Week 13 picks

Wow. Do I ever suck at this game prediction thing. 1-5 last week, and I'm now getting to the point where if I get every pick for the rest of the season right, I might end up at .500. Just did the math: including the five this weekend, there are 22 games left in the season. To end up at or above .500 (i.e. the same odds as flipping a coin for each game), I have to go 18-4 from now on. <rolls up sleeves> Here we go.

Record: 18-32 (.360)

Game	Comments	Pick
CAL @ MIN	I know Minnesota beat them a couple of weeks ago, but I still think Calgary is the top team in the league. It was just announced that Ryan Benesch will miss this weekend's games with a concussion, so that won't help the Swarm. This is why I usually wait until Friday to post my picks. (Because it's made soooo much difference thus far.)
TOR @ BUF	The Bandits will be pissed after last week, but they've been pissed most of the season and it's done them no good. Yeah, they wiped the floor with the Rock a couple of weeks ago, but the Rock played much better the next week while the Bandits played much worse. The Bandits are over .500 (9-6) lifetime in Toronto, while the Rock are way over .500 (6-12) in Buffalo.
WAS @ CAL	Washington has definitely improved in recent weeks, but as determined as they are to make the playoffs, the Roughnecks are just as determined to finish first overall, and a couple of wins this weekend are what's required to get in front of Colorado. I also know (thanks to an upcoming article) that when a team plays an away game followed by a home game in the same weekend, the most likely scenario is that they sweep both games. Playin' the odds.
MIN @ EDM	Edmonton is a better team than their record indicates and while the Swarm are still a good team without Benesch, I think the Rush will look at this as a golden opportunity to move up and try to get out of last place.
COL @ ROC	John Grant returns to Rochester. To my knowledge, there are no hard feelings either way – he didn't demand a trade, nor is he upset with the Knighthawks trading him, and there were no personal issues with ownership or the coach or anything. There's no reason to believe (a) he'll be booed by the Knighthawks fans, or (b) he'll have a chip on his shoulder and something to prove, so I'm not sure it'll have that big an effect on his play. That and Shewchuk and Mac Allen are both back bodes well for the Mammoth.

Previous weeks:

Week 1 – 0-1
Week 2 – 2-2
Week 3 – 2-2
Week 4 – 2-4
Week 5 – 2-2
Week 6 – 1-3
Week 7 – 2-2
Week 8 – 1-3
Week 9 – 2-2
Week 10 – 2-4
Week 11 – 1-2
Week 12 – 1-5

More statistics than you require

I was recently sent a spreadsheet containing information on every NLL game ever played, from 1987 to 2011. For each game, it contains the date/time, home and away teams, final score, attendance, and what type of game (i.e. regular season, division finals, championship, All-Star game, etc.). For a numbers geek like me, this is heaven. I immediately imported the data into a SQL Anywhere database and started to write stored procedures and web services to aggregate and analyze the data.

Thanks very much to NLL Chatter reader Dennis for sending this to me, and props for all the work it took putting it together!

Over the next little while (probably more in the off season), I will be posting articles summarizing and analyzing certain aspects of this data. For example: which team has the best record in Friday night games? What about Saturday away games when they also had a Friday home game the night before? What about Saturday afternoons on artificial turf against a lefty starter when the roof is closed? Oh wait, sorry, wrong sport.

If you have particular requests or interests, please leave a comment here or send me an email and I'll see what I can do.

Just to whet your appetite for the types of information I can get from this data, here are some random pieces. Note again that these numbers do not include the current (2012) season.

Record	Value	Details
Best regular season winning percentage	.714	New Jersey Saints, 10-4 in 2 seasons
Best playoff winning percentage	.833	Washington Stealth, 5-1 in 2 seasons
Worst regular season winning percentage	.000	Charlotte Cobras, 0-8 in 1 season
Worst playoff winning percentage (ignoring teams that never made the playoffs)	.000	Minnesota Swarm, 0-5 Boston Blazers, 0-3 Vancouver Ravens, 0-2 New England Blazers, 0-1
Highest game attendance	19,432	Arizona 13 @ Toronto 19, May 14 2005 (Championship game) Important note: I was at this game.
Lowest game attendance	1,437	Edmonton 6 @ San Jose 14, April 13 2008
Best overtime record (>5 games)	.684	Colorado Mammoth, 13-6
Worst overtime record (>5 games)	.222	Boston Blazers, 2-7
Highest scoring game	32-17	Montreal 32 @ Calgary 17, Nov 23 2002
Lowest scoring game	7-4	Albany 4 @ Toronto 7, Jan 11 2001 Important note: I was at this game.
Biggest goal differential	22	Buffalo 28 @ Charlotte 6, Feb 24 1996
Fewest goals, one team	2	Philadelphia 2 @ Toronto 13, Apr 16 1999 (Semi-finals)
Most goals, losing team	22	Buffalo 23 @ Washington Power 22, Mar 23 2002
Highest average goals/game	15.9	Washington Power (3 seasons)
Lowest average goals/game	8.5	Charlotte Cobras (1 season)
Highest average goals against/game	18.6	Charlotte Cobras (1 season)
Lowest average goals against/game	9.6	Orlando Titans (1 season)

Now, if you have a spreadsheet containing every goal from every game, who scored it, who got assists, what quarter it was scored in, and whether it was a power play; shorthanded; empty-net; or penalty shot, and you feel like sending it to me, that would be perfect.

P.S. Yes, I stole the title of this article from John Hodgman's second book.

Are Kilgour's days numbered?

Just before the season began, I wrote up my predictions for the final standings and some of the NLL awards. In the East division, I have 0 correct out of 4, while in the West division I have 1 correct out of 5. Some of my awards picks could still happen: Dan Dawson for MVP, Kyle Rubisch for Defensive Player, and Kevin Crowley for Rookie. My Goaltender (Mike Thompson) and Transition Player (Paul Rabil) picks aren't looking too good, and my GM pick (Derek Keenan) ain't looking great either, though you could argue that the Iannucci / Rabil trades were good trades, and the fact that both players ended up holding out wasn't Keenan's fault.

My pick for the Les Bartley Award was Darris Kilgour. This could also still happen – as long as the Bandits run the table while winning every game 15-0. If Darris can get his team to pull that off, people might forget the 6-game losing streak from earlier this year. But assuming that doesn't happen, Kilgour will have taken a team that won the East last year, lost Chris Corbeil but added Luke Wiles, Kevin Buchanan, Mat Giles, Jeremy Thompson, and Anthony Cosmo, and coached them to a last place finish. Unless they turn it around very soon, this is likely to be their worst season since Kilgour began coaching the Bandits in 2003. Could this be the end of the Darris Kilgour era in Buffalo?

The problem here is that Kilgour is both the GM and the head coach. It's unlikely that he'll resign as coach but stay on as GM, and it's unlikely that the Bandits owner would fire him from one of those positions and not the other. But for the sake of argument, let's just talk about Darris the coach.

I've been of two minds about Darris Kilgour forever. I have a lot of respect for him as a coach (you don't become the winningest coach in NLL history by accident), though I frequently disagree with how he coaches. The Bandits have had a particular "style" of lacrosse for years. When someone has talked about "Bandits lacrosse" over the last ten years, you know what they mean – tough, physical, gritty "old school" lacrosse, not always pretty and rarely flashy. One of those things that is hard to describe, but you'll know it when you see it. I don't think there have been as many player changes on the Bandits as on many other teams; it seems that players like Chris White, Billy Dee Smith, John Tavares, Roger Vyse, Tom Montour, Mark Steenhuis, and obviously Darris and Richie Kilgour have been Bandits forever. The fact that Kilgour has managed to create a recognizable style and get every new incoming player to adapt to it is a testament to his coaching ability.

