.

Hoggarth appeared to end things that night with a pair of goals over Scigliano’s left shoulder with 2:33 and 1:36 remaining to go up 9-7, sending many Rush fans home early… and then it happened.

What Just Happened?

What happened in the final minute of this game will be remembered for years.  It started off with a Zach Manns goal with 41 seconds remaining where Manns is on his opposite side and throws a shot he probably wouldn’t under normal circumstances, but does so because the Rush need two goals, and lasers it top far side.

9-8 game. 

Then Jake Naso won a crucial faceoff and the Rush took a timeout.

On the ensuing play, Clarke Walter gets a great look inside but Warren Hill gets just enough of the shot with his pants and immediately calls timeout with 14 seconds left.  There was debate on whether Hill should have called timeout here.  I think it’s the right call.  There are too many Rush players right around the net and the opportunity to snag the ball away or a pressure pass flying out of bounds means that the odds of you getting a better play to ice the clock are better with a settled play.  Keeping in mind, at this stage, the Rush’s chances of scoring the game tying goal should be at best 2% with a settled play.  And then…

The play starts with Clarke Petterson taking the ball to the right side of the Halifax net, and Jake Boudreau and Matt Hossack in full pursuit.  This would have been highly expected when you discussed the plan during the timeout.  Should Petterson have been the player with the ball?  In my mind, no.  Ryan Terefenko should have started with the ball here given his transition skills.

Petterson, under pressure, lobs the ball to a spot where the plan is for Terefenko to run onto it and ice the game.  This is where the plan went wrong.  To me, you put your top transition defence out there, and when you’re running out of clear pass options, you lob the ball down the floor.  By the time it actually lands and the Rush can get to it, they would have less than 5 seconds to fire a pass down the floor and get a shot off.  Lobbing a ball in your own end comes with so many risks that if it goes wrong, the Rush have a much shorter distance to get a shot off.

Now granted, once Terefenko runs onto the ball, this would also normally be game over.  Ryan Barnable now has to slide forward to cut him off, leaving his man wide open for the next pass. What Terefenko, and pretty much everyone in the building doesn’t expect, is for Mike Messenger to leap one-handed and yard sale Terefenko.

The mistakes don’t end there though.  Barnable collects the loose ball, fires a pass up to Hossack, perhaps in shock as to what just happened, Petterson doesn’t move out to defend Hossack, he sits on the far post and gives Hossack a clean shot to tie things up.

Thankfully the Rush do have the camera angle available that shows the entirety of the play as the TSN cameraman wasn’t even pointing the camera in the right direction when the play starts and doesn’t pick up the play until the pass is on its way to Hossack. It brought memories of game 2 of the 2017 finals where TSN cut to a shot of the Rush bench instead of the play and by the time the cameras caught up, Georgia was about to score.

The Major in Overtime

What continues to amaze me is all the comments online mostly from a handful of Thunderbirds fans about how the refs won this game for Saskatchewan.  Let’s go back to the hit by Mike Robinson in overtime on Bobby Kidd.  There isn’t one rule reference I could quote here, there are two.  We can go with Rule 70 for an Illegal Body Check, which specifically states:

“Officials shall consider the positioning of the players when contact is initiated, specifically whether the player being checked is in a vulnerable and/or defenseless position, which may include a player’s head being down or being unaware of a pending hit, and significant distance travelled by the player making the hit.  An appropriate penalty for illegal body checking shall be assessed based on the severity of the illegal contact.”

Kidd is aware that he is about to be hit, but less than a half second before he is hit and he has no chance to avoid the contact.  He is in a defenseless position being in the danger zone near the boards.  Robinson travels a significant distance to make the hit.  In hockey, this would be charging to put it into context.

Then we can go to rule 74 for boarding:

“A boarding penalty shall be assessed on any player who checks an opponent in such manner that causes the opponent to be thrown violently into the boards. The onus is on the player who is applying the check to ensure his opponent is not in a vulnerable position and if so, he must avoid contact.   However, there is also the onus on the other player not to put himself in a dangerous position.”

Once again, the onus is on Robinson to ensure that Kidd won’t be violently thrown into the boards.  Kidd can’t intentionally put himself into that position, but Kidd doesn’t have time to change his position.  This is about as obvious of a major that there is for boarding or illegal body check that you can make.

Because Robinson had taken two major penalties in the same game, rule 38.2 states that the player receives a game misconduct to go with the second major.

It’s unfortunate for this game end on a major penalty and a quick power play goal for the Rush from Austin Shanks.  But that happens, and there was no question that the refs could not let a hit that dangerous go unpenalized in overtime.  It was an undisciplined major for crosschecking to the head of Mike Messenger that started the problems for Halifax and it was another undisciplined major that ultimately ended their season.  The only difference is that you wouldn’t expect that Robinson was the player to do it.  Robinson is a rookie and he made a rookie mistake in OT trying everything he could to get possession back.

If we’re looking forward for Halifax, one thing they really need to consider is the style of play.  Halifax has played for years on an intensity level that has drawn them into too many undisciplined penalties and too many lost games because of them.  Should this playoff exit be a wakeup call that things need to change?  It’s going to be exceedingly difficult to win a championship when you play on a knife’s edge like this consistently.  Odds are that at some stage in the playoffs that you’ll go over that fine edge and it will cost you.  Whether Curt Styres will make some changes, we’ll have to wait and see.

One other side note, the number of people that left the building when Hoggarth scored to make it 9-7 was significant and even more left when there were 15 seconds left (some even left before the start of overtime).  You should rarely leave a lacrosse game early because you never know what will happen.  Those people left to beat the “traffic”, which even post-game it took me less than 10 minutes to get onto Idywyld, and they missed one of the craziest finishes ever.

