The Halifax Experience I travelled to Halifax this past weekend with my wife and a couple of friends to see game two of the Finals. This was my third time in Halifax in the past three years, but my first Thunderbirds game there. Seeing a game there became a bucket-list thing for me not long after…

2026 NLL Finals game two The books are closed on the 2026 NLL season, as the Toronto Rock defeated the Halifax Thunderbirds in the Nest to take game two. The Rock won their seventh Championship, but first since 2011. Challen Rogers was 17 when the Rock last won it all. CJ Kirst was eight. The…

2026 NLL Finals, game one Game one of the finals was close, back-and-forth, and exciting with some great goaltending, exceptional defense, and a big comeback. But unlike the quarterfinals, it wasn’t the Halifax Thunderbirds staging the big comeback.

NLL Experience of GMs & Coaches During the semi-finals, I noticed that all of the people listed on San Diego’s “Coaching staff” web page were very high NLL draft picks. I posted that to X and someone suggested that I do that for all the teams. I decided to add some additional information - when…

2026 NLL Semi-Finals, week 2 Good news: The Finals are here! We’re this close to determining the 2026 NLL Champion! Bad news: There are at most three games left in the NLL season.

NLL One-Hit Wonders This might be a strange article. One of my favourite podcasts, which is about music and completely unrelated to sports, recently did a series that was really interesting, and I thought that I might be able to apply similar logic to NLL players. I did that and got quite…

Coming tomorrow to NLL Chatter - we've all heard of "one-hit wonders" in the music world, but can we apply similar logic to NLL players? What players had a single season with a much higher point total than the rest of their career? Any guesses as to who's on the list?

2026 NLL Semi-Finals – Week 1 The unexpected results from round one continued this weekend. The higher-seeded Rock won game one of their battle with the Seals on Friday night, but Sunday saw the Seals battle back to tie the series - with their backup goalie in net, a man who’s seen less than 180…

Game report: Semi finals game 1, San Diego @ Toronto The Rock played their first home playoff game in just over two years on Friday night, and what a game it was. It started off looking like it would be very physical, but that sort of calmed down a bit. But the end-to-end action never did, and…

Not Awesome: the overtime goal I’m sure that by now you’ve heard about the controversial goal scored in overtime in the San Diego / Colorado game from this past weekend. A minute into the overtime period, Tre Leclaire took a shot, Ward stopped it, Wes Berg picked up the rebound, and passed it to…

2026 NLL Quarterfinals It’s the playoffs! We had four exciting games this past weekend, and of the eight teams who made the playoffs, four of them are out. The crazy thing is that the #1, #2, and #3 seeded teams are all out thanks to getting beat by the #6, #7, and #8 teams. There are an awful…

2026 NLL Week 21 The 2026 NLL regular season has come to an end. The standings are final and the playoff bracket is set. You’ve probably seen the matchups in other places but just in case, next weekend we’ll have Vancouver hosting Halifax at 10:00 (all times Eastern) on Friday night, and three…

2026 NLL Week 20 The regular season is almost over and the last two playoff positions are not only down to the wire, but both will be decided in the best way possible: head-to-head.

2026 NLL Week 19 The playoff picture is almost set, as we now know six of the eight teams that will play in the post-season. Once Halifax beat Rochester, Georgia clinched the fourth spot and the door was open for Toronto and Buffalo to clinch with wins. They both did, and so now we have Ottawa,…

NLL playoff percentages: BUF 96.7% GEO 99.9% HFX 18.9% LV 69.6% OTT 63.6% ROC 17.9% SD 35.5% TOR 97.9% First round home game clinching percentages: BUF 42.4% COL 79.8% GEO 70.6% HFX 0% LV 1.8% OTT 0.7% ROC 0.9% SD 0.1% SSK 82.9% TOR 27.0% VAN 93.9%

2026 NLL Week 18 A couple more playoff decisions have been made, as Calgary and Oshawa are now out. Nobody else clinched so right now, we’re at three in and three out. We have a 10–5 team (Georgia) and a 6–9 team (Halifax) and with only three weeks left in the season, it’s still possible for…