If you ever listen to the Voodoocast podcast, they talk about the Bandits as nothing more than a team full of goons, and I've heard that sentiment elsewhere as well. For years, it seemed that the way to beat the Bandits was to piss them off – they'd start taking stupid penalties and beat themselves. Kilgour mostly put a stop to that and the Bandits started playing smarter, which corresponded exactly to them turning from a pretty good team to a perennial contender.

But this season, that seems to be gone. The Bandits are less disciplined than in the last few years. Indeed, the Bandits have given up 42 power play goals this year, 3.8 per game, more than any other team by over half a goal. They've also allowed more shorthanded goals than anyone (tied with the Rock). Mike Thompson has been wildly inconsistent, and the Cosmo experiment appears to have been a mistake. John Tavares and Luke Wiles are in the top 10 in scoring, but after that you have to drop down to #25 to find another Bandit (Chad Culp). They've given up 15 or more goals three times this season, and are dead last in goals against per game at 13.3. The next closest team is Philly, almost a full goal back at 12.5.

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about Kilgour's "gentle" reaction to the Bandits being down 11-8 in the first half of last week's game against the Rock. In the second half of that game, the Bandits played perfect "Bandits lacrosse" – tough but not stupid – and outscored the Rock 13-3 in a convincing win, and then they went out and beat the Swarm the next night as well. But a week later, after the Bandits lost 17-6 to the Roughnecks, Kilgour had this to say about his team:

It's pathetic. My team's pathetic. My team's stupid. I don't even know what to say about these guys right now. I totally question the hearts of basically everybody but about four guys on our team. Other than that, they're a bunch of bush leaguers and they don't give a (expletive).

I get that he's frustrated, but is this the way to get your team motivated to play for you? One week he makes a very smart coaching decision and gets the guys to play as a cohesive unit, and the next he says that almost everyone on the team sucks. There were three fights at the same time near the end of the game, as the Bandits' frustration boiled over. For all of you who assumed that Kilgour sent them out there and told them to "send a message" or whatever, he had this to say:

That's bush league. I didn't send anyone out there to do that. They took it upon themselves to do it and you know what, I don't care. That doesn't show me anything. That doesn't show me one thing. Show me you can play lacrosse, that's what I want. I don't care if you can fight.

But then again, it was Kilgour who sent Irving, Francis, and Priolo out onto the floor at the same time, and I doubt it was because he thought they had the best chance of beginning the Bandits' comeback.

One problem with having a recognizable style is that you may become predictable. After Calgary's blowout of the Bandits this past weekend, Shawn Evans said (emphasis mine):

We knew exactly what Buffalo wanted to do and how they play. They fell into our game plan. They took penalties. They ran around, they chased us. We did everything right. We killed them on the power play tonight.

Is it possible that Kilgour has lost the room? Have the Bandits been playing the same kind of lacrosse for so long that the rest of the league knows how to deal with them, and Kilgour's style is no longer effective? Perhaps it's time for Banditball to have a new face and a new style. I have no suggestions on who they should bring in, nor do I have any predictions on where Kilgour may go. He's too good and too young to just retire. Darris has been a Bandit so long, it's hard to imagine him anywhere else. Kilgour behind the Rock bench? Or the Roughnecks? Or the Swarm? It's hard to picture, though so was John Grant in a Mammoth uniform at one point. As weird as it is for a Toronto Rock fan to say this, the National Lacrosse League is better with a strong Buffalo Bandits franchise. I'm not sure Darris Kilgour can deliver that any longer.

Top 10 surprises from the 2012 NLL season so far (pt. 2)

In part 1, we covered Steve Toll, Athan Iannucci, Paul Rabil, Tyler Carlson, Evan Kirk, Matt Roik, and Nick Rose, as well as some rule changes. In this article, we'll cover the top 5 surprises in 2012.

5. John Grant

John Grant being an impact player should not surprise anyone. He's been an impact player his entire career in the NLL, MLL, MSL, or any other L he's played in. But I don't think anyone expected him to be as dominant as he has been this season. Not only is he 37, but he's only three years removed from missing an entire season because of a serious injury that became life-threatening. He recovered well enough to go out and score 83 points in his last year in Rochester and another 83 in his first year in Colorado. Fine numbers, to be sure, but not Grant-like. In fact, 83 points was Grant's lowest total (playing a full season) since his rookie year in 2000.

Grant is a fierce competitor, so it is no surprise that he'd want to get back to his previous numbers – not because the personal stats are important to him, but because he wants to lead his team to as many wins as possible, and his contribution to that objective is putting up tons of points. Starting the season with 11 points was nice, but following it up with 9 and 10 points was amazing. Nobody thought he could keep up a 10-points-per-game pace, and he hasn't. But he's still averaging 8.3 points per game. He has yet to pick up less than 3 goals or 3 assists in a game and his season low for a single game is 7 points. He missed two games with an upper body injury, and then returned with another 7 point performance. Before the injury, he was on pace for 136 points in a season, blowing the old single-season record away by 21 points. In fact, even after missing two games (1/8 of the season), he is still on pace to break the record. Unbelievable.

4. Buffalo's 6 game losing streak

The Bandits are mostly the same team as last year. They traded Chris Corbeil but got Billy Dee Smith back from injury, and also gained Luke Wiles and Mat Giles. They went 10-6 last year and given the team changes, you wouldn't expect a huge drop-off this season. Sure enough, they started the season 2-0 with wins against the Rock at home and the Knighthawks on the road. And then it all fell apart. The Bandits lost their next six in a row, something they have never done before in a single season. (They did finish the 1999 season with five losses and missed the playoffs, then started 2000 off with a loss. Similarly, they finished 2009 with two losses and started 2010 with four, but there was a playoff win and loss in between.)

Some of the games were ugly. They managed to shut out Philadelphia for half the second quarter and all of the third, and still lost the game. They lost 19-11 to the Swarm in a game that included a 7-0 third quarter. They lost to the Knighthawks in a game that included a 7-0 second quarter. But there were two one-goal losses in there as well, including an overtime game against the Stealth. Of course, the Stealth were 0-3 at the time and then lost their next three.

Bandits coach and GM Darris Kilgour has a reputation for being fiery and passionate, and I'm sure that during this streak more than a few f-bombs were dropped. But after losing six in a row, the Bandits started their next game against the Rock down 5-1 and losing 11-8 at the half. Did Darris lose his mind and scream and yell like a stereotypical drill sergeant? Not at all. In his IL Indoor interview with Tracey Kelusky, Ty Pilson used the unlikely word "gentle" to describe Kilgour's reaction. Kelusky said "he just said you guys are sticking with it, you guys aren’t panicking, and that’s something we were doing during that six-game skid... He said we’re playing confident, keep doing that and we’ll have success." How did that go over with the Bandits? They outscored the Rock 13-3 in the second half and won 21-14. That is solid coaching.

3. This year's crop of rookies

Every year, one rookie is singled out and given the NLL Rookie of the Year award. And every year, there are arguments that someone else deserved it as well. Last year, Curtis Dickson won it over Cody Jamieson, and in 2010, Stephan Leblanc beat out teammate Garrett Billings. This year, the number of deserving rookies who will not win ROY is crazy. It seems that every team has a rookie who's having an outstanding season, and some have more than one. In the case of the Minnesota Swarm, you could almost nominate half the team.

There are high-scoring forwards like Crowley, Powless, Jones, Lincoln, and Keogh. There are defenders and transition guys like Gamble, Thompson, MacIntosh, and Cornwall. And there are goaltenders like Kirk, Carlson, and Scigliano. At this point in the season, the race is likely between Crowley and Jones, but all of these guys have played well so far and with a few strong games to finish the season, any one of them could find themselves in the ROY race. I don't remember another season with such a strong group of rookies – not just in terms of how good they are, but in terms of how many good ones there are.

