At Least They’re Consistent; Leaving Las Vegas; Broadcast Highlight
How Albany refuses to learn from history; the Desert Dogs as Nic Cage; a cool moment during GAvsOTT
Photo Credit: Rochester Knighthawks
At Least They’re Consistent
I tapped out after the first quarter of Halifax versus Las Vegas on Saturday, fighting a losing battle trying to stay awake instead of getting needed rest to recover from a sinus infection. Not catching the Thunderbirds 9-5 win live meant I missed out on some crazy stuff, but fortunately, my group chats were blowing up with messages of “Still no 5v5 goals against.”
That’s an incredible text to read first thing in the morning. Even strength is the hardest area of a box lacrosse game to score in, but teams very rarely fail to find the back of the net 5-on-5 or 4-on-4 in a game. I knew immediately off the top of my head that the Desert Dogs were the first team to make that rarity a reality this season; I could not recall if I’ve ever seen another NLL team not score settled in a game.
So, I went about my business watching all five games and collecting data, and after finishing up with the Albany FireWolves versus Rochester Knighthawks, I noticed something else — the FireWolves had also failed to score an even strength marker.
A team failing to score settled is one thing, but two separate teams in the same weekend?! That had to be a first, at least a first since I started this project back in 2022-23, and a quick research dive revealed that to be the case. But it’s also not the craziest stat I discovered during that research session.
There have been five games over the last two-and-a-half seasons where a team failed to find the back of the net settled. Once was on March 25, 2023, when the Saskatchewan Rush lost 14-6 against the Calgary Roughnecks; another time was last Saturday when the Las Vegas Desert Dogs only scored on the power play or in transition in their 9-5 loss to the Halifax Thunderbirds.
The other three games all have the same unfortunate coincidence. In a 20-4 loss to the Georgia Swarm on Feb. 25, 2023, a 10-7 loss to the Toronto Rock on April 6, 2024, and a 14-7 loss to the Rochester Knighthawks on Feb. 28, 2025, the Albany FireWolves average a game a season where they can't solve the opposing netminder on even strength shifts.
Good or bad, the FireWolves find a way to put a bagel in the even strength category once a season, and I appreciate the commitment to the bit. Say what you want about their Jekyll or Hyde seasons the last three years, but it’s nice* knowing there will be one game a year Albany utterly fails at the most important facet of a National Lacrosse League game.
*Unless you’re an Albany FireWolves fan.
Photo Credit: Las Vegas Desert Dogs
Leaving Las Vegas
I really want the Desert Dogs to be good, but my patience is thin. They’re a scrappy team that can surprise you with defense and have a creative offense that hasn’t scratched its ceiling yet. The 14-7 win against the Colorado Mammoth in week 13 showed what they can do when they’re firing on all cylinders. Their 9-5 loss in week 14 showed what we’ve seen from them more often than not — one side of the floor doing its damndest while the other struggles mightily.
It was the offense’s turn to struggle, and when Vegas couldn’t produce 5-on-5 as the game went along, they fell back into their bad habit of trying to manufacture goals with transition. 22.8% of their offensive shifts last Saturday where on fast breaks, the third highest single-game percentage for them this season. The other games that had a higher percentage of shifts in transition also correlated with a lower amount of even strength shifts, and Saturday was again no exception, as 50.6% of the Desert Dogs offensive shifts were 5-on-5. It was their second lowest settled shift percentage of the season and also their second lowest amount of settled offensive shifts in a game (40).
Meanwhile, the short revolving door in net has settled with Landon Kells performing really well over the last two games, as he has a 7.50 GAA and .857 Sv%. It’s improved his season GAA and Sv% from 14.72 and .733 to 13.01 and .761. The defense has played exceptionally well during those two games, too. In both of those games, the settled defense has kept the Mammoth and Thunderbirds to a collective TrueESE% of 5.3% and TrueESLP% of 23.9%, both better than average. They’ve allowed just two PPG against.
You can even skip that 21-8 shellacking to the Roughnecks and appreciate the defense’s efforts in the 12-8 loss to the Vancouver Warriors, as well. Again, the defense did a solid job settled and on the penalty kill.
But a better defensive performance can’t overcome an offense that couldn’t hit water if it fell out of a boat. The only facet the Desert Dogs offense was remotely successful in was the power play last Saturday, where they were 2-6 by traditional metrics but sported a below-average TruePPE% of 14.3%. All three of newcomer Holden Cattoni’s points came on the power play. He and Jonathan Donville were the only forwards to find the back of the net that night, and all the forwards only put 25 shots on goal 5-on-5 — you guessed it, that’s low (re: bad), and sadly not the lowest single-game total for them this season. Again, they spent less time settled, meaning less shot attempts in a game.
