Cutting-edge NLL and boxla coverage
We noted early in this National Lacrosse League (NLL) season to keep an eye out for six of this year’s young goaltenders. All of those keepers have seen action in 2009, with San Jose’s Tyler Richards potentially earning a starting position and Portland’s two young goaltenders being forced into starts. READ MORE »
Happy Hump Day NLL fans. I got your highlight videos from last weekend’s action right here. Once again its split into two videos, the biggest hits and the best goals.
Some of my favorite hits include Geoff Snider knockin’ the helmet off Boston’s Kyle Ross and a pile-up including a banana, raccoon, and a couple lottery balls. Huh? READ MORE »
There are few in the sport that have refined their game to the extent that Colin Doyle has since he first broke into the NLL with the Ontario Raiders in 1998.
Doyle went from being an inside threat that took nasty beat-downs in his early days with the Raiders and Rock, to an outside scoring sensation that was threading needles against the league’s best D’s, and then finally transforming into one of the NLL’s greatest ever O leaders and set-up men.
What’s a team to do with a guy like that on their roster? READ MORE »
In three previous tries, last year’s improbable Cup run donning a Portland Lumberjax sweater, was the closest Dan Dawson came to winning it all at this level of the game.
On a hat-trick and six helpers (leading the final in scoring), Dawson dragged the Jax to what would have been the most unlikely NLL championship win in league history, had they pulled it off.
Although Dawson played well in and leading up to the 2005 (vs. Toronto) and 2007 (vs. Rochester) finals, his play late in 2008 and then in last year’s playoffs was some of the best clutch performances we’ve seen from anyone over the last several years, regular or post-season. READ MORE »
Some have called Athan Iannucci’s 2008 season a “flash in the pan”.
Others have said it was the coming out party of a legend in the making.
No matter where you have Iannucci ranked in the grand scheme of the game, one thing you undoubtedly can’t deny, is the season he dropped on the sport last winter was definitely one for the ages.
Love him, hate him, don’t buy he’s got enough in the tank to continue his torrid pace? Who cares, cuz unless you’ve just had a lobotomy (and I wouldn’t rule that out for some of you), it’s next to impossible not to realize that what Athan Iannucci did in 2008 was something truly special. READ MORE »
On reputation and past achievements alone, John Tavares is easily the best in the NLL right now.
Well, Gary Gait might have something to say about that statement now that he’s found his was back via Rochester, so how bout, best on rep and past AND not having taken a semi-retirement, in the game right now.
Tavares showed over 2008 that age has very little to do with his game, and although the recent Champion’s Cup winner might not be blasting single game and season records like he did in the past, few are as impactful as JT both on-and-off the court. READ MORE »
Today was originally gonna be the day we dropped the four top dawgs in the NLL Insider Top 50.
Change of plans.
With a flurry of questions both emailed to us and posted on the boards, we wanted to set the record straight before naming our last four.
So, after the jump, your questions are answered… READ MORE »
Last year the NLL ended up announcing the top three finalists for the MVP nod for the first time, with Athan Iannucci, John Tavares and Casey Powell being the trio that were up for the honour.
Although AI was practically everyone’s favorite, not having Jeff Zywicki in there was a bit of a crime considering the kinda year the UMass grad had in 2008 (and yeah, know it was based on votes, but it was still robbery).
In three short years in the NLL, Zywicki has already become one of the league’s top power forwards and is one of the league’s best off ball guys too. Few gut it out like Jeff and even fewer have the stats to go with it. READ MORE »
No one’s reputation has improved more than Casey Powell’s has over the last two winters.
After leaving the pro indoor game for a couple seasons, coincidentally coinciding with a head-shot courtesy of then Toronto Rock defender Pat Coyle, Powell was called every name in the book by box lacrosse purists.
They called him soft, weak, a wimp, a baby and worst of all, an American field laxer!! Yeah, they went there, and they did it time-and-time again, dragging Powell’s NLL rep through the thickest mud they could find. READ MORE »
In a sport where American field studs are usually the ones pointed to as the NLL’s top overall athletes, it’s funny that the league’s best pure athlete is actually a short, scrappy Canadian that only picked up the game at the age of 18.
Had it not been for Billy Dee Smith’s sister, Vanessa, we might not even be talking about Buffalo’s Mr. Do Anything-and-Everything, Mark Steenhuis, as one of the NLL’s best current players.