2. Colorado starting 6-0 and 8-1

Maybe others saw this coming, but I certainly didn't. This is related to #5 above, the amazing play of John Grant, but even if you thought he'd have a good season, did you foresee Adam Jones being so good? And the defense playing well even without Mac Allen? And Gavin Prout playing so well? And Chris Levis? And Sean Pollock and Jamie Lincoln and Jordan McBride and Derek Hopcroft and Ian Hawksbee and Rory Smith and Creighton Reid and Ilija Gajic and...? Honestly, none of those things individually is an absolute shock but the fact that they all happened at the same time has resulted in the Mammoth being the best team in the league, which is a distinction they haven't been anywhere near for years. The Mammoth only won 5 games in 2011, and managed to match that total in 2012 after... 5 games. They have a very good chance of doubling their win total from last year.

The team is quite different from last year – Mac Allen is out with an injury, Steve Toll retired (temporarily – see #10 on this list) as did Brian Langtry, Joel Dalgarno is out for the year because of work commitments, Ned Crotty and Dan Carey were traded, and Connor Martin was released. Instead, we have Adam Jones, Jordan McBride, Jamie Lincoln, Jon Sullivan, Rory Smith, Sean Pollock, Mat MacLeod, Creighton Reid, and Derek Hopcroft. Is the fact that a team with this many changes has gelled as well as they have a testament to good coaching by Bob Hamley, or Gavin Prout becoming captain, or some combination of both? I'm sure Mammoth fans don't care, but they're certainly enjoying the ride.

1. Washington starting 1-6

It was surprising that a bad team would retool and instantly become a great team, but it's even more surprising that a great team would make very few changes over the off-season and become a lousy team. And that's what the Stealth looked like for the first seven games of the 2012 season. They won an overtime squeaker against the also-struggling Buffalo Bandits, but lost to the Roughnecks twice, the Wings, the Knighthawks, and the Swarm, and they got smoked by the Edmonton Rush 16-5 in their own arena.

Sure, they lost Jeff Zywicki to injury early in the year, but he only played three games last year anyway. They traded Matt Roik but Tyler Richards played more than twice as many minutes as Roik did in 2011. Richards and Rhys Duch got injured as well, but not until the Stealth were 1-5. They did lose Luke Wiles, who's tearing up the turf in Buffalo, and didn't really replace him, so that's something. But Duch and Ratcliff couldn't find the back of the net, and Richards had a worse GAA than every starting goalie in the league and several backups.

The Stealth have been struggling with low attendance despite two consecutive Champion's Cup appearances; the highest Washington crowd this year, 4687, is 600 less than the lowest crowd anywhere else (5267 in Rochester). Maybe you could use that fact to argue that winning and losing has no bearing on attendance in Washington so it doesn't matter if they win or lose. But I doubt it. And I doubt the players are OK with losing if it doesn't affect the crowds.

Part, maybe even most, of the problem was the absence of head coach Chris Hall. CH was the heart and soul of the Stealth, but our old nemesis cancer raised its ugly head once again, this time in the form of throat cancer, and Hall had to stay away from the arena to concentrate on his treatment and recovery. Thankfully, it seems that Hall has won this battle, and after missing the first six games of the season he returned cancer-free to the bench. The Stealth lost their first game after his return, but have won two of three since then.

Week 12 picks

The Bandits are back! After I said last week that I wouldn't be picking the Bandits until they proved they "are worthy of a pick", they proved just that. Obviously my statement was the straw that broke the camel's back, the thing that finally kept them going during the games and got them to play as well as we thought they would at the beginning of the year. Similarly, right after I said I wouldn't pick the Stealth until they started winning, they started winning. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

So I ended up 0-2 on Bandits games. At least I got the Philly / Edmonton game right, though not by much. Six games this weekend, so let's get to them.

Record: 17-27 (.386)

Game	Comments	Pick
PHI @ COL	Now that the Mammoth don't suck anymore, the Pepsi Center is a tough place for visitors to win again. John Grant will not be back this weekend, though my prediction of the Mammoth offense not being as good without him didn't really come true. They really stepped up last weekend in his absence, and I see no reason why they couldn't do it again, though the Philly defense has been really solid lately.
BUF @ CAL	Before last weekend, this would be a no-brainer, but with Buffalo playing so well last weekend, it's a tougher now. Buffalo may be confident enough now that they can just keep rolling, but this one comes down to goaltending. I think Thompson at his best is better than Poulin at his best, but average Poulin beats average Thompson. If Cosmo plays as he can, he may be the best in the league but he still seems to be shaking off rust.
WAS @ EDM	The Stealth have been looking more like the Stealth we expected over the last few weeks. They split with the Mammoth two weeks ago but even in the loss they looked pretty good against a team that was 7-1 at the time. If Paul Rabil announces he will actually suit up for the Rush I may change my pick, but I don't see that happening.
TOR @ ROC	The Rock are 3-17 lifetime in Rochester, but of course one of those thee was the Championship game in 2003. The other two wins came last season, so I think it's safe to say the home-and-home curse between these two teams is over. The Rock will be breaking in new starting goalie Nick Rose and hoping to end their three-game losing streak, while the Knighthawks are looking to continue both their two-game winning streak and their three-game home winning streak. The Rock are my team and I hate betting against them, but they just haven't impressed me at all over the last three games.
COL @ PHI	This was my toughie of the week. Colorado certainly has the talent to sweep the Wings, but Philly has been getting better and better as the season has progressed. Philly's first in the east though they're not having the dominant season the Mammoth are having. The fact that John Grant is missing will help the Wings, but as I said above the Mammoth offense managed just fine without him two weeks ago. If one team sweeps this series, they will undoubtedly be the #1 team in the league, but I foresee a split.
MIN @ WAS	The Swarm are impressing me more and more, and they'll be fresh while the Stealth will have played the night before and travelled from Edmonton. Certainly not a guarantee (both Colorado and Calgary have won the second game of back-to-back games this year), but I'll go with the Swarm's young legs on this one.

Previous weeks:

Week 1 – 0-1
Week 2 – 2-2
Week 3 – 2-2
Week 4 – 2-4
Week 5 – 2-2
Week 6 – 1-3
Week 7 – 2-2
Week 8 – 1-3
Week 9 – 2-2
Week 10 – 2-4
Week 11 – 1-2

Top 10 surprises from the 2012 NLL season so far (pt. 1)

2012 has been a season full of surprises in the NLL, and it's only half over. In true "top ten list" fashion, we'll start at #10 and move up towards #1.

 

10. Steve Toll's return

He hasn't played yet, but Rush GM Derek Keenan has already announced his signing. I guess Toll's retirement was never official, so he's just a free agent. What I don't know is whether his "iron man" streak will continue. He played all 16 games with the Mammoth last year, and wasn't on a roster for the first part of this season, so does that count as breaking the streak? If not, he'll only be one game behind the new leader Shawn Williams. Williams and Toll are good friends off the floor, so it stands to reason that Willy was involved in this transaction somehow, but I don't know whether he convinced Steve to come back, or Steve asked him to put in a good word with the boss.

In case you are wondering, the other Toll on the Rush, Jarrett, is not related to Steve. At least he doesn't think so.

9. Iannucci and Rabil

The biggest trade of last summer was unquestionably Brodie Merrill for Athan Iannucci. At the time, I thought Philly got robbed blind – not because Iannucci is so much better than Merrill, but because they gave the Rush three first round draft picks among everything else. Well, someone got robbed blind, but it wasn't Philadelphia. Merrill is playing very well for the Wings, but Iannucci never reported to the Rush. Apparently he didn't have problems with the team or the city, but the contract negotiations got heated and apparently things started to get personal, and Iannucci refused to play. Five games into the season, Nooch was finally traded to the Stealth, where he's been OK, though nowhere near his level of play back in 2008. In return, the Rush got transition star Paul Rabil – who then refused to report to the Rush, and the whole thing started over again. This time it wasn't about money; Rabil had been trying to get traded back east for years, but Washington couldn't do it. I guess travelling to Edmonton would have been worse than to Washington since there are likely no direct flights from the Baltimore area (where Rabil lives) to Edmonton, so he'd likely end up having to fly to Seattle anyway and then to Edmonton so his travel schedule just got way worse. I guess you can't blame him for that, but when you hear that someone like John Grant can up and move his entire family, including a young child, to Denver, you feel less sympathy for Rabil.

