NLL Insider

Heard through the grapevine that these Thumbs Up nods are like gold on the street. You get a Tut’s Thumbs Up and your street cred goes through the roof, straight up. Or so the rumor (which may or may not have been started by me) goes.

Anyways, here she goes now that week 5 is in the books…

Thumbs Up

Jason Wulder, Colorado Mammoth
Wulder’s clutch scoring has already been noticed on The Money Ballers and it was never more evident than the sick games he threw-down again this weekend how good he definitely still is. He also got a ton of love from his peers as one of the main off-season pick-ups that are gonna make a difference this year in our first Player Poll.

Jake Bergey, Philadelphia Wings
Four more goals, another game winner, this time 20 tics into OT and his best loosie digits of the year. Forget the Jake Bergey of old, I’m diggin’ this latest version even more than five years back!!

Check out Lauren’s Q&A with the Wings’ vet from earlier this week.

Ryan Benesch, Toronto Rock
Benny has looked ok this year, but it wasn’t until the fourth period in last night’s come from behind win against New York that the former KW Brave flipped the switch and took it to the next level in 08.

Calgary Secondary
Instead of feeding every ball to Lewis Ratcliff like they did a couple weeks back against San Jose, the Necks’ O (and D) took on a whole helluva lot more responsibility then they did in that OT loss, and it showed. Jeff Shattler, Scott Ranger and Kelly Hall all got in on the act and made Calgary’s press and O look a lot less one dimensional. Secondary Calgary thumbs up to Ryan Avery, who looked damn good in his first win this year.

Callum Crawford, Chicago Shamrox
Probably a number of guys I coulda given out this last thumb to (like the entire Minny roster), but Crawford lookin’ like the Crawford we saw in Vic this past summer, means big things for Chicago if he can keep it up. Definitely looked like a legit pro threat last night. Now just needs to post those digits against the league’s top dawgs, like in two weeks against the Stealth.

Thumbs Down

Rochester’s Power Play
There were a few really sorry lookin’ man-ups this weekend, but Rochester’s usually smooth working power play fell flat on their face again last night. Even with all the short man goals they keep finishing on, going 2 for 9 against most teams in the East this year is gonna mean a loss (usually). I hate to us Mike Accurrsi as a cop out, but his 34 PP points last year would definitely come in handy right now.

Portland’s O
The Jax’s O is really falling into some ruts this year. Their secondary offensive guys chipped in and almost held on against Colorado, but six goals against a Calgary D that hasn’t really kept scores too low so far in 08, is really unacceptable, and I bethca anyone on that team would tell ya the same thing. Whether it’s a mental thing or some minor changes need to be made on the rug, something definitely needs to be done to get things running a lot more consistent in Portland this year.

High Hits
Like I said last week, I’m all for being hard on high hits, but let’s get some consistency!! Saw a number of really questionable high shots during this past weekend’s games that guys were spending more than two minutes in the box for previously. Sometimes those same calls weren’t even getting whistled this weekend. The inconsistency on the way these penalties are getting handed out are giving mixed messages to players. Simply telling the guys to stop going high isn’t the answer when they can’t get a feel for how this stuffs gonna get called. I know it’s tough to get everyone on the same page when we have PT refs reffing in a PT league, but something more has got to be done if the league is truly serious about getting those high shots outta the sport. This isn’t the first year high hits have been a high priority, but it seems every year come mid-season we’re back at where we were a year ago. Last time, promise, I bitch about that.

Rate This Story:

(13 votes, average: 3.92 out of 5)

 Loading ...