I attended my first-ever field lacrosse game tonight at BMO Field in Toronto, as the new Toronto Nationals took on the Chicago Machine. I have been to many box lacrosse* games over the last eight years, including every Toronto Rock home game but one, as well as a number of games in Buffalo and a couple in Rochester, and one or two OLA games too. But until tonight, I was a field virgin. In a nutshell, it was fun, but I wouldn’t trade my Rock tickets for Nats tickets. The amount of scoring was about the same, but the pace of the game is slower and I found it less exciting than box lacrosse. It’s really the same pace for the most part, but the field is much bigger so regardless of how fast you run, you can’t make it from one end to the other in a few seconds and since three defensive players are required to stay on the defensive side, breakaways are just about impossible.

* – Technically, the game played in the NLL is actually indoor lacrosse, not box lacrosse. Box is the form played in the OLA, which has minor differences from the NLL game. But for the most part, box and indoor lacrosse are interchangeable.

Biggest complaint: I found it harder to follow the ball. The fact that it was orange helped, but the field is so much bigger than the box floor that if you look away for a second, you lose track of the ball. Maybe what they need is a blue line to appear when the ball is passed and then when someone takes a shot… ah, never mind.

The midfielders have very long sticks, which I assumed were used primarily for long passes, but there were only a handful of those in this game. It didn’t really seem to me that the long sticks were much of an advantage.

Cool stuff:

• The Nationals won! They are now 2-0.
• A bunch of fans behind us kept calling out to Colin Doyle. In the fourth quarter, Colin acknowledged them with big smiles and waves. It’s unlikely San Jose would do it, but there isn’t a player on the Rock roster that I wouldn’t trade to get Doyle back in a Rock uniform.
• The Nationals team is a total powerhouse of NLL players. Gait, Iannucci, Dawson, Doyle, Zywicki, Williams, Grant, Thomson, Snider, Prout, Brodie Merrill, Point, Powless, Vyse… that’s ten MVP awards, four rookie of the year awards, countless scoring titles, and along with Patrick Merrill and Jordan Hall, four first-overall draft picks. Not to mention that they have Ken Montour, the reigning NLL goalie of the year, as well as Matt Vinc, another standout NLL goalie, and neither of them is a goaltender for the Nats.
• Goalies don’t look any different from any other player on the field apart from the big pool-skimmer stick, and they don’t do the stick-head-between-the-legs stance that box goalies do. It always looks to me like a field goalie is just another player standing in the net, looking out-of-place. But those goalies really know what they’re doing, and made some pretty impressive stops, including several “how the hell did he stop that?” saves. And in at least a couple of cases, they’d not only leave their crease to play the ball, they’d take it more than halfway upfield. Seems like a dumb idea to me, but hey, I’m the field virgin here, what do I know?

Not so cool stuff:

• Note to Nationals management: keep the “hosts” away from the booze. The “long pole dancing” thing was silly, and the bit with one of the hosts singing “Summer of ’69” with whichever fans wanted to join him was just embarrassing. He may not have been, but it really did look like he was hammered.
• The one-page “program” that they gave out listed the roster of both teams on one side, and has a big picture of Nationals player Shawn Williams on the other side. But Williams didn’t play in the game. He was told that of the twelve games in the season, he’d play six of them, because they have such a large roster. But he wasn’t told this until after the first game last weekend, in which he did play. He said that if he’d known he’d be a scratch in this game, he wouldn’t have played in the first one. Shawn has lots of family in and around Toronto, so I’m sure he would have liked to play in this game.
• I need to learn the game better. There were a number of times that the play was stopped, the ref went to talk to someone, and then play resumed, with the player who had the ball before retaining possession. I couldn’t figure out why the play was stopped in the first place. And when the ball was thrown out of bounds, it seemed that the person nearest the ball when it went out was awarded the ball, regardless of who threw it. This doesn’t make sense to me, but it explains why some players would go sprinting towards the line (not always towards the ball) when they had no chance of stopping the ball from going out.
• Looking at the scoreboard and seeing that it was the 4th half of the game just screamed “FAIL”. Surely that word on the scoreboard can be changed from “Half” to “Quarter”.

