Run support for Dobson, bumpy roads for rule changes, attendance outside the box, and it's Saskatchewan's title to lose. NLL Week 8 Overreactions.

They finally got the kid some run support

A few weeks ago I made a Brett Dobson : Gaylord Perry comp.  Perry was an MLB pitcher who put up some truly incredible pitching stats, including in 1968, a year in which he lost 19 games. Brett Dobson currently owns the best save percentage in the league at 86.9%, and the league’s best GAA at a miniscule 6.71. Georgia entered the weekend with a 2-3 record. They have a 7-4 loss to the Rush and more recently a 7-5 loss to the Mammoth. The Swarm are getting some truly outstanding defensive efforts led by Dobson, along with rookie Michael Grace who is firmly in the ROTY race. The scoring, however, needed improvement. Coming into the weekend, Shayne Jackson was the only player with double digit goals. Lyle Thompson was the only player with double digit assists. Thompson had just three goals, well below what we’ve come to expect. Dobson has been doing his best brick wall impression through five games, so much so that it feels like if Georgia can just get up near double digit goals in a game they should feel they have a great chance to win. Against Calgary, it all came together. The Swarm put up a whopping 19 goals in the contest. Thompson had 10 points, including four goals on seven shots. Rookie Nolan Byrne continued to heat up, tallying five assists. Georgia was up 7-1 after the first. They entered the 4th quarter up 16-4 and took their foot off the gas, or the total could have been higher. Dobson’s services weren’t needed for the 4th, so he sat the final 15, finishing his night with just four goals, 30 saves, and an 88.2% showing in net. 

Vegas goalies catching up. 

The Desert Dogs goal totals over their last three games before this weekend were 15, 13, and 17. The problem is that their goals against over the last two games, both losses, were 15 and 21. Landon Kells has gotten the bulk of the time in net, but he entered the weekend with a  13.43 GAA and a 75.7% save percentage. Alex Buque has appeared in four games but hasn’t looked much better. In the offseason Vegas made some big ticket acquisitions in free agency to bolster their offense, and it’s working, but they haven’t gotten consistent goalie play. Things may have taken a turn for the better on Saturday. Landon Kells went 84.4% in goal, making 38 saves in a bit of a goalie battle against Philly’s Nick Damude. It was Kells first game over 80% in about a month, and his best GAA of the year. Philly is not the heaviest hitting offense in the world, but the game should build confidence and give Vegas a solid foundation going forward. Right now the Desert Dogs sit at 3-3, firmly in the mix and able to hang with anyone. They’re off this weekend before hosting a suddenly quite hot Oshawa team. 

Rule changes never go well

Sometimes we just don’t know how good we have it. Lacrosse rule tinkering has something of checkered past, and that’s across multiple disciplines. In college lacrosse, the crease dive was unbanned in 2022. Seems straightforward enough, right? Diving goals are now allowed in the field game. With it came the rule about the goal mouth, and all sorts of little nuanced to where a player landed when they dove, the angle they dove at, if they hit the goalie, what the defender did to get them there or while the diving player was in midair, and it led to a weekly debate on par with the NFL’s What-Is-A-Catch troubles. When the MLL launched 25 years ago, they tinkered with the rules and decided four poles is too many, we need to just have three, leading to defenses being helpless and scoring being out of control. The PLL’s shot clock adjustments needed additional rule changes just a year after being implemented because it had the unintended consequence of fundamentally altering team approach to faceoffs. The NLL is having its own rule change rough patch. In the offseason, a rule was added that prohibits players from blocking a shot while in their own crease if a goalie is also in the crease. I counted at least twice where a player attempted to block a shot this way in the Rochester/Toronto game and neither was called. I watch a lot of lacrosse but I don’t get to watch every game every weekend wire to wire, and that said, I still feel like this call gets missed a decent amount of the time. It’s the first year of it, referees need time to adjust I suppose. But Rochester/Toronto was a one goal game, these calls can make the difference between winning and losing whether we like it or not. It’s important to get calls right. Just ask Curtis Dickson.

Edmonton’s attendance was good

I don’t want to be in the habit of talking about attendance every week. But this is a case where it’s warranted because it’s a long way from the typical talk. The NLL held their UnBoxed game this past weekend in Edmonton, a neutral site now but actually home to an NLL franchise once upon a time. Edmonton is a city that is perpetually on the short list of destinations whenever rumors about team relocation or league expansion come up. For that reason, and given its history, the attendance in Edmonton is certainly worth exploring. Announced attendance was 6,941. Is that number going to blow anyone away at face value? Probably not. But I saw some very helpful context from Adam Levi. Average home attendance in the NLL is 8,036. However, if you remove Buffalo games from that number, it’s 6,915. Edmonton put more people in the seats than home teams have in seven different current NLL markets this year. Would it have been great to see 10,000 fans in the barn for this? Of course. But I got the feeling what we saw was closer to the attendance floor than the attendance ceiling in Edmonton. 

It’s Saskatchewan’s title to lose

By now everyone has caught on to the fact that every week I make it someone different’s title to lose; it’s just my way of shouting out whoever I thought looked the best in a given weekend. But this is not tongue in cheek, it really is Saskatchewan’s title to lose. After a pretty even first quarter they demolished Oshawa over the weekend and now sit at 6-1. Ryan Keenan and Austin Shanks had seven points each. Alex Simmons did some damage for Oshawa, but the rush defense seriously limited opportunities for Tye Kurtz (just four shots), Dyson Williams and Ethan Walker (three points each). The Rush right now look like a team that knows how to adjust and pick each other up if things don’t follow the script. Robert Church shoots 1-10? All good, Brock Haley adds two goals while Jake Boudreau and Holden Garlent add a goal each. The Rush dominate in loose balls; they’ve got 528 this year which is 23 more than the next closest team. They’ve played the same amount of games as Halifax and have 60 more loose balls. They’re second in the league in caused turnovers, own the league’s shooting percentage, and lead the league in both assists and goals. Yes, at this point they have seven games played which means extra production, but even on a per game basis, the Rush are crushing it. Over the last three years you’d be hard pressed to visit an oddsmaker and find a team not named the Bandits as the odds on favorite to win the NLL title. But if you go look today, you won’t see Buffalo. You’ll see Saskatchewan.