NLL Insider

The Beat

Savilla Eliuk has met her match

With the tragic events of recent weeks, the lacrosse world is in need of a happy ending. Fortunately for us — and more importantly, for Savilla Eliuk — a man named Stephen has come through.

As you’ll likely recall, Savilla is suffering from a kidney disorder called IgA Nephropathy. In 2007 she went into complete renal failure. Even with the life-sustaining therapy of peritoneal dialysis, she is in dire need of a kidney transplant. Thanks largely to many of you, the money for her brother’s testing was raised but due to high blood pressure he was quickly ruled out as a potential donor. But sometimes when life closes a door, it busts down a wall, and somewhere in Las Vegas a complete stranger read Savilla’s story and underwent the donor testing process.

The transplant surgery will take place January 5th. READ MORE »

Inside the Numbers

The specialists on special teams & five on the floor kings

In at least this week’s final chapter on the importance of special teams scoring in today’s NLL (see PP vs SH, Special Teams = Cups, 08’s Chart Toppers) we’re going beyond just 2008’s digits and tracking back a few years to determine who not only some of the league’s best special teams scorers are, but since I appreciate the guys that do their thing 5v5, we’ll also take a look at the best even strength scorers too.

Just like earlier in the week, we’re looking at what percentage of a guy’s goal totals come from those two areas, not simply just a tally of what they’ve done over the years. We went as far back as 2005’s numbers.

Any guesses on who’ll lead in either category? Find out after the jump. READ MORE »

Uncategorized

NLL Best of 2008 Photos!

Hey be sure to check out the best Wipe outs from 2008!

NLL Top 50

NLL Insider Top 50: Shawn Nadelen #29

Now that we’re heading inside the 30 mark of the Top 50, most names will probably be pretty agreeable with fans across the board, cuz a lot of ‘em are gonna be as close to household names as we have in the sport.

Well, everyone except for maybe the guy in the pic to the left of this text.

There are few in the league that play textbook D like Philadelphia Wings’ defender Shawn Nadelen, and there are equally as few that get ignored as much as Nadelen does when talking about the best defenders in the sport today. READ MORE »

From the Stands

Fan Poll: Veltman and Finneran look like they could be HOFers in ‘09

This week’s fan poll proved a few things.

One, a couple dudes from Victoria and Ashton have way, way, way too much time on their hands. And two, Jim Veltman looks like an overwhelming favorite for entrance into the Hall of Fame in 2009.

After you scrape-away all the “extra” votes from the readers that really need to find a hobby, the former Rock captain and current team assistant coach got by far the most love.

The buzz is he’s also the guy the league is hearing about the most in their plea to the fans for who they’d like to see inducted this winter too. READ MORE »

The Beat

Rochester Knighthawks experiment with meta-marketing

Step one in marketing to college students: get college students to write your marketing plan. Rochester Knighthawks, you are brilliant.

The Rochester Lax Cup: a four team local college outdoor lacrosse competition. In-season Junior Hawks youth clinics. A club membership card for merchandise. Shuttle buses. Any of this stuff sound good to you? Thank Allan Pogroszewski’s Sports Marketing and Promotions class at St. John Fisher College.

The class was split into seven groups and instructed to come up with a marketing plan for bringing in college students to Knighthawks games. The students behind the top proposals will earn the label of unofficial advisers to the team’s marketing department.

“Forty percent of them were sort of new ideas,” said Rochester team president Lewis Staats. “They might have been an inkling in someone’s mind, but were never brought to the table in any way that mapped out and said that this is a good idea. So it was great that way. It was new ideas and new concepts coming in.” And now the team can put a hold on that big order of FREE BEER signs.

The Beat

In other news:

• What was Bob Matthews thankful for this year? Curt Styres selling a lot of cigarettes, John Grant Jr. making his way back to the game, and the city of Rochester being respected for anything, anything at all their standing in the lacrosse world: Rochester D&C
• Considering the seasons Lewis and Cayle Ratcliff have had lately, is it a surprise to anyone that they made a deal with the Devil(s)? BCLocalNews
• Okay, so as long as the giant shrine to Luke Wiles is in his own house, it’s not creepy? I didn’t mean to cause any trouble I just need someone to explain the rules to me here: Orillia Today

Inside the Numbers

Power-Play versus Short-Handed scoring, which secures the W’s and the Cups?

