NLL Insider

Over the years, there’s been much discussion about the dominance of Canadian scorers in the NLL. Why do the Canadian offensive stars seem to have an advantage over their American counterparts? Why do the American NCAA field superstar scorers have so much trouble adapting to the indoor game? Why do the great All-America defensemen have difficulty stopping the best of the Canadian O guys? How come the Top 10 scorers in the league are guys with Canadian indoor heritage?

The answer is quite easy, actually. It’s all about what is known in indoor, or box lacrosse, as the two-man game. It’s experience.

When it comes to offense, the philosophies and principles of the indoor and field games are fundamentally different. One-on-one in the field game, O players tend to have their sticks to the outside of the middle and dodge north/south to the outside or sweep east/west across the top with their sticks outside. Indoor players almost always carry their sticks on the inside, dodging inside north/south or cutting diagonally through the middle. That’s the first of the fundamental differences that forces a different mindset defensively.

When you add the pick-and-roll or two man game in indoor, it creates different O opportunities and defensive problems than outdoor. Basically, the two-man game setup is two dominant left-handed players on the right side of the floor and two dominant right-handed players on the left side of the floor. The fifth O player, or point man, usually sets up at the top of the offense like a point guard in basketball. Picks can be set on each other on the two-man side of the offense where the ball is (the on ball side) or set on each other by the two players on the opposite side of the floor (the off-ball side). The point man can also engage in the pick game thereby creating a three-man game that is even more difficult to defend.

Toss in the fact there are a variety of ways to set picks and screens (traditional pick and roll, back picks, top and bottom seals, slip or fake picks to name a few) and it’s easy to see how quickly you begin to create nightmares for the defense.

Now add the contact factor. In the field game, you must be “stationary and motionless” when you set a pick. However, in the indoor game, some contact traditionally is permitted on the defender by the pickers or screeners. Conversely, the defenders have historically been allowed to “free hand check,” or hold the attackers, in order to regain strong defensive position.

It doesn’t take long to figure out if you’ve grown up predominantly playing the indoor game as most Canadians have. You have a distinct advantage over your American peers who have most likely learned only the field game both offensively and defensively. And those Canadians have been honing and finessing those skills since they were 5 or 6 years old.

The dominance of Canadians? It’s elementary when you spend your lacrosse lifetime learning the two-man game.

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