Surely not many MLL fans expected to see the Rochester Rattlers at the top of the standings heading into the final quarter of the season did they? I certainly did not. Rochester is the team that traded arguably their two best players, Matt Striebel and Ned Crotty, to their in-state rivals in the New York Lizards before the season started. The Rattlers looked like a team devoid of any offensive threat with two rookie midfielders coming back as the leading players.
Fast forward to the present and the Rattlers are legit, with a capital L. Let’s start with this team’s offense which has seen a complete 180-degree turnaround since last year. At the end of 2013, the Rattlers ranked second to last in goals scored as they scored 144 goals. The only team with a lower offensive output were the lowly Ohio Machine who won all of two games in 2013. In 2014, the Rattlers are tied for third in the league in goals scored with 143.
What has been the key to the offensive turnaround? It all starts with Justin Turri and the rest of the midfield unit. Turri, along with Jordan MacIntosh, Dave Lawson and Jon Ranagan have combined for 88 of the team’s 215 points, or 40.9 percent of the offensive output!
That leads me to the second point. The attack is young but explosive, especially with rookie Jordan Wolf. Coming off a stellar career at Duke that ended with breaking Matt Danowski’s record for points in a single season at Duke and back-to-back National Championships, the former Blue Devil has 19 points in only four games! Joining him is fellow ACC attackman Mark Cockerton who has been named offensive player of the week twice this season. Of course, you can’t foget about the wily old veteran in Kevin Leveille who ranks third on the team with 20 points.
All of a sudden, an offense that couldn’t get out of its own way last season, is one of the best in the league.
Now let’s flip to the defensive end. This team was already pretty talented in 2013 but has gotten much better in 2014. Last season, the defense allowed 171 goals which ranked fourth in the league at the end of the season. This season, the unit has taken their game up a notch by ranking second in the MLL in goals allowed with 128. The defense is lead by goalie John Galloway who has been on another level after making the 30-man roster for Team USA before being named an alternate when the roster went to 24 players.
The close defense is also pretty darn good. Mike Manley, is well, the man on defense. He has 11 points, which is crazy for a defenseman! But he plays both ends of the field equally well. Speaking of offensive defensemen, the Rattlers other rookie, John LoCascio, has two points so far this season to go along with 32 ground balls. LoCascio is such a threat on offense that Villanova actually had him on man up this season! Don’t be fooled though because he was a takeaway defenseman in college as well.
Finally, the two former Syracuse Orangemen, John Lade and Joel White, are the veterans on this defense as Lade has 29 ground balls on the season while White has 59! White’s 59 ground balls leads the league in terms of players who aren’t faceoff guys. If you want to include guys who faceoff, only four are better. Lade and White are also great defensemen and are familiar with playing with Galloway in college and now in Rochester for a couple of years.
Finally, one more improvement for the Rattlers has been at the faceoff X where John Ortolani has won close to 50 percent of his faceoffs. That faceoff percentage goes along well with his 65 ground balls. Both those statistics rank him fourth in the league. With the ability of the offense to put up goals at will, the fact that Ortolani can get the ball back to them and keep a scoring run going is vitally improtant to their success. The defense continues to rest and with the margin widening, the defense can press out on the ball and force teams into easy fastbreak opportunities or force them into bad shots for Galloway to gobble up.
As the Rattlers continue to stifle the competition with its airtight defense and goal scoring muscles. Expect the Rattlers to keep the No. 1 seed when the season ends and for them to make a serious run at the Championship Trophy because no other team has quite the combination on both offense and defense that the Rattlers do.
