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The First Ball Flies

NLL 2006 is still a beautifully balanced league
But look for a five-team pull-away come spring

Sunday January 1, 2006

TORONTO -- It’s showtime, lacrosse fans – and there’s just enough time to get a few clear, unsullied thoughts on the record before the facts come pouring in.

Yep, the National Lacrosse League is still the most balanced pro loop you’re ever likely to love, with far more teams improving than in decline. But from my admittedly dubious pre-season vantage point, I see only five franchises with a real chance of hoisting the trophy come May – and Colorado and Rochester aren’t any of them.

Yours, etcetera, and here we go:

Buffalo Bandits: I can’t give any actual nuts-and-bolts, on-the-floor lacrosse reason why I think the Bandits are going to steal the East from the Toronto Rock this season. I just absolutely love Tabasco Town’s deep, delicious offence, and I think Tavares, Steenhuis, Powless, Shannon et al are going to more than compensate for any lingering defensive concerns. Tavares shows no tangible signs of slowing down, and the youngsters are all a year older and that much more experienced. They pretty much know that if they knock off the Rock, it’s no worse than a one-game showdown with the best in the west, which they’re going to be better prepared for than they were when they lost the crown to Calgary two years ago. Look for some furious forechecking to create a couple of extra scoring chances every quarter. That should be more than enough. I think Buffalo is ready to roll.

Toronto Rock: But, of course, so are the Rock. Year by year, the roster gets younger. Year by year, coach/GM Terry Sanderson adds names that don’t really seem to be that well-known. Ah, but Terry knows them, and that’s how he won three Minto Cups in Orangeville, a pair of Mann Cups in Brampton – oh, and his first career NLL title last spring. Sanderson knows Buffalo’s attack is loaded, so he’s counting on grit, discipline and overall team cohesion to win the day. Oh, and he’s still got his son Josh feeding Doyle and Manning, and that’s a high-octane drag racing machine if ever The Creator saw one. No offence, West Division, but Buffalo-Toronto is it this year, and you might as well start re-tooling accordingly.

Calgary Roughnecks: I love watching these guys play. Tracey Kelusky is so creative, and Toth and Ratcliff are nightmares to defend. Bringing Rob Kirkby back on defence is a canny move, particularly since they grabbed him from defending divisional champs Arizona, and it only cost them a draft pick. There’s really not a lot to separate the Riggers from the Biggers (sorry). They should be able to return to Western dominance this season, but they might want to consider throwing together the league’s best regular-season record, because they’re really going to need home floor in the final to have a serious shot at their second championship.

Arizona Sting: What a blast! What a wild, wonderful ride! Young team makes good! Dan Dawson emerges as a front-line team-leading star -- and they stole Craig Conn along the way, which makes them even better. So what’s the problem? All together now – goaltending!! Starter Mike Miron actually had a losing record last season. He’s a human wall, but he lacks the overall game needed to steal victories in this league. Stolen wins are going to be huge this season, and Arizona is on the outside looking in. Ken Montour is more mobile, but not hugely so. Picking up veteran backstop Rob Blasdell adds depth, but the questions remain. This team will either score twenty goals a game, or it will only go as far as its goaltending will take it.

Philadelphia Wings: What a draft! Luke Wiles, Sean Greenhalgh, transition whiz Chad Thompson, and then they get Brad Self in a trade with Colorado. Like his brother Terry in Toronto, Philly boss Lindsay Sanderson likes to bring in players he’s worked closely with in the Ontario summer leagues. This is the season Wings fans get to see the real Lindsay Sanderson. This team will run and gun all year. They’ll be physically punishing, and should be one of the league’s better passing teams as well. Goalie Dallas Eliuk is gone to Portland, but Matt Roik should be able to shoulder the load. Philly will be the NLL’s most improved team hands down, and have an outside chance to win it all.

Colorado Mammoth: This is a franchise, over the years, that has proven over and over that you can have the best talent, and still lose. This year, they don’t have the best talent. Naming Gavin Prout team captain would normally help a lot, making a clear statement that this is his team, and not Gary Gait’s. Except who’s the new head coach behind the bench? Gary Gait. I’ve noticed, in recent years, that the shadow of the Gaits has helped other teams more than their own. Colin Doyle of the Toronto Rock, for example, who just happened to win the scoring title and MVP award last year, regularly sites the Gaits as both heroes and major inspirations. But where has that inspiration been in Denver in recent times? I don’t know that Gait is going to be a flop in his head coaching debut. I just don’t know how he’s going to succeed. He won as a player by being Gary Gait. He doesn’t have anyone on the roster who can do that. Looks like another grinding season of disappointment for the Tuskers.

