NLL Insider

The Brodie Merrill headshot to the left was lifted off of Inside Lacrosse’s January 2007 cover, when the mag anointed the Portland Lumberjax’s cornerstone as the best player on the planet.

Is Merrill the best in the game now two years after IL first made the claim?

It depends what your definition of “the best” is.

In a league that usually names the best offensive player their MVP (outside of Jim Veltman finally snapping that trend in 2004, Steve Dietrich in 2006), players that play the kinda game that Merrill does very rarely get the public recognition they deserve.

Merrill registered some pretty insane numbers during his rookie year (17G-32A-49Pts-214LB), but to define Merrill’s style of play by stats alone would really only tell a small chapter of the recent Mann Cup winner’s story.

For example, although both Merrill and Mark Steenhuis are labelled as transitional players in the NLL, the two studs play vastly different games both from a personal standpoint and a positional one. To simply judge two-way guys by stats like you would with many forwards in the league, just wouldn’t make sense since Merrill plays a bulk of his minutes in the Jax’s own end and Steenhuis plays at times almost exclusively on set-O, resulting in some pretty monster offensive digits. Someone watching box lacrosse for the first time probably wouldn’t even have guessed that the two are classified under the same position by the NLL.

Maybe the best way to describe Merrill is that he does pretty much everything possible in the box game really, really, really well, but isn’t the absolute best in any single area, although his instincts and work ethic might have him owning Veltman’s loosie counts. There’s no one in the NLL right now that has as many bullets on their resume under work related as experience as Merrill does, and that’s talking either end of the floor and the locker-room.

And although NLL fans like to point to Merrill’s lack of MVP nods or Cup wins as reason enough not to call him “the best”, within the last year Merrill not only came a goal shy of winning his first NLL title (a game in which he scooped up an insane 19LB), he won that Mann with the Brampton Excels and also an MLL crown with the Rochester Rattlers. It’s the closest anyone has ever come to winning all three major senior lacrosse titles in a single year.

So is Brodie Merrill the best player in the NLL today? Probably not. Is he the most versatile player the league has had come through their doors since Veltman broke in with the Bandits? Most definitely, and it showed last year.

Plus he’s got an acting gig on the burner too in case this lax thing doesn’t work out…

Does Merrill belong in the NLL Insider Top 50? Hit the boards and let us know what your Top 50 looks like heading into the 2009 NLL season…

#50 Matt Roik, San Jose Stealth
#49 Jon Sullivan, Minnesota Swarm
#48 Billy Dee Smith, Buffalo Bandits
#47 Steve Toll, Rochester Knighthawks
#46 Jarett Park, New York Titans
#45 Bruce Murray, Colorado Mammoth
#44 Shawn Evans, Rochester Knighthawks
#43 Peter Lough, Toronto Rock
#42 Matt Vinc, New York Titans
#41 Jeff Shattler, Calgary Roughnecks
#40 Craig Point, Minnesota Swarm
#39 Scott Ranger, Calgary Roughnecks
#38 Brian Langtry, Colorado Mammoth
#37 Sean Pollock, Minnesota Swarm
#36 Jake Bergey, Boston Blazers
#35 Pat O’Toole, Rochester Knighthawks
#34 Kyle Sweeney, Philadelphia Wings
#33 Luke Wiles, Toronto Rock
#32 Ryan Boyle, New York Titans
#31 Chris White, Buffalo Bandits
#30 Jordan Hall, New York Titans
#29 Shawn Nadelen, Philadelphia Wings
#28 Cam Woods, Toronto Rock
#27 Mike Accursi, Buffalo Bandits
#26 Dan Carey, Colorado Mammoth
#25 Pat Maddalena, New York Titans
#24 Andy Secore, Edmonton Rush
#23 Ryan Ward, Minnesota Swarm
#22 Tracey Kelusky, Calgary Roughnecks
#21 Josh Sanderson, Calgary Roughnecks
#20 Shawn Williams, Rochester Knighthawks
#19 Blaine Manning, Toronto Rock
#18 Nick Patterson, Minnesota Swarm
#17 Eric Martin, San Jose Stealth
#16 Scott Evans, Rochester Knighthawks
#15 Scott Self, Edmonton Rush
#14 Anthony Cosmo, Boston Blazers
#13 Geoff Snider, Philadelphia Wings
#12 Lewis Ratcliff, Toronto Rock
#11 Ryan Cousins, Minnesota Swarm
#10 Brodie Merrill, Portland Lumberjax

Hit this link for NLL Insider’s Top 50 archive and keep checkin’ back every week as we countdown the top 50 best in the pro game, with #1 being named just before the NLL season kicks off.

Rate This Story:

(+14 rating, 3 votes)

 Loading ...