There is a tendency in sports to over-react to any sign of weakness in a team’s performance. In most cases it’s important to avoid knee-jerk reaction or evaluations because a team can have a bad day or a bad game, heck, even a bad quarter at any time and any one of those situations could deep six their efforts for the day. The middle of the pack in MLL seems…
Marcus Holman had a game-high five goals and Tom Schreiber led the visiting Ohio Machine with seven assists on a chilly Friday night in Denver, en route to an 18–12 victory over the Denver Outlaws. The loss was Denver’s first home loss since July 4th, 2014, and only their second since midway through the 2012 season. Brian Phipps led a stalwart defensive effort for the Machine with 10 saves, several…
Ok, in terms of full disclosure, for last week’s rankings I put much more thought into teams’ Mallrats equivalents than the actual order of the teams. Looking back, however, I’m comfortable with where everyone was slotted. The obvious caveat to that last statement is that comfort is a relative term with the teams in this league. As one of the play-by-play guys said this weekend (I can’t remember which) the…
The evening was chilly with scattered rain starting around halftime, but the 6,700-plus fans in attendance walked out of the stadium with warm fuzzies and a home team victory. The Denver Outlaws rode off into the sunset on Sunday evening with a 17-10 victory over the visiting Chesapeake Bayhawks. The Outlaws were boosted by hat tricks from Cam Holding, Chris Bocklet, and John Grant, Jr., and the latter also contributed…
Being the “Denver” guy means that, naturally, I cover the Outlaws. While my rooting interest should be pretty obvious I find it important to remain as objective as possible. Why mention this at the outset here? Because what follows is probably going to sound like a total homer piece, but I’ll get to the rationale behind these comments in a moment. First of all, if you’ve ever read my MLL…
In 1995, Syracuse won the NCAA men’s lacrosse national championship, gas cost $1.35 per gallon, and Kevin Smith released Mallrats, which, for my money, is far and away his best film. What does any of this have to do with this week’s MLL “power rankings” (read that like Dr. Evil would say “laser”) you might ask? Well, MLL is an “any given Sunday” or whatever day of the week the…
The Denver Outlaws traveled to south Florida to take on the Florida Launch on Saturday. Denver came away with a 15-12 victory, and we led by a 16 save effort by Jesse Schwartzman. Three different Outlaws registered four points in the contest: Eric Law (3, 1), Jeremy Sieverts (3, 1), and John Grant (2, 2). The Launch got four points out of Kieran McArdle (1, 3) and Casey Powell (3,…
Denver takes its talent to South Beach on Saturday. Well, an hour or so north of South Beach, really, but you get the idea. Florida is coming off their first win of the year. If the MVP is understood as the individual who is the most important to their team, is Kieran McArdle not that person? Most people’s knee-jerk response would be Paul Rabil, but put him on a different…
Ah yes… The illustrious rankings of power. Where figuring out what team belongs were in relation to every other team is an exercise in futility. What do you value more? Stats? The Eyeball Test? Advanced Analytics? (HA! Just kidding. MLL doesn’t really have those yet.) There is only one thing that is clear at this point and that is that the New York Lizards are the king of the mountain…
Sunday saw a rematch of the 2014 MLL championship game when the Denver Outlaws visited the Rochester Rattlers. What a difference a year makes though. The Rattlers handed the Outlaws their second defeat of the season by a score of 15-12. Attackman Jordan Wolf tallied a hat trick for the Rattlers, and five other players had at least two goals for Rochester. Mike Bocklet and Greg Melaugh led the Outlaws…