I’m now 5-for-6 in playoff game predictions, having missed the Buffalo-New York game last weekend but getting the Calgary-San Jose game right. Luckily I didn’t post score predictions because I would have been way wrong. Who could have predicted 5 goals for San Jose (who scored 20 last week) and only 3 for Buffalo, including 0 for Steenhuis and Tavares? Who could have predicted Matt King shutting out San Jose for three periods and outscoring Colin Doyle and his goal being the game-winner?

New York vs. Calgary

Given the goaltending performances last week, we might be looking at a 3-2 game, which is unheard of in lacrosse. Then again, 17-5 and 9-3 scores are pretty unheard of anyway, and we had both of those last week. Even as good as Vinc was last week and as strong an offensive team as the Titans are, I don’t think they’re a match for Calgary. As long as Calgary doesn’t get too cocky after last weekend’s blowout, the Championship is theirs to lose.

Prediction: Calgary

Unfortunately, I will be vacationing in Las Vegas this weekend, so I won’t be able to watch the game. Well, perhaps “unfortunately” is the wrong word to use here.

Since I was four out of four in my first round picks (did I mention that already?), I will stick with the picks I already made for the second round as well.

East

Buffalo vs. New York

Second verse, same as the first. The Bandits are hungry to repeat as champions, and I just don’t see New York being able to stop them (though I think Calgary has a good chance). It won’t be a blowout, but I don’t think it’ll be that close either.

Prediction: Buffalo

West

San Jose vs. Calgary

I said in the first round picks that I don’t like betting against Colin Doyle in the playoffs, but this Calgary team is just too strong. The Stealth have too many rookies to go all the way this year, but if they can get off to a good start next year, the Stealth could be the team to beat next year.

Prediction: Calgary

So… let’s see how accurate my first round predictions were:

So that would be, let’s see here… carry the one… four for four. A perfect record. I even called the overtime game.

Just sayin’.

East

Rochester vs. New York

Rochester started the season 0-4 and just looked really bad, but they fought hard to recover and beat Philadelphia in a must-win game to make the playoffs, which is a testament to rookie coach Paul Gait. They have survived the loss of John Grant and Scott Evans, plus Pat O’Toole for a few games. On the negative side, we all knew Gary Gait wouldn’t be the multiple-MVP-winning Gary Gait from years gone by, but I think he was even less impactful than expected. Gait didn’t even make the top 50 in scoring. He missed five games, but even if you extrapolate out to 16 games, he’d only be tied for 35th. After Williams (#6) and Evans (T12), the third top scorer on the Knighthawks was Jason Henhawk, tied for 57th. The Titans have six scorers in the top 37.

New York was in second place all year, but ended up tied with both Buffalo and Boston and won the East on tie-breakers. Matt Vinc is one of the best goaltenders in the league, and Casey Powell ended up 8th in the league in scoring despite only playing 13 games. Extrapolating his point total to 16 games you end up with 104, which would have tied him with Dan Dawson for second. The Titans took two of three from the Knighthawks during the regular season, but the first win was early in the season when a struggling Hawks team only allowed them 8 goals, so you could almost call the season series even.

Prediction: New York in a close one

Boston vs. Buffalo

Another toughie. Two strong offensive teams, two outstanding goalies. Boston has nothing to prove – nobody though they’d make it this far – but Buffalo lost their last two games (their last to these same Blazers) and with that, their lock on first place. The days of Buffalo losing games because they took too many stupid penalties are long gone, and I think the Bandits will be back with a vengeance.

Prediction: Buffalo

West

Colorado vs. Calgary

Calgary only lost four games all season, but one of them was to the Mammoth. (Another one, inexplicably, was to the lowly Toronto Rock.) King and Campbell have been the best one-two goalie combo in the league this year, and Josh Sanderson has made Calgary fans forget Lewis Ratcliff. Colorado, on the other hand, finished the season with a win over Edmonton but lost seven of nine before that and as any Star Trek fan will tell you, losing Seven of Nine is a very bad thing indeed. Leyshon and Palidwor played admirably, but the loss of Gee Nash was just too much. Calgary shouldn’t have a problem getting to the west final again.

