While most other teams are looking ahead to Week 2 of the 2015 NLL season, the Buffalo Bandits will have a bye week. This bye week will not be a simple “take the day off” bye, they will be in full practice mode and looking ahead to their next opponent, the Vancouver Stealth, on January 17th.
Right now, the Bandits are in a good position. While they dropped the first game in their back to back to open the season to the New England Blackwolves 12-8, they managed to redeem themselves the next night in a nail biter win against the Edmonton Rush 9-8. In that Rush game they showed a lot of improvements from the night before, and with this bye-week, I think can really improve on that even more.
The biggest thing the Bandits need to work on in this bye week is their power play unit. On Friday against the Blackwolves, the Bandits powerplay unit only scored twice on seven powerplay opportunities. When they played Edmonton on Saturdaynight, the Bandits had eight powerplay opportunities and only found the back of the net on one of them. Those type of numbers on special teams are absolutely unacceptable if you want to be a successful team in this league. The Bandits have the talent, but for some reason they were taking bad angled shots when on the powerplay, and they did not use pick and rolls effectively in this time. Pick and rolls are even more effective on the powerplay play, because, well you already have the man advantage, and by setting a well placed pick, that eliminates another opponent temporarily.
The Bandits also need to be more disciplined when it counts. The short handed unit proved on Saturday night that they can kill off even the longest of penalties. Some may argue that a few of the penalties the Bandits received against the Rush were uncalled for (even Bandits head coach Troy Cordingley called out the officiating crew), but the fact of the matter is, you have to stay out of the box, especially if you are down or only ahead by a goal or two.
The Bandits are back in action on January 17th when they travel to the LEC to play the Vancouver Stealth.