New on NLLStats.com: The list of games for the current season can now show upcoming games nllstats.com/allgames

2026 NLL Week 17 What an incredible weekend of games. Keegan Bal and the Warriors clinched a playoff spot by holding off Jeff Teat and the Black Bears in a meeting of the two top scorers in the league, the Mammoth held off the Roughnecks who were never out of that game, and the Rock beat the…

2026 NLL Week 16 The 2026 trade deadline was this past Monday and once the trades started being announced, it seemed like they just wouldn’t stop. No real blockbusters, but there were a couple of significant deals and a number of smaller trades as well. Las Vegas made a number of moves to improve…

Longest single-franchise careers There are players in the NLL who seem to move around almost every year. Callum Crawford and Mat Giles played for 12 teams each, and Ryan Benesch is running out of body space for the tattoos he gets of each team he plays for. But there are others who have played…

2026 NLL Week 15 Week 15 wasn’t nearly as busy as week 14, but there were some important results this past weekend. The Rock and Thunderbirds had their offenses working while Colorado and Rochester didn’t, and the FireWolves held off a late surge by the Wings. Next week features a few matchups…

2026 NLL Week 14 There were ten games this past weekend, which ties for second place among the busiest weekends in NLL history - the last weekend of the 2007 season featured eleven games. Every team played, a bunch of teams played twice, and yet the standings didn’t change an awful lot. The Black…

2026 NLL Week 13 Only four games this past weekend, but they all made my Awesome list in one form or another. If you’ve got some time and you didn’t see any of them, head on over to NLL+ (or TSN.ca in Canada*) and check them out. You will not be disappointed.

Game review: Colorado @ Toronto This was a really entertaining game. It was close with a few lead changes and only a couple of leads of as much as two until the very end. I was going to list this game under the Awesome section of my weekly report, but it got kind of long so I split it out.

2026 NLL Week 12 We are officially at the halfway point of the season, as every team has now played at least nine games. The Rush are now tied for the fourth-longest single-season winning streak at eight games, the Mammoth are right behind them with a seven-game streak, and the Swarm have won five…

Quite possibly the least popular hockey player ever, Sean Avery

ICYMI: 2026 NLL Week 11 Awesome: Paul Tutka and @tymerlax.bsky.social, TOR, OSH, PHI, standings Not awesome: Gash/Clark fight, BUF, pregame fight, goalies in YVR nllchatter.com/2026/02/09/2...

2026 NLL Week 11 I would guess that nobody is shocked at most of the game results this week, other than maybe the game in Banditland (which I guess was more unexpected than shocking). The Warriors beating the Knighthawks isn’t shocking (they did it last week too), but the final score was a bit…

It's funny how those angry over "I didn't understand Bad Bunny's lyrics because they're in Spanish" are the same people saying "translate his lyrics, they are inappropriate for kids". If your kids don't understand them, who cares? And Kid Rock's biggest song is "Bawitdaba"

2026 NLL Week 10 A crazy high-scoring weekend with seven games, only two of which were settled by less than six goals. There were goals and hits and injuries and controversy. The Desert Dogs are an offensive powerhouse and the Bandits have suspect defense. The world has gone crazy.

Contact on a fast breaking opponent The incident happened a little over twelve hours ago as I write this, and there are already tons of posts all over social media talking about it. Many are condemning the hit, others saying it was a legal hit blown out of proportion, and still others saying we…

2026 NLL Week 9 A light week in the NLL with only four games, and all ended up fairly close. The Swarm took out the Rock in OT, the Seals came back to beat the Wings by two, Vancouver led 10–3 in the second until Ottawa surged but couldn’t get closer than three back, and Oshawa got within two with…

2026 NLL Week 8 We’re about a third of the way through the 2026 NLL season. A bunch of teams are playing as well as expected or even better: Saskatchewan, Rochester, Colorado, Ottawa, Las Vegas, and arguably Georgia. Others are struggling: Calgary, San Diego, Philadelphia, Oshawa, Halifax. I…

2026 NLL Week 7 There was so much awesome this week that I cut down on the commentary for each entry a little bit. Otherwise this article would be five times as long as my normal articles.