This isn’t a new issue for the Las Vegas Desert Dogs. I wrote at the beginning of 2025 about how they need to set their feet and stop trying to outrun their losing streak; settled offense was under that umbrella, but now I’m specifically pointing it out. It’s bad, and the team collectively has a godawful habit of freaking out and trying to push in transition instead of letting their young offense make it work 5-on-5.
I don’t know if they started running because their 5-on-5 couldn’t score or if their 5-on-5 couldn’t score cause they started running, but politely paraphrasing Nic Cage, it doesn’t matter. Either something gives or they finish 5-13 again. Again.
Photo Credit: Georgia Swarm
Broadcast Highlight
Taking care of mental health means celebrating minor victories, even if I’m the only one that cares about them. We’re through 14 weeks of the 2024-25 National Lacrosse League season, I’m numb to the dread of looking at spreadsheets for an entire weekend and few weekday evenings, so I’ll revel in whatever minor victories I can.
During Friday’s Georgia Swarm versus Ottawa Black Bears game, the broadcast came back from the first media timeout of the second half with a report from Ashley Docking. The camera panned across the Swarm bench as she delivered the following hit:
“The Georgia Swarm tying things up here in transition, something that they feel like they left on the table against Toronto. Talking with (Swarm assistant coach) Sean Ferris earlier today, he said, ‘We had 15 transition opportunities; we capitalized on none of them. Our success rate was nonexistent. It’s hard to simulate that transition feel, someone bearing down on you in practice, but it’s something we have to be more efficient with if we’re going to be successful here tonight.’”
Hearing that piqued my interest, one because of the 15 transition opportunities and another because of “efficient.” I immediately looked at the stats for GAvsTOR in week 13, saw that there were indeed 15 transition chances that I had seen for the Swarm, and did an internal fist bump. Validation.
The Swarm use First Line Sports Analytics for their advanced statistics, but head coach Ed Comeau and his bench staff have always been exceptional at keeping a running tally of the number of shifts their team takes during a game, as well as the goals and shots on/off. That 15 transition opportunities was their count during the game, and it’s a nice feeling for me that it matched what I saw when I was scoring the game, a validation of my efforts and knowledge.
Small proof I’m not a dumb ass (in this particular way) was the icing on the cake, as I was a bigger fan of the term “efficient” being used, as it’s a focal point of the statistics I track. It’s what the E in E% stands for; if you’re not efficient (consistent), you’re not winning, and it’s a simple enough concept for anyone — diehard or fairweather NLL fan — to understand immediately.
Given the Swarm’s use of transition to help them improve to 7-4 last Friday, Docking’s report was (a) well-timed (Andrew Kew had scored that wicked behind-the-back transition marker to open the half’s scoring) and (2) provided great insight to fans as to what NLL coaches look at during a game and how a specific example — 0-for-15 on fast breaks the week before — factored into their strategy during that game, a focal point they aimed to improve on from the week before. It was an excellent piece of reporting, extremely relevant to the situation and digestible for the viewer.
I absolutely love those parts of a broadcast, using advanced stats to help explain what’s going on and factoring into a team’s play on any given night. I wrote about it last season after Cooper Perkins and Nick Ossello’s exceptional broadcast earlier in the 2023-24 season, and those feelings haven’t changed, same as the rally cry I had in that article:
The info’s there; use it, damn it. Perkins didn’t continue with LaxMetrics this season, but <waves arms violently around> I have this entire site, and Graeme Perrow’s NLLStats.com is still the most useful NLL-related site filled with an endless amount of info. Him going on vacation and not updating the site for over a week made every media member's jobs nearly impossible — which is an abhorrent castigation for the NLL, who still can’t get their stats on NLL.com to offer the same information that was publicly available four years ago, individual player data to consistently load, or the right headshots to appear no matter what web browser you’re using — The Next Major League consistently being anything but.
That veered more negative than I intended, so let’s circle back to end positively. Stats are good, the info’s publicly available, and I hope more NLL broadcasters and media members are able to use it to enhance their content and educate NLL fans better, not fearing turning them off with “advanced statistics.” There’s nothing advanced about the math I use, and educating a fan should be our primary goal.
Smarter lacrosse fans are more invested lacrosse fans.