In keeping with the even strength versus special teams debate sparked by Shanny and myself this week, today we wanted to take a quick look at what special team scoring, extra or short-man, means to a team in the NLL when trying to grab that all important W every weekend and holy grail at the end of the year.

Like both Shanny and I eluded to this week, power-play scoring has taken over a lot of the game in the NLL these days.

Or has it? READ MORE »

NLL Insider

The Week That Was In The NLL

It’s been an up and down week in the NLL; one that is sure to have a lasting effect on a lot of people; good for some, not so much for others. Here is my little recap of the week that was in the NLL and a few other points of interest. READ MORE »

NLL

Kelusky: Game face is already on

Tracey Kelusky and the Calgary Roughnecks opened training camp last weekend and TK rode in with a message: This town ain’t big enough for you AND your ego.

Check it at the door, the team captain says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a nine-year veteran like myself or you’re a guy who just started to make a name for himself last year,” Kelusky told the Calgary Sun. “The message has always been that short. That you shouldn’t be comfortable — it doesn’t matter who you are — and that you need to continue to battle for your spot.” The ‘Necks have close to 40 bodies in camp, which should make for some intense competition, especially on defense where 15 players are gunning for spots. Shoring up that end is Mike Kilby, who signed a two-year deal with the team after he was acquired in a three-way deal with Colorado and Boston just last week.

The Sun also reported that Curtis Manning, the team’s first-round draft pick, opted not to sign this year and will return for to Simon Fraser University for another school year.

NLL Insider

Specialty Team Coaches: Do you have one?

 I read with interest Paul Tutka’s blog  on NLL ‘s Even-Strength Chart Toppers because and it was closely related to something I was looking at recently. Paul showed some stats about teams that got most of their goals while even strength, as well as some individual player stats on the same topic. READ MORE »

The Beat

Roughnecks named as evidence in case for new City of Champions

In a piece from yesterday’s Edmonton Journal, columnist Dan Barnes makes a case for Calgary swiping the title of City of Champions from their neighbours to the North, Edmonton. To help prove his point, he draws on evidence from the National Lacrosse League:

For instance, each city has a National Lacrosse League team, and Calgary’s Roughnecks have taken it to the Edmonton Rush. The Roughnecks are 25-23 since 2006, the Rush a truly terrible 11-37.

That’s all fine and good, as are the rest of his team-by-team comparisons, but aside from Sunday’s Grey Cup (which Edmonton themselves won in ‘05), where are the championships? Why wouldn’t you cite the Roughnecks winning the Champion’s Cup in ‘04 instead of their records? The City of Slightly-Betters. Don’t worry Calgary, maybe you can get everyone to call you T-Bone.

In other news:

• Attention Mammoth fans not already in the know, you can now direct a question to Gavin Prout and Gee Nash on the team’s message boards: coloradomammoth.com

The Beat

Confusion over the roots of box lacrosse? Crikey.

Everywhere you look, box lacrosse is referred to as a uniquely Canadian game — an offshoot of a sport developed to keep ice-less hockey rinks occupied in the summer, and maybe make the arena a little money in the process. What could be more Scottish Canadian than that? Common opinion is that it was Paddy Brennan who invented the indoor game and was the driving force behind the first Professional Box Lacrosse League, which officially launched in 1931.

However, in the process of doing a bit of research on Mr. Al Frick last night, I stumbled upon an old St. Catharines Standard article from 1955 that credited Australia with introducing the game to Canada in 1929. READ MORE »

NLL Insider

Rochester Knighthawks GM Regy Thorpe signs playing contract for 2009 NLL season

NLL Insider has learned that current Rochester Knighthawks GM Regy Thorpe has signed a contract today that will not only have him serving as the franchise’s active GM, but also as a player during the 2009 NLL season.

It appeared that Thorpe had ended his 14 year playing career this past off-season when the Knighthawks named the hard-nosed defender their new GM after the departure of Ed Comeau, who left Rochester to pursue a new GM and coaching position with the New York Titans.

The dual role Thorpe will apparently be serving in is the first of its kind in the NLL, while occurrences of a player-GM are extremely rare in any professional sport in North American or abroad.