Attendance

I wrote a few weeks ago about the attendance woes in Saskatchewan for the quarterfinals.  The official attendance Saturday night was 5,829.  Slightly higher than the quarterfinals, but not by much.  The inner seats on the lower bowl were fuller, but not so much on the ends.

Had there been a game 3, the attendance figures would have even been lower with less than a day to sell tickets to anyone that wasn’t on the Pay As We Play plan.  It doesn’t help that harvest is underway so most farmers wouldn’t have a chance to go to the game, especially when it’s dry and sunny outside.  It probably didn’t help that the weather has been fantastic for people to enjoy what is a limited Saskatchewan summer.  It probably didn’t help that spring sport activities are well underway and tournaments are happening everywhere.  But that doesn’t exclude everyone.

Now that the Rush are in the finals, there’s a major obstacle in the way, the Victoria Day long weekend.  In the USA, the Memorial Day weekend is the biggest celebration of lacrosse each year. In Canada, Victoria Day is the unofficial start of the summer.  It’s your first excuse to get out to your cottage or head out to a campground.

In Saskatoon, May Long is a big deal. It’s the weekend where the most people leave the city.  Most of the popular getaway spots are 2-4 hours outside of Saskatoon.

There isn’t a comparative I can really use here to predict where it will go as the last time the Rush hosted a playoff game at home on the Victoria Day weekend was in 2017, when Rush attendance was at all-time highs.  Let’s hope things get better for Sunday.

Condensed Game

One of my sons wasn’t able to make the game on Saturday due to work, so when I got home, we turned on NLL+ and watched the Condensed Game.  For those who haven’t watched it yet, it’s an AI generated video that pulls the highlights from the game and puts them into a 20-minute summary.  It’s been a helpful tool for me when there are multiple games going in a given week or if I need to refer back to a game to make sure I didn’t miss something.

But AI has it’s limitations.  It isn’t always accurate.  People at my work had suggested I use it when I was figuring out all the playoff scenarios, but the inaccuracies it can generate made that impossible when you’re looking for precise accuracy in every possible outcome.  What is necessary with AI is to make sure that you prompt it correctly.

The bot in the program the NLL or anyone would use to create a condensed game is looking for the items you prompted it with in determining what is the most important.  It clearly focuses on getting every goal in first, as well as things like the opening faceoff, big saves and a handful of other events depending upon how much time is left.  The one thing the bot leaves out though is most penalties.  Showing every penalty isn’t necessary, but showing the penalties that led to powerplay or shorthanded goals are important.

When looking back at the condensed game from Saturday, not including the penalty calls is missing a major outcome of the game.  If you looked really closely, you would see that Robinson takes a crosschecking penalty but you’re not told it’s a major.  As for the OT major, it’s not even shown.  If you looked at the score clock, you would see the 5-minute powerplay but would have no clue why.

It’s still new technology, but when you look at this condensed game, the league needs to make a simple change to it’s prompts to include any penalty that results in a powerplay or shorthanded goal, and all major penalties.

Looking Ahead

Looking at the 2025 NLL Finals matchup, we can look at a number of factors to see who has the advantage.  Keep in mind that the Bandits and Rush finished with the same overall record and both are 3-0 in the playoffs.  But let’s break this down by position and a few intangibles:

Offence – this isn’t a slight on the Rush offense, as they have the most balanced attack in the league.  But Buffalo has Josh and Dhane.  Enough said. Advantage Bandits.

Defence– this is a tough one.  The Bandits have had games this season where their defense let them down and their offense was able to outscore their problems. They’ve also had games where their defense won them the game.  Both teams have yet to allow double digit goals all playoffs.  If there’s any advantage, the Rush defense is a little younger and a little more mobile.  Let’s call this even.

Transition – The Rush have scored 39 goals this post season.  11 of those were by their defence and transition.  That doesn’t include the number scored by forwards out the front gate on a fast break.  Advantage Rush.

Faceoffs – Jake Naso is 61.1% in the playoffs and just beat Jake Withers twice in a row.  Connor Farrell is 38.5% in the playoffs.  Advantage Rush.

Goaltending – Frank Scigliano has been playing better than he has in his career.  But the Bandits have Matt Vinc, the GOAT when it comes to goaltending, and at age 42, isn’t slowing down.  Advantage Bandits.

Special Teams – In the playoffs, the Rush are 11 for 23 on the PP (adjusted for the 2 penalty shot goals in Halifax – 47.8% overall) and the Bandits are 6 for 13 (46.2%).  Basically equal.  On the PK, the Bandits are 8 for 12 (66.7%) and the Rush are 9 for 11 (81.8%). It’s slight, but Advantage Rush.

Experience – The Bandits have been to the last four finals.  The number of Rush players that have been to a final? Four. Advantage Bandits.

Home Floor – the Bandits have home floor advantage due to their regular season win over the Rush.  Plus, the size of the crowds in Buffalo will play a bigger advantage.  Advantage Bandits.

Summer Lacrosse Streaming

I am happy to hear that the OJLL will be sponsored free streaming selected games this summer, the Six Nations Chiefs will be doing the same for their home games and select road games, and the Founders Cup in Calgary will also be free streamed.  This is clearly the best way to get more eyes on your product and raise your revenue base.

If your team/league/championship is going to free stream this summer, please DM me or reply to my post on Twitter so I can help promote your product and we increase the amount of sponsorship to make sponsored free streaming more mainstream amongst all summer leagues!

Until next time…