My impression of Rabil has always been that the MLL and field lacrosse in general is his thing, and the NLL is an interesting pastime and way to make a few bucks and keep up his skills during the winter. That's not to say he doesn't try hard; I'm sure he gives 110% when he's on the floor, but if he had to give up the NLL or the MLL, the NLL would lose in a heartbeat. This is not a judgement or criticism of him, he just likes field lacrosse better. He's happy to play in the NLL, but if it means lots of travel and major inconvenience, then he's fine giving it up.

The trading deadline has just passed and Rabil was not dealt, so the deal now looks like Merrill, Mike McLellan, Dean Hill, a 5th round pick in 2011, and a 4th round pick in 2013 to the Wings for Alex Turner, Brodie McDonald, and first round picks in 2012, 2013, and 2014. Given the first rounders, it's still not that terrible a deal for the Rush long term, but certainly isn't helping them this year.

There are rumours that Derek Keenan will ask Rabil to report for the rest of the year, but that seems unlikely. I can't imagine the reception he'd get from the Edmonton fans when his name was announced.

8. The rule change making the most difference

A number of rule changes were announced for 2012. A lot of people, myself included, thought the change from ten seconds to eight would be the most significant, or possibly the "two feet in the box" substitution rule. But when I'm watching the game, the two that make the most difference for me (and I'm putting them together because they're related) are the delay of game on possession change, and the fast start rule. When the ref blows the whistle to signal a possession change (eg. a moving pick) or the shot clock expires, the attacking player must immediately put the ball down on the floor and give the other team some room. None of this rolling it away from the other team or running around for an extra second or two to give your team a chance to change. It's been pushed to the limit a few times, where a player will put it down but not completely stop it, and it rolls a couple of feet and the player is given a penalty. That seems excessive, but assuming those kinds of calls disappear as the refs and players get more used to the rule, it really keeps the game moving.

The other one is related – say a player on team A shoots at the net and misses, and then the shot clock expires. If the ball bounces off the boards and all the way out to centre and a team B player picks it up there, the ref blows the whistle and play just continues. In previous years, play would be stopped, the ball would be brought back to the goal area, and team B would start again. Again, the new rule keeps the game going. It makes transition plays more likely and forces teams to either change faster (but the "two feet in the box" rule makes sure that they're not too fast) or have the O guys play more D, which we're seeing a lot this year.

7. The goalie situation in Minnesota

At the beginning of the season, it looked like Minnesota's goalies might be Nick Patterson and Anthony Cosmo, which should have been an excellent tandem. In reality, Cosmo was unlikely to play, as he told the Swarm before they picked him in the Boston dispersal draft. So the Swarm decided to go with rookies Tyler Carlson and Evan Kirk backing up Patterson. After Patterson let in 20 goals in the Swarm's first game, they gave Carlson a try. Carlson went 2-2 with a GAA around 11 in his first four games, and Evan Kirk and went 2-0 and an amazing 6.50 GAA in his first two games. Patterson was released, Cosmo was finally traded, and Minnesota has just as great a goalie tandem as expected, but not with the players that we expected. After ten games, the Swarm are 5-4 and third in the west, Carlson is 3-2 with a GAA of 11.14, and Kirk is 2-1 with a league-leading GAA of 8.33 and by far the best save percentage with 83.2%. Only one other goalie is over 80%, and that's Calgary's Frankie Scigliano (another rookie), who's only played 51 minutes.

6. The goalie situation in Toronto

Bob Watson decided to retire following the 2010 season but after the Rock lost the Championship Game, owner Jamie Dawick (among others) managed to convince him to come back for one more year. It ended up as a storybook ending that couldn't have been scripted any better, with a Championship for the Rock and well-earned Championship Game MVP honours for Watson. But as happy as Rock management and fans were with 2011, the question loomed: how do you replace Bob Watson?

They answered that question in July, when they traded Kyle Ross to Washington for Matt Roik. Over and over, Rock management sung his praises. When Boston announced in September that they would "temporarily suspend operations" (NLL-speak for "vanish forever"), the rumours of Anthony Cosmo's return to Toronto started almost immediately. The Minnesota Swarm traded three players to the Mammoth to get their first round pick, and they chose Cosmo. When I heard that Toronto and Minnesota had made a trade during the dispersal draft, I assumed it would be for Cosmo. Instead, it was Josh Sanderson coming to the Rock, and once again the Rock said that Matt Roik was their man and that they had no interest in Cosmo.

Five games into the season, it certainly looked like they'd made the right choice. The Rock were 3-2, and Roik had been solid in the two losses and great in the three wins. He was even named Defensive Player of the Week for week 5. Smooth sailing, right? Wrong. Four games later, the Rock are 4-5 and last in the East. So do they stick with the guy they've been talking about as "their man" since July? Nope. They release him outright and trade for Calgary backup Nick Rose. Then they talk about how it wasn't Roik's fault that they've played badly in the last few games, but Roik paid the price anyway with his job, possibly his season, and maybe even his career.

This whole situation is eerily similar to the 2004 Rock season. Legendary coach and GM Les Bartley had announced over the off-season that he was fighting cancer and would not be able to be behind the bench during the 2004 season. The Rock named Derek Keenan and Ed Comeau the interim GM and coach respectively in Les' absence. But after only 6 games, both were fired and the Rock hired Terry Sanderson (who was an assistant coach with the Bandits at the time – the Rock would give up a draft pick the next year as punishment for "tampering") as the new GM and coach. Considering that both Keenan and Comeau have gone on to great success in the NLL, both winning the GM and Coach of the Year awards, I have to wonder what might have been if they had been given a little more leeway and time. But Rock fans certainly can't complain about how things worked out, considering the team went 8-2 over the rest of that season and then won the Championship the next year. (Les Bartley would lose his battle with cancer at the tragically young age of 51 the day after that 2005 Championship game.)

Rock fans may always wonder what might have been had Roik been given more time. But if Rose works out in Toronto as well as Sanderson did, the question may just never come up.

 

Coming soon: the top 5.

Roik out, Rose in

In an attempt to right their listing ship, the Rock replaced the anchor on Monday. Matt Roik was supposed to be the goalie of the future for the Rock but his tenure lasted just over half a season, as the Rock traded for Calgary backup Nick Rose on Monday, releasing Roik outright. Calgary gets Toronto's first round draft pick in 2014, and if Toronto doesn't make it to the Championship game this year, they also get a second round pick from Calgary in 2014. Is this the solution? Obviously we won't know that until a few games have been played, but in order for Rose to be the solution, Roik would have to have been the problem. Was he?

In 10 games, Roik was 4-4. Among regular starters (i.e. 300+ minutes), he ranks ninth in both GAA (12.52) and save percentage (.725). In a nine team league, ranking ninth is not good. The Rock are also tied for last in goals against with 129. From these numbers, it certainly sounds like goaltending is a big problem. But (feel free to gasp out loud here as a stats guy says this) the numbers don't always tell you everything.

Quite simply, Roik was not the reason for the Rock's less-than-stellar season thus far. He had his tough games, and in a couple he wasn't sharp at all. But in those ten games, he's really only had two or maybe three bad outings, and only one real stinker. Interesting that the Rock decided that this was too much for Roik, when Stephen Leblanc has had more than three lousy outings this year, but he's not going anywhere (and I'm not suggesting that he should be).

The real problem is that there isn't a single problem. There were games where the goaltending wasn't great (pretty much the last three), but there were also games where the defense in front of him gave up too many chances, and other games where the defense was fine but nobody wanted to score. The Rock have scored 13 or more goals in five games, so they can score. They held the Wings to only 6 goals so they can play defense, though that was the only game this year where they've held the opposition to less than 11. In the first seven games, the Rock were 4-3, but in the three losses, Roik wasn't the problem. In the 14-8 loss to Philly, I said in my game report: "I certainly wouldn't pin the loss squarely on him [Roik]". Even Terry Sanderson said in the press release "In this case, I don't feel our guys were playing well enough in front of Matt". That sounds to me like they are acknowledging the fact that it was a team thing, not just Roik.

