The new National Lacrosse League season is upon us, with the opening game between the defending champion Rochester Knighthawks and the Washington Stealth just a couple hours away.
While certain other professional sports continue to bicker over how to slice up their multi-billion dollar pie, now might be the time to give box lacrosse a try, since they’re, you know, actually playing.
As a rabid sports junkie, I maintain that indoor lacrosse is far and away the most entertaining spectator sport ever devised. I would dearly love to see the NLL gain some traction and fill the void during the lockout.
Every NLL game this season can be viewed on YouTube, so worldwide access to the league is pretty easy.
They’ve also once again brokered TV deals with TSN in Canada and CBS Sports Network in the USA.
Man, that was a helluva game! Washington beat Rochester 13-12, upsetting the defending champs. Rochester’s game tying goal late in the 4th quarter by Johnny Powless was spectacular and Athan Iannucci’s game winner in the dying moments of regulation was nothing but dramatic. Clutch Duch had an excellent game, with six points for the Stealth. Great way to start the year!
Man, disappointing start to the Calgary Roughnecks season.
Calgary got beat by the Toronto Rock 13-11 tonight in front of a crowd of more than 11,000 fans. It was a fairly closely matched game all the way through except for several breakaways that Toronto picked up early in the game that they converted into easy goals. Calgary’s transition to defense was too slow, too sloppy and the Rock made the most of it.
Better luck next week, Roughnecks!
The Rock, meanwhile, head north to Edmonton for a game against the Rush on Sunday night. Looking forward to catching it on YouTube…
I caught the last five minutes of the third and all of the fourth quarter. At least Calgary made it interesting. I kept looking for you guys in the crowd shots but didn’t spot you. Wear some crazy wigs or something next game.
What’s a game like in the Dome at about half capacity? 5000 (aprox) for a Hitmen game seems absolutely empty.
I was the one in the upper deck screaming like a crazy person and shaking a cow bell for all I was worth every time Calgary scored and my wife was the one next to me also screaming but trying to plug her ears amid the noise of the cowbell.
When you have the music playing for the entire game and a bunch of dedicated and passionate fans in the stands, it gets very loud in the Saddledome, even when there’s only 11,600 there (like last Saturday). It’s actually a really fun atmosphere. I mean, who doesn’t love yelling “Get in, sit down and SHUT UP!” at every opposition player who draws a penalty?
The Toronto Rock are looking really good so far and will be tough to beat. I’m intersted in seeing the Rochester Knighthawks ofense in action when they’re fully healthy, with Casey Powell, Dangerous Dan Dawson, Cody Jamieson, Johnny Powless and Mike Accursi all on the floor. Calgary will be in tough against Colorado (I’ll be at that game), but it should be a good one. And it will be interesting to see if the Washington Stealth steamroller continues producing against one of the league’s best defenses in Edmonton.
Is it wrong of me to hope that John Grant, Jr. of the Colorado Mammoth has a career-ending injury before we meet them again? It is? Okay. I’ll just hope that our guys learn to keep him away from the net before then.
Gregorio, if you were watching the Colorado-Calgary game closely on YouTube (you can rewatch it whenever the mood strikes as well), we were sitting right behind the Mammoth bench for the first half. I got a couple sweet pics of John Grant Jr. in all his magnificent glory.
Week 4 highlights are now available, featuring some sweet, sweet goals.
With the exception of the Rochester Knighthawks, who are 0-3 to start the seaosn, the rest of the league is bunched together pretty tightly, with no team more than a game and a half out of first place. Gotta love that level of parity.
Rochester is still trying to get its first win; the Casey Powell-Dan Dawson experiment is so far working about as well as it did in Boston a couple years ago. Not a good sign for them.
I’m also interested to see how Colorado does with Matt Roik as their top goalie. He failed to the point of getting cut in that role last year with Toronto.
The rule that makes the referees review every goal in the last two minutes has to be updated - the last two minutes in the game between Edmonton and Calgary tonight (which Calgary won - in your Edmontonian faces!) took forever due to this rule. One of the goals that had to be reviewed was an empty-netter - seriously, League? You need to review ALL the goals?
The logic behind the rule – if you can call it that – is that they took away one of the coaches’ chalenge flags this year, so they can only challenge one goal per half instead of two as previously. To make up for it, they decided to automatically review every goal in the last two minutes of every game. But frankly, when a guy scores an empty netter from 40 feet away, its unlikely he managed to step into the crease before the ball went in the net. I think a certain amount of discretion would make sense with this. Or, you know, review one camera angle once for an obviously clean goal and then be done with it instead of sitting in the penalty booth looking at every frickin’ angle for five minutes before deciding that an obvious goal is an obvious goal. There has to be some sort of workable compromise in there.
Should be a couple interesting games this weekend. The Calgary-Edmonton rematch should have all the anger and intensity of a grudge match after Calgary put Edmonton down last weekend. The Rochester-Philly game tonight should also be a very close and intense game with both teams trying to claw their way back up in the standings. I think the Colorado-Washington game on Saturday should also be pretty kick-ass, with both teams fighting for position in the standings.
Interesting article on Mark Matthews, the Edmonton Rush’s first pick overall in last year’s draft and odds-on favourite to win the Rookie of the Year award.
There were two full-on brawls this weekend, in the dying moments of the Colorado-Buffalo game and the Washington-Philly game (the fights can be found at the tail end of the highlights on the links). Sadly, no goalie fights, although Philly goalie Brandon Miller kept sticking his big fat self in the way of one of the fights in his game. Jerk shoulda earned himself a beat-down for meddling.
Former MVP Casey Powell didn’t even last a full season with the Rochester Knighthawks. He’s been sentto the Colorado Mammoth for Jon Sullivan and joins an offense that features another former Knighthawk and former MVP, John Grant Jr. along with solid scoring options in Gavin Prout and Adam Jones.
Powell didn’t gel well with Dan Dawson and Cody Jamieson in Rochester; it’ll be interesting to see how he performs with JGJ.
The lacrosse world is continuing to grow and the latest bit of evidence is that they now have their very first million dollar manin American all-star Paul Rabil.
Three teams are officiallyin the playoffs, three have a chance of locking up a spot this weekend, and the bottom three are still fighting to avoid the shame and disgrace of missing the postseason. Should be an interesting weekend!
