NLL Insider

Although there is a bit more separation in the standings between the top dawgs and bottom feeders this year versus recent seasons, as we saw last night in Toronto, games in the National Lacrosse League always seem to come down to inches.

Fourth quarter comebacks, or at least going stride-for-stride with the opposition late in the game, has been pivotal this year for the team’s at the top of the standings.

After the jump, find out which players still have enough left in the tank to be effective in the last 15 minutes in the NLL.

It’s actually a topic myself and Inside Lacrosse’s Job Brand spoke on earlier in the season. Jon had mentioned a stats based system in the NBA that rates players who continue to perform strong or even go over and above in the fourth quarter.

Although we only have some of the more basic offensive stats available to us when looking at the NLL period-by-period, determining who posts the most digits late gives us a good idea who teams go-to guys are this year when the games on the line. Does it tell us anything else?

When looking at this year’s numbers, from as recently as last night’s clashes in Toronto and Minnesota, Mark Steenhuis easily leads the pack. And not only does he easily lead the pack on points alone, almost exactly a third of his points come in the final period of play (we included the fourth period and OT).

Although sitting 55th in the NLL’s regular season scoring charts, Colorado Mammoth forward Gary Rosyski has been one of this year’s highest scoring fourth period scorers, with a pretty insane 65% of his points coming in the final frame.

Some interesting numbers you won’t find on the table below?

San Jose captain Colin Doyle has scored just one goal in the fourth period for the struggling Stealth, who are actually led on the table below by rookie Rhys Duch and soph Frank Resetarits, who does most of his damage late. And although not appearing on the leaderboard below, sophomore Tom Johnson has scored five for San Jose in the last period of the game.

Merrick Thomson, Luke Wiles and Sean Pollock, like Doyle, have just a single goal in the fourth, while Jeff Zywicki and Craig Point, two of last year’s more impressive clutch players, have yet to score in the fourth period at all this winter.

Does fitness come into play when looking at the guys that are able to produce late? Is it simply being “clutch” that allows guys to excel late? Is it a coincidence that of the 19 ball players listed below, only five currently play on a team with a below. 500 record? And even though he leads the regular season scoring race, should we be surprised that a spark plug like Steenhuis, who looks like he’s never even close to exhausted at any minute in the game, easily leads fourth period scorers this year?

Hit the boards and let us know.

Player’s regular season scoring rank in brackets.

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