None of what I've said would be news to Sanderson, Troy Cordingley, Jamie Dawick, or anyone else in the Rock organization, were they to grace my humble lacrosse blog with their presence. So if Roik wasn't the problem, why did the Rock make this move? I have to think it's the same reason you sometimes pull the goaltender during a game – just to shake up the team. Mike Thompson had some ugly games for the Bandits, but their 6-game losing streak wasn't entirely his fault. That didn't stop Darris Kilgour from picking up Anthony Cosmo, and who's been the better goalie since then? Thompson.

Rose hails from the lacrosse hotbed of Orangeville, Ontario, and a number of Rock players – Edwards, Gamble, Bryan, Rooney, and Josh Sanderson, according to Eh Game – have played with Rose before, either on the Boston Blazers or the Orangeville Northmen. It's not like Roik was a complete unknown, but we all know that Terry Sanderson, also an Orangeville guy, would much prefer having players on his team that he's familiar with.

Are the Rock a better team with Rose? This year, it obviously remains to be seen. Going forward, the answer is likely yes. Rose is eight years younger than Roik, and had a lot of success in junior lacrosse, winning a couple of Minto Cups and being named IL Indoor's Junior Goaltender of the Year in consecutive years. He hasn't seen an awful lot of playing time in the NLL, but has been a backup to two of the best in Cosmo and Poulin. Oddly, Poulin was also a backup to Cosmo, and both Poulin and Cosmo were at one time backups to Bob Watson in Toronto. And Cosmo was once traded for Matt Roik. The cycle of goalies is complete.

So what happens to Roik now? Maybe he and Nick Patterson will hang together and watch NLL games online for the rest of the year. It's certainly possible that he'll catch on with another team, likely in a backup role unless there's an injury. Or maybe he'll get a starting job somewhere if a team starts to falter, even if it's not their goalie's fault.

Game report: Buffalo A MILLION @ Toronto 14

The Bandits and the Rock played a rare lacrosse doubleheader on Friday night. In the first game, the Rock played smart and the offense was clicking, while the Bandits were undisciplined and had lousy goaltending. Toronto won the opener 11-8. In the second game, it was just the reverse. The Rock couldn't score to save their lives because of the great Bandits defense and they took the stupid penalties while the Bandits got their offense going, and Buffalo won the second game 13-3. Unfortunately, each of these games was only 30 minutes long, and their aggregate score was what really mattered.

The final score was actually Buffalo 21 @ Toronto 14, not A MILLION like in the title of this article but as a Rock fan, that's what it felt like. Some of the numbers in this game are staggering – Toronto had 11 goals in the first half and 3 in the second. Buffalo had 8 (eight!) power play goals and four shorthanded goals. In contrast, Dan Carey's beautiful behind-the-back goal in the second was Toronto's second shorthanded goal of the season. The Rock had a run of five goals to take an early 5-1 lead, but in the second half Bandits had runs of 5 and 6 goals. Five different Bandits had 6 or more points.

How Rock fans felt as the game went on

Mark Steenhuis wasn't having the greatest season of his career, but he was everywhere on Friday night. Near the end of the game when it was obvious that the Bandits were just killing time whenever they had possession, they'd just send Steenhuis out there by himself to run around and get pounded for 30 seconds. He didn't even have anyone to pass to half the time – there were no other Bandits anywhere near him. One of those times, the Rock were on the power play but managed to allow Steenhuis to run around without really hitting him at all. After about 20 seconds of this he scored. A few Toronto fans actually started to boo the Rock defenders.

The Rock were much more undisciplined in the second half than the first. Toronto had four penalties in the first half, but only one that wasn't coincidental with a Buffalo penalty. Buffalo had five, including two at the same time. In the second half, Toronto had six non-coincidental penalties. Matt Roik even got a penalty when he cross checked Luke Wiles in the head, though I did not see what Wiles had done. Wiles got a minor while Roik got a double minor. Toronto fans started booing when the penalties were announced, but Roik deserved it and was lucky he didn't get five. There were two fights: Stephen Hoar and Travis Irving in the second, and then Patrick Merrill and Irving again in the fourth. I didn't see the beginning of the second fight, and all I saw was Merrill on the floor with Irving pounding on him. My son asked if the guy who didn't throw any punches could be given a fighting penalty; I said that in that case Merrill wouldn't be given anything and Irving would just get two for roughing. But both got game misconducts and Merrill was also given an instigator penalty, so it sounds like Merrill picked a fight with the wrong guy and got his butt kicked.

On the plus side for the Rock, Garrett Billings continues his strong season picking up 9 points (3+6) and Colin Doyle had another good game with 5 goals and an assist. The Rock had four power play goals of their own and a shorthanded goal. Let's see... other positives for the Rock... I'll have to get back to you on that.

For the Bandits, Cosmo did not look sharp. He made a few pretty good saves, but the Rock seemed to have him figured out. He was pulled for Mike Thompson, who played very well. That is the Mike Thompson that I picked to win goaltender of the year. Mat Giles had 6 points (2+4), Steenhuis and John Tavares both had 4 goals and 3 assists, Luke Wiles had 5 goals and 2 assists, and new daddy Chad Culp had a pair of goals and six assists for eight points. I mentioned in the pre-season that if all the Bandits offensive guys could get it together, they could have a scary good offense, and we saw that on Friday.

I don't really have a lot else to say about this game. It started off well for the Rock and it looked like the Bandits would continue on their losing skid. But then Toronto came out flat in the second half while Darris Kilgour must have given one hell of a halftime speech in the Bandits dressing room. The Rock have now lost four of the past five, while the Bandits season might have just turned around.

Other notes:

• The singing of the National anthems was a study in contrasts. There were two singers, one for the American anthem and one for O Canada. The guy that sang the American anthem had a deep country-and-western sort of voice, and did a very good job. The woman that sang the Canadian anthem was local radio personality Josie Dye. She started off with the wrong words "O Canada, we stand on guard for thee", and things got worse from there. After a few more lines it was obvious she was so nervous or flustered that she had totally lost track of the words and she actually stopped and started over. Then she got them wrong the second time as well and the crowd started singing very loudly – whether that was to drown her out or to help her remember, I can't say. She seemed to remember the words after that and ended up finishing the song. She was actually a decent singer but the performance was shameful. I haven't seen an anthem that badly butchered since Roseanne.
• There was one unusual play in the first half – a shot clock violation was called on the Rock, and the Rock player (I think it was Doyle) immediately put the ball down, and then stood there waiting for the Bandits to grab it. The Bandits defense raced to the bench to get the forwards out, but a few seconds later the ref blew the whistle and Doyle picked up the ball again. He ran in and got a shot on net, though it was stopped. It was not clear why he was allowed to pick up the ball in the first place. My only guess was that the ref decided that the Bandits took too long on the line change.
• Jesse Gamble had yet another nice game, scoring a goal and adding two assists. He's impressed the hell out of me this season.
• Ryan Sharp announced on Friday that he has retired from the NLL. He missed most of last season with knee injuries and I guess he aggravated it enough in the last game (or gradually over the season) that his doctor told him he had to stop. I can't say I've been a huge fan of Sharp this season; while he was a big tough defender, of which the Rock have precious few, I felt he took too many unnecessary penalties. That said, it sucks when a player has to end their career early because of injuries.

Week 11 picks

I have still yet to break the elusive .500 mark this season, and not just on the season as a whole; I haven't broken .500 in any single week either. I went 2-4 last week, but was this close to going 4-2. I called the split of Colorado and Washington, but for some reason I decided that the Stealth would win in Colorado and the Mammoth would win in Washington. They did split, but each team won at home.

