OK, so my hockey predictions (8-4 after 2 rounds) are slightly better than my lacrosse predictions (1-3 after one round). As I said as I updated the previous post, I nailed the Buffalo game completely, and was totally wrong on the other three. Since there are only three games left, the best I can do is 4-3, so let’s try for that:

• Buffalo over New York — The one word that best describes Darris Kilgour is intensity. If there’s anyone who can get his team fired up, it’s Darris, whether that’s through an inspiring speech or just being afraid that if you don’t step up your game he’ll beat the snot out of you. Bob McMahon just doesn’t have that kind of presence. Anyway, they’ve been getting great goaltending from both Thompson and Montour, and if Steenhuis can learn that passing the ball is a good thing, I don’t see New York, or anyone from the west, stopping the Bandits.
• Calgary over Portland — Dan Dawson has the ability to carry a team for one game, and since this is single-game elimination, that’s a big deal. But he did that in the win over San Jose — can he do it two games in a row? Calgary played well enough to make it to the playoffs without Tracey Kelusky for most of the season. But he’s back now, and if there’s one goalie whose name isn’t Bob Watson that I want between the pipes in a critical game, it’s Chugger.

One more thing I need to say: I’ve never been a big fan of Billy Dee Smith. He generally takes too many dumb penalties and I haven’t yet forgiven him for the nasty cross-check to Colin Doyle’s head about five years ago. But he played a great game in Buffalo on Friday. The Bandits in general played smart, stayed out of the box (an old nemesis of theirs — stupid penalties have cost the Bandits a number of games over the last few years), and Smith played a hard but smart game and even scored a couple. A few people on the lacrosse message boards have talked about Smith in the past as a good solid player with a bad reputation, but I never saw it. On Friday I did.

I’m also wondering if John Tavares will retire after this season if Buffalo wins it all. He’s still playing at a high enough level that he doesn’t have to, but he may want to retire before he gets to be one of those players who still hangs on and doesn’t want to admit that their playing days are over even though they are a shadow of their former selves. Jim Veltman could probably have played another year, but he wanted to retire before he became that guy that should have retired, and Tom Marechek and Gary and Paul Gait all did the same thing. It would be kind of too bad if Tavares does retire after this year, since Veltman, Gary Gait, and Marechek all had the whole “final season” celebration thing, and Tavares deserves that as well. It would be too bad for the fans if he finished the season and then just didn’t come back.

I made my predictions for the first and second rounds of the NHL playoffs, so it’s time to make my predictions for the NLL playoffs as well.

• Buffalo over Philly — Iannucci is the real deal, Snider is a monster on face-offs and loose balls, and Philly got some great goaltending from Blazer and Miller in the Toronto game the other day, but they did almost lose to a Rock team that didn’t make the playoffs and didn’t have Ryan Benesch playing for some crazy reason. The game is in Buffalo, and the crowd there will be really loud, which the Bandits thrive on. This will be a good game though, and some friends and I will be heading to Buffalo to catch it.
• Minnesota over New York
• San Jose over Portland — Colin Doyle had a great season for San Jose and always steps it up in the playoffs. We saw it time and again when he was with the Rock. The guy hasn’t won three Championship Game MVP awards for nothing.
• Colorado over Calgary

Update: I nailed the Buffalo-Philly game. I did go to the game last night, and Iannucci was the real deal (4 goals), Snider was a monster on face-offs (winning 28 of 30, though the vast majority were simply conceded by the Bandits), Blazer and Miller did play well, and the Buffalo crowd was very loud. Oh, and the Bandits did win.

Second update: That was all I nailed. New York took out Minnesota, Calgary beat Colorado, and Portland stunned San Jose this evening, so I’m a dismal 1 for 4 in the first round. Second round begins this Friday, so more predictions coming soon…

For the first time in their ten-year history, the Toronto Rock will not make the playoffs this year. They had yet another mediocre season (though actually better than last year when they did make the playoffs), and have not had a season above .500 since 2005 when they won it all. Something’s gotta change, and I think it should be Mike Kloepfer, the “Director of Lacrosse Operations” (why they don’t just call him the General Manager like every other sports team, I don’t know). He’s the guy that made the Doyle for Benesch deal which I wasn’t sure about at the time, but has since shown itself to be the downfall of the franchise. That may be stretching things just a bit, but not that much. This is nothing against Benesch, who I like — he is a skilled player and has scored his share of very nice goals. But Colin Doyle he ain’t, and his sophomore slump this year isn’t helping his case any. Maybe they thought that Kevin Fines would turn into a Doyle-type player, but before he showed whether he could or not, they traded him away as well.