Steenhuis started dating Billy Dee’s sister in high school and would later be introduced to lacrosse by him as well. After impressing some of the St. Catharines area’s most respected lacrosse minds in his first shift out, Steenhuis has since become one of the indoor game’s most dynamic and exciting players. READ MORE »
With the Colorado Mammoth not exactly having a banner year last season, dropping three W’s from 2007’s impressive regular season and then getting dumped in the opening round of the playoffs, captain Gavin Prout’s 2008 seemed to go slightly unnoticed likely due to that fact.
Prout finished with 92 points, knotting him up with Lewis Ratcliff and John Grant for second behind Athan Iannucci in the scoring race.
His 67 helpers easily ranked him first in the NLL last winter and was the sixth highest single season total in league history. READ MORE »
Some had him as their MVP last year and pretty much everyone had him as the best tender in 08.
That of course being Toronto Rock starting keep, Bob Watson, who at the age of 38, had maybe his best ever season in the NLL.
Watson’s performance last winter was also a great example of why you can’t always just judge keepers in this sport based on their stats alone.
They’re nice to have, but what stat registered the amount of momentum shifting (or stalling) saves Watson routinely made last year when he was hung out to dry? READ MORE »
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. READ MORE »
We were laughed at by readers last year when we continuously included Minnesota Swarm captain Ryan Cousins in our Top 20 Player Ranking, but after being named the NLL’s first back-to-back Defender of the Year last season, who’s laughing now?
Cousins might not be the most technically perfect pure D guy out there (although he’s up there and recovers better than most), but he brings more intangibles to his game than maybe any other defender available today and is one of the NLL’s most important non-offensive players in a league that often fails to recognize past its O Gods. READ MORE »
Previous to 2008, Lewis Ratcliff had beefed up his stats every year since entering the bigs in 2003 (45-71-86-91-104-92).
It was a steady progression until last season, when Ratcliff fell short of the ridiculous 104 points he posted in 2007. In his defense however, not only is 104 a tough nut to crack every winter, he wasn’t exactly finding himself in the healthiest of O situations either.
Ratcliff played 12 games in 2008 for a Calgary team that was hampered by the loss of captain Tracey Kelusky and keeper Steve Dietrich, both sidelined with concussions, and an offense that struggled to find its groove with high profile healthy scratches sending fans into a rage mid-season. READ MORE »
Yeah Geoff Snider is the unofficial pro fight champ right now, but if that’s the only aspect of his game you see on the court, you’re missing out large on one of the NLL’s most high impact guys in the game right now.
He’s also by far the league’s most entertaining non-offensive guy too, getting fans outta their seats as many times during a game as John Grant or Dan Dawson do.
Snider is also probably the lone non-O player that team’s totally change the way they play in order to counter his presence. READ MORE »
At ‘his best’, Anthony Cosmo is ‘the best’ tender on the planet.
He has the size, athleticism, angles and vision to be the absolute best keeper in today’s NLL.
We saw that from Cosmo during the summer, when he not only won a Mann Cup with the Brampton Excelsiors, he was named the Mike Kelly winner too (aka Mann MVP), but he was a bit behind the pace from what we saw from him in the NLL in 2007, when he was named the pro game’s top keep. READ MORE »
There’s few pure defenders in the NLL today that are as consistent as Scott Self.
No knock on Anthony Cosmo, but from speaking to some teams leading up to the Chicago Dispersal Draft, they claimed they woulda taken the defensive leader first overall if they had the chance, and pass over the guy that everyone was apparently drooling over.
That first overall grab was not the no-brainer some “experts” had you believe it was, and the reason for that was Scott Self. READ MORE »
Well, with the Top 50 being compiled in early September, it was kinda tough to foresee Scott Evans blowing out his knee during training camp, so he still remains our 16th ranked ball player in the Top 50.
Evans is the definition of a true power forward in lacrosse.
He’s as strong as a bull through traffic, as tough as they come when the gloves are on or off, skilled beyond belief, and has the ability to takeover a game like few can in the NLL. READ MORE »
San Jose Stealth defender Eric Martin might just end up being the first American to win the NLL’s Defender of the Year nod.
Hell, in a lot of people’s opinion, he should have done it last year, but after not even being named to the league’s All-Pro Second Team, it’s pretty evident that Martin is still somewhat an unknown commodity in the indoor game, playing in front of Albany Attack-like crowds at the HP Pavilion.
The American field convert has gone through major strides since first taking up box four winters ago, including a summer spent with the Victoria Shamrocks early in his pro career. READ MORE »
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