NLL Insider

I took in the Portland vs. Edmonton game at the Rose Garden on Saturday night. It had the potential to be a closely fought battle with the Rush playoff hopes very much on the line. With respect to this weekly piece, I focused on the specialty teams of raggers and chasers. If you look up the NLL special teams stats, you’ll notice they track power play percentage (PPPCT) and penalty kill percentage (PKPCT), along with short-hand-goals-against (SHGA) and short-handed-goals-for (SHGF). PPPCT and PKPCT relate to a team’s power play and short man, respectively, while the SHGF and SHGA relate to a team’s raggers and chasers respectively.

Raggers and chasers? What the heck are those you ask? Well, they are two special teams that can have a big impact on the outcome of any NLL game. The raggers are the players who handle the ball in their offensive end when they’re a man down (or men down). They either try to use up as much of the penalty time as possible (within the constraints of the 30 second shot clock) or try to score a short-handed-goal-for (SHGF). The chasers are the players who come on to the defensive end of the floor to check the raggers and either prevent a short-handed-goal-against (SHGA) or try to get the ball back for the power play.

Considering the relationship between the raggers and chasers, you can also do a quick plus/minus calculation to see how your team is faring in the raggers/chasers game.

For example, at this writing, the Buffalo Bandits and San Jose Stealth were leading the league in the raggers/chasers plus/minus factor at +5 (Buffalo at 10 SHGF and 5 SHGA, San Jose with 9 SHGF and 4 SHGA)) while the Minnesota Swarm were in the basement at -6 (2 SHGF and 8 SHGA). The Edmonton Rush, interestingly enough, is at 0 having neither allowed a SHGA nor scored a SHGF.

Let’s take a look at how this raggers/chasers game is played. A team can choose to be aggressive or passive on either the raggers or the chasers. The decision on how you’re going to play these special teams is usually based on the score of the game and/or the time of the game. It’s easy to understand how you can be aggressive on the chasers simply because you have an extra man.

But how can you be aggressive on the raggers when you’re a man short?

It comes down to floor space. When the defense (D) is playing regular 5 on 5, they usually try to keep themselves as tight as possible, packing the middle of the floor and forcing the 5 man offense (O) to attack the pack.  When the raggers (usually 4 of them) are on the floor, they attempt to spread the D out as much as possible by playing the four corner spots of the attack zone. The more floor space you have to beat a defender 1 on 1, the easier it is. And, the only defender coming to double is the extra defender so, as an attacker, you know where the double is going to come from. If the defender extends out to a corner, the attacker has lots of space to maneuver by him. If the defender chooses to stay more to the inside, a ragger can take an aggressive run at him forcing him back on his heels.

If a ragger with the ball opts to attack the net, the extra defender (who is usually in the middle of the D zone) must begin to slide to help the defender under attack. The attacking ragger will then quickly move the ball to one of the other raggers who should have a ton of floor space to then attack his defender knowing that the double man is far away. You can also attack the 5 defenders by trying to “seal” the middle man. The chasers normally set up with four of the defenders each picking up a ragger while the fifth defender plays the middle floor safety position in case one of the other defenders gets beat either on-ball or off-ball.

A ragger without the ball can run his defender toward the middle safety defender and, when he arrives, try to seal both his own defender and the middle defender, thereby preventing the middle defender from getting to help the on ball defender or preventing the middle defender from doubling the ball. Thirdly, as a diagonal off-ball ragger, you can run your check into the blind side of the middle man and free yourself up for a pass and/or shot. There are other ways to attack 4 versus 5 by using picks and screens, but this will you give you a basis to understand what is happening on the floor with the special team raggers when they show an attacking style.

The chasers can choose to be totally passive, mildly aggressive or totally aggressive. As mentioned previously, their (or the coach’s) decision is usually based on the time and/or score of the game or the remaining penalty time. If there’s no need to get the ball back in a hurry and the raggers are not attacking, the 5 chasers can play as passively as possible, packing the middle of the floor and forcing only outside shots or a dump of the ball to a corner as the shot clock nears expiration. Or, they can choose to put some pressure on the ball, trying to make the raggers pass or shoot the ball early in the shot clock rather than just wasting time on the outside. If the game situation is more urgent for the team with the PP, the chasers can put pressure on the ball in an attempt to strip the ball carrier while simultaneously cutting off the passing lanes to adjacent raggers. Lastly, if the chasers really need the ball in a hurry, they can apply pressure on the 3 off-ball raggers and instantly double team the ball carrier.

In the Lumberjax/Rush game on Saturday, the raggers/chasers game-within-the-game was very passive. The game was close throughout so neither team felt the urgency to be aggressive with their raggers or chasers. But with 9 minutes to go, the Jax’s Matt Holman (a smaller O player) got caught back in D and was immediately isolated 1 on 1 by the Rush O, forcing Holman to take a holding penalty.

Portland was really pushed into having to be at least a bit more aggressive with their raggers at this stage of the game given a Rush PP goal would put the Jax 3 down and the way Curtis Palidwor was playing in net for the Rush, 3 goals to tie late was looking like an insurmountable task. The Jax attacked with their raggers for what seemed like the first time in the game. They sprung Derek Malawsky on an off ball cut but he just missed.  Basically that was it for the raggers/chasers teams in this match-up. The Rush scored an insurance even strength marker with a couple of minutes to go and finally broke the win barrier for the season.

Had Malawsky been able to convert his short-handed raggers’ team effort, the game could have turned in Portland’s favor. It’s the small things in this league that make a big difference and the play of the raggers/chasers is one of those seemingly small things that have potentially big impacts.

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