Kloepfer brought Peter Lough to Toronto as a free agent, and that was a good move. Getting Cam Woods and Kasey Biernes sounded good, but neither has played as well as I had hoped (though Woods is kicking ass in the penalty minutes department). Clark didn’t play Ian Rubel and then Kloepfer traded him away for nothing, and I don’t understand that move at all. Rubel was no candidate for Defenseman of the Year, but he was capable and tough, and I don’t understand why they didn’t want to play him. He traded Rusty Kruger away for nothing. He traded All-Star defender Phil Sanderson away for nothing. The Josh Sanderson for Ratcliff trade is too recent to really consider, though it is a touch ironic that Sanderson assisted on the overtime goal that knocked the Rock out of the playoffs.

Then there’s Glenn Clark behind the bench. In his two years as head coach the Rock are 11-16 with him behind the bench with one game left to play (that doesn’t include the 2-2 record while he was suspended). He’s not in a Paul Maurice-type situation, i.e. a good coach with crappy players, he’s had some excellent players in front of him including future Hall-of-Famers Veltman and Watson, a bunch of skilled offensive players like Manning, Sanderson, Ratcliff, Benesch, Wilson, Biernes, and Shearer, and top defensemen like Phil Sanderson, Chris Driscoll (one of the most underrated players in the league), Lough, Woods, Daryl Gibson (another guy traded away for nothing), Biesel, Merrill and Rubel. Clark has also shown a tendency to fly off the handle, though he’s shown a lot of restraint since that incident. The Rock’s failure this year is at least partially his fault as well, but Kloepfer is the guy who made the big trade that killed the offence. I don’t think Kloepfer is as bad as this guy does — he think that it’s Kloepfer’s fault if it rains — but the team needs a major change in the off season. Jim Veltman is retiring after this Sunday’s game and losing him will hurt, so some lacrosse-savvy person needs to be brought in to do something, and probably something significant.

The Rock have a track record of not waiting long to make this kind of move. Ed Comeau took over for the legendary Les Bartley and so had some pretty big shoes to fill, but they fired him after only six games. Terry Sanderson took over and brought that 2-4 team to the playoffs, then brought them to 12-4 and the Championship the next year, but when the Rock finished 8-8 the year after that, Terry was given the hook. I guess the thinking there was “Sure, we won the Championship last year, but what have you done for me lately?”

If they don’t fire Kloepfer and/or Clark after missing the playoffs for the first time ever, I will be very surprised.

I’m going to miss my first Toronto Rock home game in over six years this weekend. Gail’s dad turns 65 on Saturday, and so we’re going up for a visit. Since I got Rock season tickets in 2000, the only home game I’ve missed was one game in December of 2002. We were on a Carribbean cruise at the time, and had scheduled it in December because we knew the lacrosse season started in late December. That was the one year that the league decided to start the season early.

And so I will miss the Rock debut of Lewis Ratcliff, who was traded from Calgary at the trading deadline for Josh Sanderson (some draft picks were thrown in there too). For the most part, I will miss watching Josh on the offense — he’s one of the best playmakers in the game, and holds the league record for assists in a season. In fact, I believe he holds second place on that list as well. He can score some pretty goals as well, make no mistake, but he is known for setting up players, and is was kind of the point guard of the Rock. However, he’s not a great defender at all, so if he gets caught on a fast break and can’t get off the floor, he’s a liability. I did get quite frustrated with his lack of hustle as well — you almost never see him running full out, and on the transition to defense, he’s almost always the last guy off the floor. He’s probably the smallest guy in the league (5’7″, 160 lbs), making him pretty useless at setting picks; big defenders just run over him without noticing that he was even there.

Ratcliff, on the other hand, is 6’1″ and 200 pounds and is a pure scorer. He might give back to the Rock what we lost in Colin Doyle, and that’s someone who can power through the defense instead of trying to finesse around them. People have called Ratcliff a selfish player who would rather take a low-percentage shot himself than pass, but he’s got more assists than Sanderson this year, and that’s without Tracey Kelusky playing.

I see this as a fairly even trade that might be good for both teams.