NLL Insider

For anyone new to the NLL, there is a lot to get used to.  Gameplay, new cities, all that good stuff. But for Americans new to this league there is a whole new thing they must become accustomed to. That is the lingo of our friends to the north. It can take a while for an American field player to start to understand some of the dialoge that our Canadian teammates use.

For me, I got used to it a while ago. Spending my summers playing Junior ball in St. Catharines helped me get used to the terms these guys use.  My first introduction to this would probably be when I was told i had a nice “twig.” That’s a stick for all you Americans out there. Another one is saying that someone was a “suitcase” because he played for a bunch of teams. It took me a while to finally get all the terms down.

So when I came to camp, I was a little farther ahead than some of my fellow Yanks when it came to understanding some of my new teammates. But when it came to guys like Todd Fairlie (or Gack as he likes to be called ), Sean Morris, or Steve Panarelli, guys who’ve never played with Canucks before, the language had them laughing and asking themselves if they fully understood what was going on.

But I can understand where there coming from. I couldn’t even imagine hearing a conversation between Luke Wiles, Colin Doyle and Paul Dawson and that being my first exposure to the Canadian lingo. Whenever I hear those guys talk, I think of the movie Strange Brew and the McKenzie Brothers.

So to you Americans who one day will play in this league, just remember that in the future you’re gonna trade in words like EMO to Power Play, Practice to Pracky, Goal to G-No, Fight to Tilt, Arena to Barn and Beer to Pint. Don’t worry if you dont understand it right away, ’cause when you use words like “mad” or “ill,” they’re just as confused as you.

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