Prediction: Calgary

San Jose vs. Portland

I find it difficult to go against Colin Doyle’s team in the playoffs. I’ve seen him step his game up a notch (or more) when the games matter the most too many times to think he might fold under pressure. His unprecendented three Championship game MVP awards are a testament to that. San Jose didn’t have a great season, but they won four of five near the end of the season, at the same time that Colorado was losing five of six. I think San Jose will take it, but having said all that, they’ll have trouble getting by Calgary.

Prediction: San Jose

If I was forced to make predictions on round two, I’d have to take Buffalo over New York and Calgary over San Jose, resulting in a rematch of the 2004 Championship – Buffalo in Calgary. I’ll have to give Calgary the edge in another close one. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 NLL Champions, the Calgary Roughnecks.

The 2009 NLL regular season has come to a close, so it’s time to look at the predictions I made at the beginning of the season and see how I did.

End result: one correct out of twelve. Ouch. But really, you could argue that I wasn’t that far off. Five teams – Buffalo, Rochester, Calgary, Colorado, and San Jose – were all off by only one. As with my mid-season predictions, if you make two swaps my predictions are very close. Swap Philly and Boston (who predicted that they would finish tied for first?) and four teams miss by one and the other two miss by two. In the west, swap Minnesota and Portland and I get four off-by-one’s and two correct.

I have a copy of Inside Lacrosse magazine from the beginning of the season, and Brian Shanahan made his picks as well, so let’s see how he did:

Turns out that Shanny’s ouch is worse than mine. None right and only four off by one. The best you can do with two swaps would be New York and Rochester in the east, giving him four off-by-ones and the other two off by three. In the west, you could swap Minnesota and Calgary and get two right, and you’d still have two off by one, but then Edmonton is off by two and Portland by four.

Shanny was more confident about Rochester and Toronto than I was and like me, he thought Minnesota would fare better than they did. But how he got Edmonton finishing ahead of Calgary I don’t know. In fairness, Shanny’s predictions were made before Chicago folded (he had them finishing 6th in the East, between New York and Boston) and therefore before Anthony Cosmo joined the Blazers. They were also made before Paul Gait was hired as Rochester head coach, and before it was announced that the Knighthawks would be missing Shawn Evans for the season.

Maybe Shanny should start reading my blog, instead of me reading his.

Some comments on tonight’s game:

• Watson was a little shaky at the beginning but settled down, and made some very nice stops in the second half. Cosmo was great all night. It seemed that Toronto kept trying to go five-hole on him all night, but there just wasn’t a five-hole. That’s probably why they asked for the goalie equipment check.
• Most games this season (the home games, anyway), the Rock have started out strong and then slowed down. They played a full 60 strong minutes in the last game, and tonight, the Rock’s best quarter was the third, but the 4th was pretty strong too. Overall, other than refusing to shoot the damn ball at times, they played pretty well.
• Like Rochester’s Mac Allen in the last game, another bad moustache. “Boston penalty to #12, Jon Durno, two minutes for unruly facial hair.”
• After the last goal, I was reminded of the 2001 NLL Championship game in Toronto. The other team (Philadelphia in 2001, Boston tonight) is up by two goals, but the Rock is putting on great pressure. Toronto scores a goal to bring them within one, and I immediately look at the clock to see how much time is left. In 2001, about 1.3 seconds. Tonight, 0.9. Just not enough time and the Rock lose by one.
• Nice to see Cosmo come out and congratulate Dan Ladouceur.
• Jason Clark is new to the Rock, and obviously hasn’t read the Rock 2009 playbook. A couple of times when he got the ball near the net, he turned and shot at the net. He doesn’t yet know that the way Rock do things in 2009 is to pass the ball around ten or fifteen times, ignoring decent shooting opportunities, before (a) shooting directly at the goalie’s chest, (b) dropping a pass, or (c) shooting and missing the net completely. I’m sure by the next game, he will have cleaned up his act a little and gotten with the program.
• There were a couple of goal reviews, all of which were quite obvious on the replay. I thought for sure that McGlone was in the crease on his goal, but replay showed clearly that he was still in the air when the ball went in.
• Rob Marshall is trying so hard to be Steve Toll, but he just can’t score. I like him though, he works hard.
• Cosmo twice stopped play when his team needed it by having the trainer come out to look at his equipment. Another skill he learned from Whipper while he was in Toronto.