Rochester Knighthawks: Coaching questions here, as well. There is no rational question left standing that Ed Comeau is the finest assistant coach and offensive co-ordinator in the game. Maybe in the history of the game. His players love him, and his strategies are brilliant. But his record as a head man is very different. His junior teams in Burlington and Brampton stuttered, and the Toronto Rock crashed to a listless 2-4 start with Comeau at the helm two years ago. I want very much to be wrong about this, because Eddie is one of my favourite people in lacrosse, and he’s always been a huge help to my writing over the years. I see a slow start, followed by John Grant trying to over-compensate by doing too much by himself. Getting in the playoffs won’t be a problem. Getting out of the first round alive will be huge.

San Jose Stealth: The entire question of how well Johnny Mouradian teams do when they’re not being coached by Les Bartley loomed foully in the air over Silicon Valley all last winter. The Stealth utterly collapsed with Mouradian behind the bench, and nothing the great man could do changed anything. Well, he’s not coaching anymore, and in Matt Vinc he drafted the best goaltender to come out of the Ontario junior loop since Gee Nash. That’s got to be enough to float them up ahead of the two expansion teams and Minnesota. Anything else will have to be considered a surprise.

Portland LumberJax: The Anaheim Storm are dead. Long live… the Portland LumberJax? Now we’ll get to see what former Toronto Rock assistant Derek Keenan can do, unburdened by the heavy chains of one of the cheapest, shabbiest, most poorly run franchises in recent pro sports history. His roster is deeper and stronger. I have some loudly nagging concerns about the NLL’s back-pedalling move away from ownership by existing pro sports conglomerates, but I’ll talk about that more in the Edmonton comment. Top draft pick Brodie Merrill is a dazzling two-way talent, and he’ll be the captain of this team soon – and for years to come. San Jose can be had, and Colorado’s far from invincible. Getting past either of them would be a good start.

Minnesota Swarm: A long and useful exchange of e-mails with Swarm GM Marty O’Neill has proven, beyond any doubt, that he and I disagree on everything. He argues that he had to trade troublesome young lacrosse god Craig Conn, and it was a good deal because he landed Darryl Gibson and Kasey Biernes. I counter that it’s a GM’s job to groom, shape and otherwise get along with singular talents like Conn, and that while Biernes and Gibson are both fine professionals, this is nothing more than a better-than-average dump deal. Now, I can’t give you any compelling reason why you should believe a yappy lacrosse writer from Toronto who never played the game over the general manager of the Minnesota Swarm. But neither can I give you a single compelling reason to believe Minny will be anywhere near the main plot line this season. I promise only that I will gleefully and apologetically report every stunning detail should O’Neill prove me wrong.

Edmonton Rush: It looks bad, folks. In the past, over the years, the NLL found itself dogged by dud franchises, and took some pretty strong steps to solve the problem. Stuttering squads were either shipped off to bigger owners in newer markets, or shut down completely. The new ownership model? Big-time sports corporations which already owned successful teams in other sports. Give that Washington joke to the Colorado Avalanche. Let the San Jose Sharks make sense of the Albany Attack. The Edmonton Rush are owned by a car dealer with a big cowboy hat who likes to associate with Rock stars. That doesn’t have to be a problem if he can assemble a good organization, and stay the heck out of the way. Well, he’s got a fine team builder in ex-Rochester supreme Paul Day. What he lacks, at time of writing, is roster depth. I just hope nobody panics when the losses start piling up. The league may find in Edmonton, to its considerable peril, that switching back to the old style of owner isn’t how you build the next Toronto Rock. This may turn out to be the marchin’ in of the next New York Saints.

Have a great season, y’all! Onward!

Too Early To Panic

The Toronto Rock Are 0-3 – And Could Soon Be 0-4
But It’s Unfair And Incorrect To Count Them Out

Wednesday January 18, 2006

TORONTO -- Okay, so the Toronto Rock lost their first three games. So it could easily be four after their upcoming trip into Buffalo. Is the dynasty over? Are the champions dead?

Short answer: NO!

Long answer: Let’s start by examining the three losses.

Opening night was a 14-13 overtime home loss to the Arizona Sting. Yeah, the game ended on Andrew Guindon’s breakaway extra-time goal, but it was really decided during an ugly second quarter when the Toronto defence folded like a cardboard suit, posing for the wrong end of an 8-1 Cactus Critter outburst.