This is the first season that I've really made an effort at individual game predictions during the regular season. I have come to the following stunning conclusion: it's hard. When the experts over at IL Indoor (and yes, I write there too but I'm just a fairly knowledgeable fan, those guys live and breathe lacrosse) are all under .500, what chance does an amateur like me have? You can go with "gut feelings", but we all know how reliable they are. Or, you can attempt to use logic, but you end up with contradictions. Take the Philly-Toronto game from a couple of weeks ago:

• The game is in Toronto, so I can clearly not choose Philadelphia
• Philadelphia has a winning away record while the Rock have a losing home record, so I can clearly not choose Toronto
• Toronto is the reigning NLL Champion, so I can clearly not choose Philadelphia
• Philadelphia beat Toronto in their last meeting, so I can clearly not choose Toronto
• Toronto beat Philadelphia in the game before that, and by a greater goal differential, so I can clearly not choose Philadelphia
• Philly has Kevin Crowley, a potential rookie of the year, as well as former MVP Dan Dawson, so I can clearly not choose Toronto
• Toronto has perennial top scorer Josh Sanderson and former MVP Colin Doyle, so I can clearly not choose Philadelphia
• Philly has beaten the Bandits twice this year while the Bandits beat Toronto in their only meeting, so I can clearly not choose Toronto

I decided to go with Toronto, and Philly won. After using my dizzying intellect to do all that analysis, I picked the game wrong. The real choice should have been obvious: don't make picks.

Record: 16-25 (.390)

Game	Comments	Pick
BUF @ TOR	I believe I've chosen the Rock to win every game they've played this year, so perhaps I am a homer when it comes to that. But in my defense, it's not like the Rock is a terrible team and my picks make no sense. Could the Bandits beat the Rock in Toronto? Sure. The Rock are under .500 at home this year, Cosmo's shaken off a lot of rust, and John Tavares has stolen a game or two in his career. But I seem to go with trends for my picks – until Buffalo proves to me that they are worthy of a pick (and losing 6 in a row is not the way to do that), I won't be picking the Bandits.
MIN @ BUF	Gotta go with Minnesota on this one, mainly for the same reason as above, though Minnesota has been playing really well lately, so I might have picked them even if Buffalo wasn't last in the league.
EDM @ PHI	Toughie of the week. I picked Philly to beat Edmonton a couple of weeks ago because the Wings were in first in the East and Edmonton was second-last in the west. The Rush won. Now Philly's in first in the east and Edmonton is last in the west. I gotta go with the odds and pick Philly again.

Previous weeks:

Week 1 – 0-1
Week 2 – 2-2
Week 3 – 2-2
Week 4 – 2-4
Week 5 – 2-2
Week 6 – 1-3
Week 7 – 2-2
Week 8 – 1-3
Week 9 – 2-2
Week 10 – 2-4

Game report: Philadelphia 12 @ Toronto 10

The battle for the east was hard-fought and close, as expected, with the 4-4 Wings coming into Toronto to play the 4-4 Rock. The winner would take first in the east as well as win the season series between these two. The Rock took an early but short lead, and the teams traded goals in the second, but the Wings pulled away in the third and held off a late Rock rally to win 12-10.

Kasey Beirnes gave the Rock the lead 3:48 into the first, but only eight seconds later Wings captain Brodie Merrill tied it up. Toronto never led again in the game, though they did tie it up three times in the second. One of those tying goals came with less than a minute left in the first half, which ended at 5-5. Drew Westervelt then scored early in the third to give the Wings a lead they'd never give up. The Rock scored two goals in 44 seconds with less than three minutes remaining to get within one, but that was as close as they'd get as David Brock put the game away with an empty-netter.

The Rock were playing catch-up all night, and did make a game of it, but Philly wouldn't let them get any kind of momentum. Of the Rock's ten goals on the night, five of them were followed by Philadelphia goals less than a minute later, and two of those were less than ten seconds later. It's pretty deflating when you score and think "we're making progress, only one more and we're tied!" and then the other teams scores before your goal has even been announced.

The streak of Rock losses with Colin Doyle in the lineup continues. They have not won a game this year that Doyle has finished. That's not to say this loss was his fault; I thought Doyle had a pretty good game. But it seems that the offense settled itself pretty well while he was injured, and once he returned they changed everything to allow him to run the show, rather than fitting him into the system they had used successfully. Stephan Leblanc's frustrating season continues as well, as he was kept off the scoresheet entirely. Leblanc took 12 shots on net, but 5 missed the net completely and the rest hit Brandon Miller right in the chest. Garrett Billings took an amazing 19 shots, though only 8 of them hit the net, and only one went in. But most of Billings' shots off net hit Philadelphia defenders before they ever got to the net. There were an awful lot of blocked shots by the Philly D.

Brandon Miller was excellent in the Philadelphia net, and the defense in front of him was very solid as well. The Rock passed the ball a lot because they couldn't get shooting lanes (except for Doyle, who passed up shooting lanes for passes on a number of occasions). On the few occasions that they did manage to get clear shots, Miller shut the door. At the other end, Matt Roik made some good saves as well but let's face it, he let in some that he really should have had. On Philadelphia's ninth goal, he was way out in front of the crease trying to stop Kevin Crowley, but Crowley passed to Mike Hominuck on the right side of the crease and Roik was way too far out of position to have a chance to stop it. He stopped a lot of direct shots, but anything that bounced seemed to beat him. I get that you don't want to kill the guy's confidence by pulling him two games in a row, but you have to do what's best for the team, and bringing in Pat Campbell would have been the right move. Campbell played very well last weekend after replacing Roik and really should have been in this game in the fourth.

That said, the Philly offense was able to have their way with the Rock defense, for the same reason that I mentioned in my last Philly @ Toronto game report: many of the Rock defenders are small while the Wings forwards are all huge. Watching Bruce Codd and Jesse Gamble pound on Drew Westervelt was almost funny, though they did a pretty decent job. At one point, Winds defender John McFadyen (listed as 6'7" on the Wings site) was standing next to 5'7" Josh Sanderson. At times this game looked like a high school team taking on the fourth graders from the elementary school next door.

In the third quarter, with Patrick Merrill in the box already, the Rock were given a bench minor for unsportsmanlike conduct. Considering what I've heard (and seen) Troy Cordingley yell at refs in the past without penalty, this had to be pretty bad. Anyway, the weird thing is that the ref had his hand up signalling a penalty. The Wings then had the rest of that 30-second possession and took a shot, grabbed the rebound, had another 30 second possession, another shot and another rebound, and then part of a third possession before the Rock grabbed the ball and play stopped. Wouldn't it have made sense, at least after the first 30 seconds ended, to give the Rock the ball and get themselves a two-man power play? Or at least pull the goalie for an extra attacker? They would have had almost a full minute of 5-on-3 lacrosse. As it was, they did neither and played 5-on-4 for about 45 seconds. The Wings basically killed off the first penalty themselves and had a two-man advantage for all of 9 seconds. Then the Rock managed to kill off the second penalty.

Strangely, the Rock did the same thing less than two minutes later when Philly got hit with two penalties in quick succession. They could have given Philly the ball as soon as the second penalty was called to stop the clock and get a two-man advantage, but they didn't. This one made a little more sense because the Rock pulled Roik, so they had a two-man advantage anyway. They ended up with a shorter 5-on-3, but did end up scoring after the first penalty was over.