There is speculation that the Knighthawks have had trouble rebuilding a defense that is currently without an unsigned Marshall Abrams, who was moved to the team’s protected player list earlier today, Jack Reid, Stephen Hoar, and previously to today, Thorpe. READ MORE »

NLL

NLL unveils plans for instant replay

The National Lacrosse League on Tuesday afternoon unveiled its plan to use instant replay for the 2009 season.

Wait. Check that. (slight pause)

After further review, the first sentence of this entry stands. The NLL will use instant replay for the 2009 season. So yeah, maybe the intro to this story is a bit corny, but you get the point. Like the NFL, NBA, NHL and yes, even baseball, the NLL suits got together on Tuesday afternoon to discuss what they say will assist the league’s referees to call a correct and accurate game. Instant replay will be used to review goals and crease violations only, and each team gets one challenge per half. In the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and throughout any overtime periods, only game officials can initiate a review. “Sometimes, the action moves faster than the human eye can see,” NLL commissioner Jim Jennings says.

READ MORE »

Inside the Numbers

The NLL’s even-strength chart toppers

In the NLL you’re pretty much expected to score when you’re on the power-play.

Two men-up, you better be scoring at least once. It’s the biggest gimmie in the game.

With the amount of penalties handed out these days, unfortunately, the power play has taken on a life of its own in today’s NLL, deciding games that should have been taken care of five-on-five. Shoot-arounds are meant for the pre-game not during 60 minutes of actual ball.

One current NLL head coach told us last week that the power-play was the boringest, least compelling, snoozer part of any game these days. He just hates it from an entertainment standpoint, and man does he ever have one helluva point. READ MORE »

NLL

Wings unfold desire for 2009

There are some questions facing the Philadelphia Wings as they prepare for the 2009 National Lacrosse League, and the biggest one has some encouraging answers.

Top gun Athan Iannucci appears to be recovering well from knee surgery in July and expects a complete return this season. That’s what he told NLLInsider.com earlier this month, and Wings general manager Lindsay Sanderson is just as optimistic. “Everything seems to be on pace with Athan,” he says. The next set of questions have to do with what the club can do to replicate its early-season momentum of 2008 and then go a step further: Maintain it. The 6-0 start sparkled real pretty-like, but a 3-5 stumble down the stretch and a first-round exit from the playoffs was downright ugly.

“There’s no reason we shouldn’t continue what we did last year,” Sanderson says. “At least the beginning part. We do feel we’ve gotten better, though, and we like what we have from our goaltender on out.”

READ MORE »

NLL Top 50

NLL Insider Top 50: Jordan Hall #30

He mighta been inched out by Craig Point in last year’s rookie of the year vote, but there’s no denying over the past year that New York Titan’s two-way stud Jordan Hall has had a major impact on the game, hardware or not.

As former Titans coach Adam Mueller told NLL Insider’s own Steve Kojima during his rookie coverage last winter, Hall rarely has as a bad shift, no matter what end of the court he’s working in.

Paul Stewart, assistant coach on Mueller’s award winning staff last winter, told NLL Insider prior to last year’s ROY announcement, “I just can’t see how it couldn’t be Jordan. He’s got better overall numbers than any rookie this year, plus he’s all over the floor, not just O or D. No other rookie came close to what Jordan did for us this year.” READ MORE »

From the Stands

Fan Poll: Who should be included in the next HOF class?

Thought is was pretty cool for the NLL to reach out to fans last week while trying to figure out who should be included in the league’s next Hall of Fame class.

We over at NLL Insider put together a short list of players we thought should be included on a ballot for guys that might be on the radar for consideration.

After the jump, check out the cast we’d give a look for entry into the Hall. READ MORE »

NLL

Buffalo, NLL Lacrosse Communities Remember Tom Borrelli

Tom Borrelli, speaking at his Hall of Fame induction last year (Courtesy: Buffalo News)

Borrelli, the only member of the media enshrined in the NLL’s Hall of Fame (inducted in 2007), was 51 years old.

From the first report of his fall, tributes and well wishes flew in for the well-respected journalist, both from his colleagues at the Buffalo News and from various readers and friends via a Blog set up by the News for people to comment on and send their regards.

After Borrelli’s passing on Thursday, we began to get some emails expressing the profound loss to the lacrosse world that had just occurred, so we sent out some word to the Buffalo community to share their thoughts on the man they called ‘Ox’ and what he meant to the game. READ MORE »