NLL Insider

Week 11 of the NLL features four games, all on Saturday. 

Schedule (All Times Eastern)

Saturday, March 8
Toronto at Philadelphia - 1:00 PM - postponed, TBD
Minnesota at Buffalo - 7:30 PM
San Jose at Colorado - 9:00 PM
Portland at Calgary - 9:30 PM

For coaches’ comments on these games,

Toronto at Philadelphia - Postponed

Up-date: This game has been postponed due to poor weather conditions in the Toronto area preventing the Rock team from flying out. The game will be rescheduled, but no new date or time has been announced as of yet. Stay tuned to NLL Insider for more on this story.

The game was originally scheduled to air live at 1:00 PM ET on Rogers Sportsnet Ontario and on tape delay telecast with Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia.

The news is obviously disappointing for fans that already had plans to attend or watch the game in Philly, especially when the announcement came so close to game time. But there are still three big games on tap this weekend. And the NLL action starts in Buffalo at 7:30 PM ET…

Minnesota at Buffalo

Buffalo (6-4) ended the six game win streak Minnesota (6-2) had put together to start the season. Minnesota jumped out to a 9-6 half-time lead in that game, but ending up losing 16-14. This game is a re-match, and a potential Eastern Division playoff match-up as Minnesota is No. 2 and Buffalo is tied for No. 3 in the current Eastern Division standings.

“It’s really good to have them at home twice this year,” said Buffalo GM and head coach Darris Kilgour. “They’ve been playing really well, but definitely playing at home gives us a slight advantage. They played us really tough last game, and we had to play very well to get a win off of them.”

“We’re expecting another really tough game and we’re looking forward to it.”

Minnesota comes into this game after two losses, and they’ll have to deal with some injuries, including one to their early season points leader, Andy Secore and possibly Craig Point. Be sure to check out Tutka’s report on NLL Depth Charts later on NLL Insider.

“We really just needed to have a little bit more depth,” said Minnesota GM Marty O’Neill, about the recent trades he made to bring in forwards Keith Cromwell and Dan Marohl from Philadelphia.

“The last two seasons we have entered the playoffs short an offensive starter or two because of injuries,” added O’Neill. “This trade will provide our injured players the opportunity to fully recover and allows our team to focus on what is in front of us in the second half of the season.”

For more on that four-way trade, check out Shanny’s trade breakdown.

Buffalo is again without Kevin Dostie, who’s injury has been re-diagnosed as a high ankle sprain and will probably gone for another couple weeks. And their regular No. 1 goaltender Mike Thompson will back-up Ken Montour again, as the team gives Mike extra time to recover from a concussion suffered earlier this season.

“Kenny will get the start, but Mikey’s still our number one,” said Kilgour.

The Bandits are fresh off a win over the Eastern Division’s top team. And they enter a game with a three game win-streak thanks to victories over Minnesota, Chicago and most recently Philadelphia. In their last meeting with Minny, 10 different Buffalo players scored.

John Tavares and Mark Steenhuis continue to lead the way for Buffalo. They sit No. 1 and No. 2 overall in league scoring with 58 and 56 points respectively. Ryan Ward leads the Swarm with 41 points in 8gp. Minnesota is 1.5 games ahead of Buffalo in the standings.

Portland at Calgary

There’s free admission to this game.

Portland (3-6) and Calgary (3-6) come into this weekend tied for third place in the Western Division with identical 3-6 records. They’ve played twice already this season and split those games. Both times home teams have won. Calgary won the first meeting 13-6 and Portland won the second match 13-9 on Feb. 22.

This will be the last time these two face during the regular season so the match has obvious playoff implications for playoff seeding and a possibly tie-breaker scenario.

“We’re in a dog fight in the Western Conference,” stated Calgary GM Kurt Silcott. “We’re a game ahead of Edmonton at this time, and we’re dead-even with Portland. We’ve got to come out with a good effort and try to secure our position in the playoffs.”

