Going home again, San Diego is floundering, Rochester had the perfect weekend, Halifax has mood swings, and it's Oshawa's title to lose. NLL Week 7 Overreactions.

It can be tough to go home again

Vancouver made the trip to Calgary on Saturday and game away with an OT win. The game winner came of the stick of Superman himself, Curtis Dickson. It was Dickson’s fourth goal of the night and his seventh point. The assist came from Jesse King, his fourth of the night and sixth point. Dickson is in his 15th NLL season and, barring a two year stint in San Diego, every year of that career before this year was spent in Calgary. He was drafted by Calgary and won a title in Calgary. King spent the last six years of his career in Calgary. Over the last four years, King amassed 406 points with the Roughnecks, and was a teammate of Dickson’s for the title win in 2019. Now, they both wear Warriors jerseys. Spending so many years with a franchise endears the player to the fans and the community. There’s an interesting emotional balance for competitors at this level. This place and these people were great to me, but now they’re the opponent and I need to win. Vancouver has their eyes on an NLL title this year and has the talent to get there, in no small part thanks to the massive free agent splashes that were King and Dickson. Calgary has to deal with having two of their biggest stars of the last decade lining up to play against them now. That’s pro sports. 

Something is rotten in San Diego

It’s not quite Shakespearean, but it’s close. The Seals have now lost three in a row: a blowout by Rochester, and then ugly losses to Calgary and Toronto who have a combined record of 3-6. San Diego managed just seven goals against Toronto. There are moments in these games where San Diego just gets plain outworked. Trevor Baptiste went a perfect 23/23 facing off on Saturday, that should lead to a massive advantage in loose balls for the Seals. They finished with just six more than Toronto. That’s Toronto dominating the loose balls everywhere else except on faceoffs by a wide margin. That’s effort stuff. San Diego outshot Toronto, but couldn’t solve Nick Rose. The Seals have their own goalie issues, with Chris Origlieri going on IR and Cam Dunkerley struggling on Saturday. The Seals have always been a team that’s loaded with talent. They make the splash moves with trades and in free agency, they load up on weapons on both ends. The talent on the roster just plain doesn’t add up to a 1-3 record after four games. They visit Vancouver last week, a team that will not surrender any easy plays, let alone goals. San Diego needs to spend the week looking itself in the mirror and deciding what kind of season they plan to have. The crowd out west sounded less than enamored with what they were watching on Saturday. They’ll get louder, in a bad way, if things don’t turn around soon.

Dr. Halifax and Mr. Thunderbirds

In the classic piece of American cinema titled “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”, there is a scene before the final big race where the team is together in need of inspiration. Amy Adams’ character delivers with a monologue that inspires everyone and makes the audience fully commit to believing in Ricky Bobby. And then another character chimes in with something totally unrelated and unhelpful, to which Ricky responds, “everything cool that she said, you wrecked it.” That’s how I feel about Halifax after Saturday’s game. Everything cool that they had done to this point in the season made me believe in them, especially their effort on Friday night against Ottawa, then the Saturday performance wrecked it. Friday night was a solid win against Ottawa, highlighted by outstanding debut for rookie Will MacLeod and dominant performances by Jake Withers and Graeme Hossack. And then, Saturday. Penalties have been the story with Halifax most of the year, and Saturday was no exception. 86 minutes of penalties in a game is horrific. MacLeod, Dawson Theede, Brendan Bomberry, Randy Staats, Curtis Romanchych, and Colton Armstrong all had 10 minute misconduct fouls. All of those also came in the 4th quarter of a game that was wildly out of hand early. Oshawa, a team whose offense has been inconsistent at best and currently owns the worst record in the league, was up 11-2 at the half. They had two separate 5-0 first half runs. The goal that proved to be the game winner was scored before half time. The second half turned into the Birds looking to get physical in a game that was already decided. Through two weeks, Halifax looked like a contender. On Saturday, they were completely out of sorts. 

Rochester had the perfect weekend

If you had given them a to-do list that you thought was unachievable before the weekend, the Knighthawks would have laughed in your face and done it anyway. Win both games of a double header, even when the second game is against Buffalo? Check. Set a new home attendance record? Check. Get a breakout game from Zed Williams? Check. Fight back from an early deficit to get a road win? Check. Rylan Hartley gets his mojo back? Check. The Knighthawks could do no wrong. Sure, they started slow against Philly and found themselves down 5-1. But Thomas McConvey’s goal in the closing moments of the first quarter sparked the team to a 6-3 second quarter and a tie game at half. Six second quarter goals that came from five different players. Rylan Hartley came on in relief against Philly and went 81.3% with 26 saves. He got the start against Buffalo and went the full 60 with a 82.4% and 42 save night. Zed Williams registered a natural hat trick in the first quarter against the Bandits en route to his highest scoring game of the year. McConvey stacked up seven points against Buffalo, capping a massive weekend for him as a scorer. The giant home crowd getting treated to a win against the three time defending champs made it clear that Rochester is a serious contender for the NLL crown. They own the second best record in the league at 4-1, trailing only the Rush. You could even say it’s Rochester’s title to lose. Except…

It’s Oshawa’s title to lose

That must have felt good. The FireWolves snapped a four game skid at home with an explosion of goals. As noted above, they held an 11-2 half time in a game that felt firmly decided very early on. Tye Kurtz had himself a night, scoring seven goals and ten points on 14 shots. He had a first quarter natural hat trick. Ethan Walker and Alex Simmons combined to distribute 13 assists. Dougie Jamieson was a brick wall, stopping 39 shots and going 88.6%. He got the last eight minutes of the game off, and that stretch was when Halifax got four of their goals, three of which were power play goals. But for all the goals and the blowout nature of the game, Oshawa did have to find ways to make things happen. They had a significant deficit in loose balls, in part due to the fact that Jake Withers torched them at the faceoff spot. They didn’t cause many turnovers - only four in the game. Shots were about even. But Oshawa blocked 13 shots. Twelve of Oshawa’s goals had two assisters. The FireWolves, who scored a total of 13 goals across three games back in December, have scored 30 goals in two games in January. The flip of the calendar seems to have hit the reset button for Oshawa and they look like a new team. A trip to Saskatchewan next week will really tell us a lot.