Other game notes:

• It was great for the Rock to honour the Canadian Forces. Nobody is more deserving of our respect. But why was Wings captain Brodie Merrill left out of the ceremonial face-off? Seemed like a strange and unnecessary snub, especially since Merrill is Canadian. And obviously nobody told him, since he took a couple of steps towards centre before realizing that they never called his name.
• For the second home game in a row, Matt Roik was not announced during the opening lineups, and did not come out with the team. He did eventually make his way onto the floor.
• Rock music guy: when the Rock have possession near the end of such a close game, perhaps "Give it away give it away give it away now" isn't the right song to play.
• Jesse Gamble had another great game. I really like watching this kid – he hustles everywhere and even my wife, who comes to maybe one lacrosse game per year, noticed how fast he was. He'd be a strong Rookie of the Year candidate in a normal year, but so many rookies have been so dominant this year that his chances are likely lessened. Still, I think he should at least be in the conversation.
• Ryan Sharp, on the other hand, is likely the Rock's nominee for Dumb Penalty Champion of 2012. He only took two penalties but both were blatant and unnecessary, and one led to a power-play goal. Glen Bryan's roughing penalty near the end of the third was also completely unnecessary, and he's lucky he didn't get five minutes for a cross-check to the head. That one led to a PP goal as well.

Week 10 picks

And my streak continues. Other than week 1 which only consisted of a single game, I am 2-2 in every odd numbered week, and .500 or lower in every even numbered week. The last five weeks have alternated between 2-2 and 1-3, and that will end this week since there are six games.
John Grant will not be playing in Colorado's two games this weekend, which may or may not make the picks in the Colorado games easier. After all, Rochester lost five players (including their top scorer) for one week and won, then lost when those players returned. I have said at least twice this season that Colorado's offense was based mainly around Grant and if he were to get injured or started slumping, they wouldn't be able to recover as well as other teams with more balanced offense. Now we'll see how prescient those statements were.
Record: 14-21 (.400)

Game	Comments	Pick
CAL @ EDM	Edmonton is a better team than their record indicates. If their offense can start clicking, their defense is good enough to make them contenders. But that has to start happening pretty soon, or it might be too late.  They've only had two home games, but they beat Philly last weekend at home, and they'll be motivated to put on a good show for their Twitter jersey game.
PHI @ TOR	The Rock's last four games were: two blowouts against Philly (one in each direction), then a convincing win against a good team (Rochester), and a humiliating loss against a bad team (Washington). Depending on which Rock team shows up this weekend, it could be good or it could be very bad for them. Philly's on a two-game losing streak, but first place and the season series is on the line, so expect a hard-fought game.
EDM @ CAL	Yeah, the post-All-Star-game Rush will be better than the pre-All-Star-game Rush, but sweeping the Roughnecks? Not there yet.
WAS @ COL	OMG look at me picking Washington. A couple of weeks ago this would have been a no-brainer: Colorado sweeps the Stealth, with the over-under on the weekend goal differential around 15. But since then the Mammoth have proved that they are beatable, and the Stealth have proved that there is indeed a good lacrosse team buried under there somewhere. The Stealth's fortunes will continue – for one game, anyway. I actually made this pick before it was announced that Grant would be out, but I'm a little more confident in it now.
BUF @ ROC	Buffalo can't lose six in a row, can they? Well, I also thought they couldn't lose three in a row, or four, or five. I expect Cosmo to have a better game as he shakes off more rust, but the Knighthawks are getting great production out of Cody Jamieson and great leadership and production out of Mike Accursi, and Matt Vinc had a great game against Philly. Hawks in a close one.
COL @ WAS	Yeah, the post-All-Star-game Stealth will be better than the pre-All-Star-game Stealth, but sweeping the Mammoth? Not there yet.

Previous weeks:
Week 1 – 0-1
Week 2 – 2-2
Week 3 – 2-2
Week 4 – 2-4
Week 5 – 2-2
Week 6 – 1-3
Week 7 – 2-2
Week 8 – 1-3
Week 9 – 2-2

Attendance away from home, Pt. 2

I looked over the 2012 NLL attendance stats yesterday and decided that the Bandits were the biggest draw in the league. I explained why and described the method I used to come up with that conclusion. I also said that my conclusion was wrong. Well, kind of. As it turns out, my conclusion was right but (a) the method I used was slightly flawed, and (b) there are really too few games to make a definite conclusion. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I will describe the flaw in my reasoning by way of an example using made up numbers. Let's use the same example as before – Toronto playing in Colorado and Buffalo, and Rochester playing in Minnesota and Washington, and we want to find out which team (of Toronto and Rochester) had the biggest impact on attendance. Let's say for simplicity that each game's attendance is 500 higher than the average attendance for that arena. Using the previously described method, the average draw for both Toronto and Rochester would be 500, and so we'd conclude that they have roughly the same impact on attendance. This is false.

The reason that it's false is this: bringing in an extra 500 people to a game in Colorado is not as big a deal as bringing in an extra 500 people to a game in Washington. Colorado's average home attendance is 14626, so an extra 500 people would increase attendance by 3.42%. But Washington's average is only 4017, so an extra 500 people means a 12.45% increase. Rochester's presence in Washington had four times the effect on attendance than Toronto's presence in Colorado. Once again, we need to factor out the average attendance by using the draw percentage rather than the draw. In this case, the draw percentage for Toronto was 3.42% in Colorado and 3.26% in Buffalo while the draw percentage for Rochester was 12.45% in Washington and 6.38% in Minnesota. Toronto's average draw percentage was 3.35% while Rochester's was 9.42%. While our previous calculation showed no difference in the draw numbers, in actual fact Rochester had about three times the impact on attendance than Toronto did.

Let's add the draw percentage to our previous table. Note also that the attendance for the Minnesota @ Washington game from Feb. 24 was not included in the game sheet until today. This affects Washington's home average attendance, and therefore the draw numbers for teams that have played there (Calgary, Edmonton, and Minnesota). I've updated the numbers from the previous article.

Team	Away Games	Average Draw	Average Draw Percentage
Buffalo Bandits	3	961	13.6%
Colorado Mammoth	4	920	10.9%
Rochester Knighthawks	6	279	2.4%
Calgary Roughnecks	4	84	1.1%
Toronto Rock	3	-50	-2.6%
Edmonton Rush	4	-330	-2.9%
Washington Stealth	4	-525	-5.7%
Philadelphia Wings	3	-627	-6.1%
Minnesota Swarm	4	-780	-11.0%

Despite the flaw in my logic, the ordering remains the same, and therefore the conclusion remains the same: the Bandits are the winners. Or so it looks.

As I briefly mentioned before, the biggest problem with this whole scheme is sample size. Buffalo has the highest draw percentage, but this is only based on three games. One of those games was in Rochester, which is close enough to Buffalo that many of the fans in the Rochester arena actually drove from Buffalo. Indeed, the draw percentage for that game alone is 38.3%, while the draw percentages for the other Buffalo away games were 5.0 and –2.6 in Philadelphia. That one game skewed Buffalo's draw percentage to the top of the heap, while Colorado has positive draw percentages (10.0%, 15.0%, 15.2%, and 3.4%) in all four of their away games, so you could also argue that Colorado is really the biggest draw.

If I were to take the attendance numbers for the past five years and calculate the draw percentage, then perhaps the numbers would be meaningful but half a season's worth of data is just not enough.

Attendance away from home

I have a database containing information on every game (including every goal) in the NLL this year. I've been looking at goal totals, assist totals, and weird combinations like "which quarter has seen the most power play goals scored?" (Answer: the 4th overall, though Minnesota and Philly like the 2nd better). I then started to look at the attendance numbers to figure out which were the teams that fans in other cities wanted to see.

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Background (you can skip this section if you're not interested in where this database came from):

As part of my work writing the Money Ballers columns on ILIndoor.com, I wrote up a program (a python script, if you care) to download and read the game sheets for each game from NLL.com and calculate the Money Ballers points for each player. This was a lot faster and easier than the error-prone manual way I did it for the first week or two. I then realized that I could modify my program slightly to record a bunch of information about each game in a database. I've been working for Sybase, writing software for a SQL database engine, for almost fifteen years, so I kind of know what I'm doing there.