Many expected Calgary to have played better to date, and Portland feels they’re better than their record indicates. Both franchises lost last weekend by 9-7 scores, as Portland lost to Edmonton and Calgary dropped its game to Toronto.

“We don’t feel like we’re a 3-6 team, but the bottom line is we are,” said Portland GM and head coach Derek Keenan. “Last week, we ran into a pretty hungry team. I mean, statistically, we pretty much dominated but we didn’t dominate on the one account, and that’s on the scoreboard… Scoring seven goals is not positive, obviously. We need to get back on track here.”

“We need to feed off of our game which we had against Calgary last time, which I thought was one of our best games of the year, and hopefully come up with a similar effort,” said Keenan.

For Calgary, Steve Dietrich will be out, so Pat Campbell will likely get the call again after playing great last week. Tracy Kelusky may be back.

Lewis Ratcliff and Scott Ranger are top 10 overall in league scoring, while Portland’s two top goal scorers are Dan Dawson and Derek Malawsky.

While Portland’s powerplay is converting at a league-best 56% compared to Calgary’s 39%, the teams bring almost identical goals for and against season statistics into Saturday’s match-up. Through nine games, Calgary’s scored just one more goal for and allowed one more goal against.

San Jose at Colorado

This game will be aired live on SIRIUS Satellite Radio, plus shown on tape-delay with Altitude and Comcast SportsNet West at midnight ET. 

This is for first place in the Western Division as San Jose (4-3) sits just one game back of Colorado (5-2) at about the half-way point of the season. It’s the NLL Game of the Week.

“Obviously, Colorado has a very good team, and we’re aware that they’re going to be hungry. We understand the importance of it to us, too, so I think it’s going to be a very good game,” said San Jose head coach Walt Christianson.

Colorado defeated San Jose 11-6 back on Jan. 26, a loss that doesn’t sit well with the Stealth.

“There’s no question, that we were very disappointed after that game. Our offense stood around a lot. I don’t think we challenged at all… We made it very clear to them that it was unacceptable the way they played, and they responded to that in the next two games we played. They’re hungry and I think you’re going to see a different performance Saturday, at least I hope.”

San Jose’s been lead offensively by Jeff Zywicki, Colin Doyle and Luke Wiles, while Colorado’s led by Gavin Prout and Dan Carey.

“We’ve actually spent a lot of time talking about our offense,” said Christianson. “We’re going to come at them a little bit differently this game… They have a very big defense and Bob does a great job of their sagging man-to-man defense. So, we’re going to try some different things to get to the net.”

San Jose comes into this game having put up a 17-11 victory over Chicago and most recently, an 11-8 win over Edmonton on Feb. 23.

Colorado’s looking to turn it around after two straight losses to Philadelphia and most recently to Calgary 12-9 on Feb. 24.

“We’re on a two game losing streak and we want to stop that right away and start to play a little better,” said Colorado’s head coach Bob McMahon. “We played well against Philadelphia, they just had a better fourth quarter than us. But we were pretty disappointed with our play two weeks ago in Calgary. We’ve had to wait two weeks, so I’m hopeful everyone’s anxious to sort of get rid of that game and play well this weekend.”

Is the East that much better?

“I think within the Divisions, any one can win on any given night,” said McMahon. “I think it could probably change over the course of the season… As a Western team, we’re only looking to beat an Eastern team once, and hopefully that’s sometime in late May (in the championship game).”

This weekend the focus will be on trying to earn that top seed to have home floor advantage throughout the playoffs. Although, San Jose may want to play on the road, where they’ve been better this year with a 3-1 away record. Colorado is always difficult to play in their home barn. They’re 4-1 at home to start the year.

Note: All NLL games can also be seen live with B2 Networks via broadband broadcast. Click on the ‘Live Games’ link on NLLinsider.com to catch the feeds.

Enjoy those Divisional match-ups Saturday.

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