New feature on NLLStats.com: Attendance! You can find the highest and lowest game attendance, totals and averages for every season, and data on every game and every season for every team. See the Attendance menu on the left side of the page.

The NLL Drinking Game The next time you’re watching an NLL game at home, here’s a fun game to play while you watch. Grab yourself a frosty beverage, and whenever one of the following things happens, take a drink. If the frosty beverage in question contains alcohol, you may want to choose a game in…

2026 NLL Week 6 As of week 6, every team has won at least one and lost at least one. Four teams are at .500, five are above, and five are below. The top four teams were in the top five last year, and three of the bottom four were in the bottom four last year. So not much has changed, right? No, it…

2026 NLL week 5 Happy holidays to everyone who are or were celebrating this week or last! I was doing some family stuff last weekend so I managed to watch the Rock/Desert Dogs game replay on Sunday afternoon and then Bandits/Roughnecks on Sunday evening, but nothing else. Then we’re going away for…

New feature on NLLStats.com: You can now select multiple seasons for player and goalie lists. Want to see who had the most points from 2009-2013? (Dan Dawson) Or the lowest GAA among starters from 2006-2009? (Ken Montour) nllstats.com/allplayers nllstats.com/allgoalies

2026 NLL Week 4 Only four games this week but a lot of awesome to throw around. The Knighthawks and Wings remembered how to score goals but nobody else did. We had one game with 11 goals and one with 14. Another had 19, which is still pretty low, but each team had a 25+ minute scoring drought. We…

2026 NLL Week 3 After a busy week, all teams have played at least one game now. Halifax is 2–0, Rochester and Philly 1–0, Oshawa 1–2, Calgary 0–2, and Las Vegas 0–1. Everyone else - eight different teams - is 1–1, and four of those also have zero goal differentials. Things will almost certainly…

The new place: TD Coliseum On Saturday night, the Toronto Rock returned home to Hamilton (man, that’s a weird sentence) and the Rock faithful were finally able to see the extent of the renovations that forced the team to play in Mississauga last season. I had been looking forward to this for a…

New feature on NLLStats.com: Career milestones page for goalies Want to know how many goalies have faced at least 5000 shots in their career and also have a career GAA under 11? (Answer: Bold, Cosmo, Del Bianco, Rose, Vinc) nllstats.com/careerGoalie...

New features on NLLStats.com: (1) The game search for players + goalies pages, season milestones page, and career milestones page can now use shots on goal, face-offs won, face-offs attempted, and face-off percentage as search criteria.

2026 NLL Week 2 Only two games in Week two but lots to talk about, including one of the best goaltending performances ever, an amazing NLL debut goal, and a big comeback. Let get right to it.

NLLStats.com is updated with the games from week 2

If you're new to lacrosse, here's an article I wrote a bunch of years ago that might help you learn the terminology. In fact, I think even seasoned experts will see something they didn't already know nllchatter.com/2018/03/05/l...

2026 NLL Week 1 The NLL is back! The 2026 season began last Friday with the first-ever game in Oshawa, followed by three games on Saturday in Buffalo, Ottawa, and Vancouver. Buffalo won their game, which surprised pretty much nobody, Colorado beat the heavily favoured Vancouver Warriors in an…

Goalies in the Sin Bin In last Saturday night’s Georgia/Buffalo game, Swarm goaltender Brett Dobson took a major penalty for high-sticking. It’s a bit unusual for a goalie to take a major penalty but that was less unusual than what happened next: Dobson was sent to the penalty box to serve his own…

2026 NLL Rule changes Every year, some tweaks are made to the NLL Rule book. There aren’t that many this year but Rule 67.16, the so-called “Bandits rule”, could significantly affect the defensive strategies of not only the Bandits but other teams as well - the Knighthawks come to mind.