Loss two came six days later, a narrow 13-11 loss to a fired-up, high-octane batch of Buffalo Bandits, led by a five-goal, four-assist domination job by Mark Steenhuis.

The next night, eternal Rock goalie Bob Watson – coming off two inspired performances – coughed up 10 goals on just 21 shots in the first half in Rochester, and a solid Toronto second half was completely unable to hold off an embarrassing 14-9 loss.

So: An OT loss to a defending division champ, then a close loss to what is probably a better team, followed by a big loss in a building where the Rock have never been able to win unless the NLL Champions Cup just happens to be sitting waiting in the penalty box.

I don’t see a disaster here.

But I do see some problems, so let’s break them down.

- Toronto is not dominating. Always when the Rock win, they have that awesome eight-minute run when they do absolutely everything right all over the floor, knocking whatever luckless lacrosse team that happens to be trapped on the floor with them clean into the loss column and that’s it. Not, so far, this year.

- The offence is out of synch. In that awful second quarter against Arizona, they didn’t even put Sting goalie Mike Miron to work. Miron had one of his best games as a pro, but in the second quarter, he wasn’t even asked. Against Buffalo, the Rock were dishing the ball all over the place, but weren’t really that much more effective. Yeah, the bang-bang passes freeze the opposing defence, but unless you actually send someone the wrong way, you’re not going to score much. The ball was moving beautifully, but the killer finish really wasn’t there.

- Jim Veltman is struggling. He’s not running as smoothly as usual. There’s a huge brace on his leg, and he’s noticably favouring it from time to time. I think it’s more a case of a slow start than an actual drop in ability, but it’s not helping. Getting tossed out of the Rochester game wasn’t good either – unless that was the captain’s way of saying “Enough’s enough, boys. It’s time to get mad.”

- The defence looks soft. Dan Ladouceur is getting eaten alive out there. Also, I know Steenhuis is a headache salad sandwich to cover, but he was having way too much fun popping up uncovered beside Watson’s crease during the Buffalo game. Newcomer Brad MacDonald, hugely important to this unit’s present and future, reportedly hurt his ankle in Rochester, which could be really bad news if it turns out to be serious, or chronic.

All of this stuff matters. But the NLL changed the playoff rules in the off-season, and now four teams make it from each division instead of three.

That, for the Toronto Rock, is a gold-plated “get out of jail free” card. However far they fall, they’ve only got to stay ahead of the Minnesota Swarm, and they’re in. And once they’re in, they can win. Not to pick – again – on Minnesota. They have some fantastic young ball players on that team. But this division is freakin’ loaded!

Ah, but don’t talk to Veltman about finishing fourth. I’ve already done that – after the Buffalo loss – and here’s what the captain had to say:

“There’s a lot of pride in this dressing room, and there’s a lot of guys that don’t like losing. I don’t like losing. Guys don’t want to be embarrassed, either. We don’t want to get in that four-spot in the playoffs. I don’t think that’s the way you want to enter playoffs.”

And I don’t think they will. Okay, I’ve got the Bandits picked to finish first, but I felt that way before the season started. Can the Rock finish second and still bag a home playoff game? Well, they’re two games behind Philly with thirteen to play. That’s doable. They’re a game and a half behind Rochester, but the K-Hawks have already lost to Colorado, and that doesn’t sound like the start of a 13-3 season to me.

The Rock also have Terry Sanderson behind the bench. And when Sanderson builds a roster, he builds in some deep inner integrity that is really going to come in handy now.

“First of all, any guy that plays for me is a good person,” Sanderson told me down in Six Nations before the season started. “I like to think I treat people fairly. I come from the old school, where good things happen to those guys that work hard, and I believe in that. I believe in rewarding guys for working hard.”

This is a family, folks. And not a dysfunctional one, either.

The Rock may be a little thin around the edges this year. They’re certainly in some danger in goal if Watson gets injured, or if Ladouceur can’t rally and MacDonald is really hurt.

But the biggest threat may prove to be management. How long can this go on before Brad Watters panics? It was one thing to end the Bartley regime and bring in Sanderson two seasons ago. Les was desperately ill, and Terry is a brilliant coach. But who’s out there now who can steer this ship to safety better than Sanderson?

Watters gave Ed Comeau and Derek Keenan six games before he canned them in 2004. Terry had better get a lot more rope than that. This is the first time Sanderson has faced real adversity behind the Toronto Rock bench. Watters owes him the rest of the season to prove all over again that he is one of the best – if not the best – in the box lacrosse business.