NLL Insider

Thanks to the wonder that is satellite television, I was able to catch the Altitude broadcast of the Colorado/Calgary game right from the comfort of my own home and thanks to the genius behind whatever makes my Blackberry work, I was also able to text message back-and-forth with my brother (Kurt is the GM/VP of the Roughnecks) during the game. 

Things were looking good for Calgary early on and I was sending Kurt messages of praise for acquiring Chugger and solving the goaltending issues which had plagued them for much of the ’07 season.  However, as the game progressed, I found that most of our messages were about the officiating rather than the game itself. 

 

Neither of us could say that the officials were doing a bad job.  I think that they called a very even game and both teams were given equal opportunity to take control of the contest via special teams scoring.  My complaint was just that too much was being called.  What was overall a pretty clean game saw 26 penalties called and 11 of 19 goals were scored in Power/Short situations.

I know this will change over the course of the season.  Being the first game of the year, every new rule interpretation was under the microscope and the officials simply called the game with an emphasis on the rule book rather than the flow of the game.  We all know that as the season wears on and everyone gets comfortable with the rule changes, the officials (like the players) will get into a better groove and the games will have more flow.

What won’t change, however, is the importance of special teams play.  I am not a stats junkie but this is one stat that you just could not seem to get around in 2007.  There were 13 teams in the NLL last year.  Eight of them went to the playoffs and all eight of those teams scored on 44% or better of their power plays during the season.  The five teams that did not make the playoffs all scored on 39% or less of their power play opportunities. 

The 2007 NLL Champion Rochester Knighthawks are the poster boys for special teams play.  In 2007, they scored on 59% of their power play chances.  Buffalo was a distant 2^nd at 52%.  Rochester also led the East and was 2^nd overall in penalty kill at 63%.   San Jose edged them for tops in the league with 64%.  But those penalty kill numbers do not reflect the fact that Rochester also racked up 23 short-handed goals in a league where more than half the teams had less than 10 short-handed scores.  In short, Rochester was the best team in the league and it earned that position through great special teams play.

Oh yeah, on Saturday night Calgary converted 40% of its power plays and Colorado completed 31%.  Not the type of numbers that are going to win championships.  The statistics from 2007 clearly show the impact of a team’s ability to perform on special teams and when you factor in the two short-handed goals by Colorado on Saturday, it is clear that either team could have made this a 3-4 goal victory with better production on the power play. 

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