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I was reading Bob Matthew’s column in the D&C earlier this week and was kinda thrown by a comment he made (and kinda has been making all year).

He said, “The Portland Lumberjax, 6-10 in the regular season, will play at the Buffalo Bandits on Saturday night at HSBC Arena in the National Lacrosse League championship game. Portland winning would be an appropriate conclusion to a NLL season to forget.”

I know Matthews has been fairly outspoken about his dislike for the current NLL playoff format (and he isn’t the only one) which is fine, but I think that slap in the face to the NLL definitely caught the pretty innocent Portland Lumberjax with a harsh backhand. A Jax team who’ve done nothing more than kick ass against teams that “should have” beaten them. The same teams, well at least in San Jose’s case, that I’m sure Matthews and others felt deserved a spot in this year’s post-season.

So who really is deserving of a spot in the post-season, cuz right now at least, Portland looks like they’re pretty righteous to me. Did they crash the party cuz of a poorly structured playoff system, or was the NLL in 08 just so even in talent that a 6-10 record was really pretty equivalent to say an 8-8 record, whether that be East or West?

Was there really that much of a difference between say the Lumberjax and Toronto or Rochester, two teams with better records than Portland?

I think if people really wanna crown the most consistent and deserving team, then ya gotta do what the Europeans do with footy. Most major soccer leagues (and really any major European club sport) recognize their regular season leader as the “real” champion in that specific season of play. I think it actually makes sense, but we’re in North America, so playoffs are king.

And even though the NHL has the odd eight-seed-crasher making some noise in the post-season, their seven game series usually filter out the flukes. Usually. Anyone remember the 90-91 Minnesota North Stars? Their pretty rough 27-39-14 regular season record, which is in-and-around what the Jax posted this year, was good enough to land one of the last playoff spots. A playoff spot which they rode all the way to the Stanley Cup finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins. And just to take that point even further, not only was their record crap, it was also worse than the Philadelphia Flyers (33-37-10), who missed the post-season based solely on the fact that they played in a pretty tight Patrick Division in which they finished fifth in. Was that fair? Would Philly have done as well as Minny did in the playoffs? Probably not, but…

Obviously the MLB goes a similar route as the NLL. Teams play mainly teams from their own division with a bit of inter-squad stuff thrown in, but ultimately, only eight teams get a sniff at the post season. And it’s been more than once that, let’s say for example, a team with a better record in the American Division doesn’t qualify for the playoffs while a team with a weaker record nails down a spot in the National Division. The best eight teams (based on record) don’t always make it. And trust me, if I just played (aka went through the motions) in 162 games in the MLB, only to find out some punk in the other division with a weaker record than mine made the playoffs, I’d be pretty pissed, and not just cuz I play a brutally pathetic sport like baseball.

And how many years did we hear that the winner of the NBA’s Western Conference was gonna be the ”true” winner of the league, only to have someone like the Detroit Pistons throw a wrench into a script both the media and fans spent weeks writing?

This is sports people. No matter how neatly packaged you want your post-season, nothing is guaranteed… ever. Portland did what they had to do this year and as backdoor as you think their route was to the Champion’s Cup final, they’re here and probably don’t give two sh**s what you think about their reagular season and post-season journey.

Are they deserving of playing Buffalo on Saturday night? I think so.

And they’re far from the first team with a less than glamorous record to be given a ticket to the post-season in this league (checkout the table below to see what each season’s worst playoff bound team did during the regular season and how they finished up in the post-season). They are however one of the few with a sub .500 record that have capitalized on their opportunities and found their way to the Champion’s Cup final. Should they and the league be criticized for that, or commended that the NLL sports a playing field where almost any team in the league can take the crown, including obviously this year’s Jax?

Matthews may have not liked 2008’s version of the NLL, whether that’s based solely on the playoff format or not, tough to tell from his brief statement, but I gotta say, I f**kin’ loved the NLL this year no matter who wins at the HSBC this weekend. I love to watch good lacrosse, and trust, there was a ton of good lacrosse played in 08.

With the two hottest teams in box ready to take one anothers heads off for a chance to lift the Champion’s Cup, it’s no time to bitch and whine about playoff formats or how Eric Martin got seriously robbed of some end of year recognition (who said that???). It’s time to celebrate the sport for what it is, not what you think it should be.

Anyways, here’s that table I promised ya, and as you’ll see, with a win, the Jax would only be the second team in league history to land a Champ Cup with the worst record entering the playoffs, and when you factor in how long ago Rochester played that gig, it makes it that much more impressive.

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