NLL Insider

 Is it better to have an offense led by a single high scoring power forward or one that can have any number of ball players chip in and land that W?

What happens to a team that puts all their eggs in one basket and then that lone egg breaks Kimbo Slice styles.

Today we’re taking a quick look at leading scorers, what chunk of the pie those leaders have of their team’s goal totals, and which teams spread the ball the most.

After the jump, find out if any of that matters in the NLL.

So first off, here’s a rundown of the leading scorer for each team, and what his final goal digits were worth versus his club’s goal total. Included both Josh Sanderson and Lewis Ratcliff’s total goal count even though some were scored for the Rock and others for the Roughnecks, but didn’t wanna leave them out and their numbers below should also give us an idea of what they’ll likely do next year with 16 total games for their respective teams. So no knock on Soctt Ranger and Blaine Manning, their team’s legit leading scorers.

LEADING TEAM GOAL SCORERS & PERCENTAGE OF TEAM SCORING

CHICAGO  Mat Giles 27 goals (15.34%)
EDMONTON  Jimmy Quinlan 22 goals (15.60%)
CALGARY  Josh Sanderson 29 goals (15.85%)
COLORADO  Brian Langtry 30 goals (16.30%)
MINNESOTA  Ryan Ward 33 goals (16.58%)
BUFFALO  Mark Steenhuis 34 goals (16.75%)
NEW YORK  Mike McLellan 34 goals (17.26%)
PORTLAND  Dan Dawson 38 goals (21.23%)
ROCHESTER  John Grant 47 goals (23.86%)
TORONTO  Lewis Ratcliff 42 goals (24.42%)
SAN JOSE  Jeff Zywicki 48 goals (25.95%)
PHILADELPHIA  Athan Iannucci (31.56%)

Interesting to see that three of last year’s four Champ Cup finalist are pretty much smack in the middle of the percentages up top, and the bottom four teams either didn’t crack the playoffs at all or got dumped in the first round. Same can be said for the top four obviously too.

Next, we broke-down double digit scorers for each team.

40+ GOAL SCORERS

Rochester 2
Philadelphia 1
San Jose 1
Toronto 1

30 GOAL SCORERS

New York 3
Toronto 1
Colorado 1
Minnesota 1
Buffalo 1
Portland 1

20 GOAL SCORERS

Colorado 4
Minnesota 4
Philadelphia 4
Buffalo 3
Edmonton 3
Calgary 3
New York 2
Portland 2
Rochester 2
San Jose 2
Toronto 1
Chicago 1

REST OF THE DOUBLE DIGIT SCORERS

Chicago 6
Calgary 5
Portland 5
Buffalo 4
San Jose 3
Colorado 2
Philadelphia 2
Edmonton 2
New York 2
Toronto 2

When you add up all the double digit scorers for each team, Buffalo, Calgary and Portland lead the league with eight two digit scorers each, coincidentally, 3/4’s of last year’s final four again. Also interesting to see that the four teams with 40+ goal scorers all packed their bags pretty early too.

Look at the Rochester Knighthawks Champ Cup year two seasons ago and the boys had ten double digit scorers versus this year’s meek four, which ranked them dead last in the league. Still don’t think they desperately needed that consistent fifth and/or sixth O option?

Does having a spread out offense and one that has a larger pool of players capable of scoring big matter? Common sense probably tells you yes, but 2008’s numbers prove it too. Will 2009 run the same?

Offense wins games, defense keeps the goals out, and secondary scoring might be the thing that wins Cups in this league. Everyone pointed to the Rock’s hard hitting D during their height, but with an offense that had a new hero every night, which aspect of their game was truly more important?

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