I changed my script to store information on each game (home/away teams, winner/loser, final score, attendance) and each goal (scorer, first and second assist, what quarter, what time within the quarter, and whether it was power play, shorthanded, game-tying, go-ahead, game-winning, empty net, or penalty shot). I will hopefully be adding other stats like shots on goal, loose balls, penalties, etc. in the future. This is all stored in a Sybase SQL Anywhere database, and I have stored procedures written in SQL to serve up web pages displaying and aggregating these stats in various ways. And no, these web pages are not available on the internet, only on my laptop. Sorry.

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My page on attendance originally contained the following numbers for each team:

• Total attendance (Colorado is the only team over 100,000 this season)
• Average attendance (Colorado leading, 12,614)
• Home average (Buffalo leading, 15,318)
• # home games
• Away average (Colorado leading, 10,602)
• # away games

The away average seemed like the best way to figure out who the biggest draw was, but I quickly realized that this number was heavily skewed by the cities that a particular team had visited. For example, say you wanted to decide which would increase attendance more for any given team: hosting Toronto or hosting Rochester. If each has played two away games but Toronto has played in Colorado and Buffalo, while Rochester has played in Washington and Minnesota, then you can't compare the averages. To compare them would be meaningless because Colorado and Buffalo get far higher attendance numbers than Washington or Minnesota regardless of who's visiting. This means that the fact that Toronto's away average is in the 15,000 area while Rochester's is maybe 6,000 doesn't tell us anything. We need a way to take away the differences in average attendance.

To to this, I took the attendance for a particular game and subtracted the average home attendance for the home team. For example, Calgary's average home attendance so far this season is 8,122. When Colorado played in Calgary, the attendance for that game was 9,341.This means that all other things being equal, Colorado increased the attendance by 1,219. I call this difference the draw, so Colorado's draw for that game was 1,219. If the attendance for a particular game is less than the average for that arena, then the draw for that game is negative. Doing this for all of Colorado's away games and taking the average gives you the average draw. For Colorado this number is 920. This means that regardless of what arena you are talking about, having Colorado in town increases the attendance by about 920 people.

This scheme factors out the huge differences in attendance averages at the various arenas, making them more easily comparable. But they're still not going to be 100% accurate, for a number of reasons. First off, we're talking about a very small sample size – only a handful of games per team. Secondly, attendance can be affected by many other factors, including which night of the week the game is, the time of the game, the weather in the city at the time, how the team is doing (if the team is losing, some people may not bother going to the game regardless of who the visitor is), how the visiting team is doing (more people might have come out to see Washington last year than this year) and even how other sports teams in the city are doing (a Mammoth game in Denver on Super Bowl weekend will not draw the same if the Broncos are playing than it would if they are not).

There is no way to adjust the numbers to account for all of these factors, but here are the numbers for the draw for each team.

Team	Away Games	Average Draw
Buffalo Bandits	3	961
Colorado Mammoth	4	920
Rochester Knighthawks	6	279
Calgary Roughnecks	4	32
Toronto Rock	3	-50
Edmonton Rush	4	-356
Washington Stealth	4	-525
Philadelphia Wings	3	-627
Minnesota Swarm	4	-935

We can see that the Buffalo Bandits are the biggest draw in the league, bumping attendance by an average of 961 people per game. Colorado is next at 920. The Roughnecks and the Rock don't make much of a difference, while having the Swarm in town reduces attendance by 935 per game. Again, because of the small sample sizes it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions, so perhaps we'll wait until the end of the season and see what the numbers look like then. I plan on expanding my database to include games and stats from previous seasons, though it looks like I won't be able to get the detailed goal information since the game sheets don't contain them. The attendance is there, so I may be able to get data for the past 2-3 (or even more!) seasons.

This article is the first in a short series about attendance. Next time: why my conclusion above is wrong and how to fix it.

Game report: Washington 14 @ Toronto 9

In last night's Rock / Stealth matchup, we had a 1-6 team that has been struggling on offense all year, and a 4-3 team that's contending for first place in their division. Strangely, each team looked like the other as the Stealth pulled out a 14-9 victory in Toronto. The Stealth scored early, taking a 1-0 lead a minute in, and the Rock were never really in it at all.

How bad was the Rock offense? Leblanc, Billings, and Sanderson had four points each. Nobody else on the Rock offense had a single point. Eight members of the defense / transition had a point each, and Pat Campbell got a point as well. At one point while the Rock were in the offensive zone I thought to myself "It'd be nice to get a short-handed goal here before this Stealth power play is over" and then realized that the Stealth weren't on the power play at that point, it just seemed like it.

As for the Stealth, Dean Hill led the way with 5 points (2+3), Jeff Zywicki was welcomed back with open arms as he scored two and added two helpers, and Lewis Ratcliff had 2+2 as well. Athan Iannucci has now scored one goal and two assists in each of this three games as a member of the Stealth.

Kevin Croswell, who was just signed on Thursday and is so new to the Stealth that his jersey didn't even have his name on it, was outstanding in goal. He made a number of excellent saves, though many of the Rock's 50 shots hit him square in the chest. The Stealth defense, who I recently graded an F, was also excellent in preventing the Rock from getting many decent shots.

The Rock defense, on the other hand, allowed plenty of good shot opportunities, many of which were converted by the Stealth. Matt Roik started but was pulled early in the third.  He wasn't terrible but wasn't great either, allowing 9 goals on 30 shots. Pat Campbell came in and allowed a fairly easy one within the first couple of minutes, but then settled down and only allowed 3 more. Campbell made some pretty impressive saves himself and stopped 22 of 26 shots, though he ended up getting tagged with the loss. Campbell is, shall we say, a very energetic goaltender, jumping and bouncing around like his pads were on fire. When he makes a save, he immediately passes the ball to someone, almost as if he's panicking and wants to get rid of it as soon as possible. I'm sure there's no panic involved, that's just how it looked.

I tweeted during the game that the Stealth did not look like a 1-6 team, and they definitely did not look like a 1-6 team who were missing their top scorer and their #1 goalie. A little later, my friend Faisal said the same thing. Kudos to the Stealth for what was likely their best game of the season. All the ILIndoor people, all the In Lax We Trust people, and Jon Turner, and I (my picks) all picked the Rock to win this game, possibly the first unanimous game all season. People have been spouting the whole "any team can beat any other team on any given night" thing all season long, and I've been getting kind of tired of hearing it. But the fact that the Stealth won this game in such a convincing fashion proves that it's true.

Other game notes:

• Damn, that Iannucci fella's big. He looked like he was wearing football shoulder pads but I think he's just that big.
• There was one fight, in the 2nd quarter between Cliff Smith and Rock newcomer Scott Johnston. It was pretty long but rather boring, with a lot of struggling but few punches thrown. I don't remember who won since I kind of lost interest, and I'm not sure what triggered it either. At the time, I suspected it was just Johnston doing the "I'm the new guy, I need to make an impact" thing.
• I asked my friend Steve at halftime whether he thought it was the Rock offense that was so bad or the Stealth defense that was so good. His response: "Yes."
• The Rock had at least three goals called back because of crease violations, which is not a complaint – the calls were correct. The Stealth had a couple called back as well, though Teddy Jenner and Rhys Duch (both watching on TV) said on twitter that these were bad calls. Not that this means they're wrong, but they both do have a wee bit of a Stealth bias.
• Not everything was sucky for the Rock. Damon Edwards and Jesse Gamble both looked really good on transition, and Stephan Leblanc did have four goals, though I think he led the team in "shots that hit the goalie in the chest".
• In the fourth, Campbell was hit by someone and fell while the Rock ran up the floor with the ball. It wasn't that hard a hit and Campbell got up again. The ref then decided that for whatever reason the Stealth should have possession, and then Campbell fell back down again, apparently in pain. It really looked like Campbell waited until the possession call before deciding he was hurt, though it's highly possible that he was not faking anything and the timing just make it look that way. The Rock were given an unsportsmanlike conduct bench minor (which was announced as simply "bench minor") on the same play, so I have to wonder if the refs thought the same thing.