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It’s funny that a post popped up on the boards today about D winning Cups, cuz it’s an adage I was giving some serious thought to last week.

Does defense really win Cups?

It’s a line I’m sure everyone has heard a million and one times. But is it true?

Like last week, today I ran through the past 15 year’s worth of NLL (and MILL) seasons and kinda put that adage to the test, and what I found was actually kinda surprising.

I looked at what team over the last 15 years has led the league in both defending (goals against) and scoring (thought goals for might be a good one to use for that, crazy I know) and stood those teams up against the franchise that ended up winning it all.

The results? Like I’ve said a number of times this year, “The times, they are a changin’ “.

Over the past 15 years, five times has the best ranked D during the regular season also won the Champion’s Cup. Seven of those times though, the best O during the year has won it all. Kinda goes against what we’ve always been told.

I also found it kinda interesting to see when it was that those D and O heavy teams actually won the Cup.

The mid 90’s almost always saw the best O team win. It was a time of back-and-forth ball, constant pressure at both ends of the court, and run-and-gun lacrosse at its best (checkout the bottom of the post to see what the numbers dictate).

Then we entered the mid 90’s and early 2000’s which saw the best defensive teams (aka The Rock) take the cake. Not coincidentally the same era that witnessed Les Bartley and his crew turn the game into a slow paced, O/D style of lacrosse, one which definitely favored ball clubs that put an emphasis on the boys in their own end.

And then in recent years, with most teams in the NLL really going back to more of an in your face, up tempo, two-way style of play, we’re seeing the O heavy teams winning it all again. It started with, interestingly enough, the Rock back in 2005 when Terry Sanderson molded that team into an O monster, and then the trend continued with Colorado in 2006 and Rochester in 2007.

This year’s top ranked O? The Philadelphia Wings.

The other kinda interesting thing? Only three times over the last 15 years has a team that hasn’t been the best O or D over the regular season actually even won the Cup (for those keeners out there, you probably already figured that out). The teams? The 2004 Roughnecks, the 2001 Wings and the 1997 K’Hawks who got a stunning performance from Steve Dietrich in the finals.

Is this a fad or a legit trend? Coincidence or history repeating itself? Can this year’s Roughies do what they did in ‘04 with coincidentley the same keeper that did just that 11 years ago?

Checkout the tables below for a breakdown of the last 15 years and decide for yourself…

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