The Calgary Roughnecks added nine players to their roster on Monday night at the NLL Draft, including six in the first three rounds. As a result, the Roughnecks now have a ton of talented youth to work with. Prior to the 2015 season, rightie forward Scott Ranger retired, taking 50-60 points per season with him. Although it looked like the Roughnecks had enough firepower to make up for that loss,…
In what is expected to be one of the most talented drafts in NLL history, the Colorado Mammoth are looking like one team that won’t be doing much—they don’t pick until the fourth round and have just three selections overall. Perhaps because of this, the Mammoth front office has made some significant moves in the free agent market. They acquired forward Callum Crawford on Aug. 19, giving them what might be one…
The Calgary Roughnecks locked down one of their key young players on defence this week when they re-signed Dan McRae to a one-year deal. McRae was Calgary’s sixth-overall pick in the 2010 NLL draft, their second of three first-round selections that year (they took Curtis Dickson with the third-overall pick and Brandon Ivey with the eighth-overall pick). He has been with the team ever since, averaging just a hair under…
The Calgary Roughnecks have made a splash so far during the free agent period, not so much for what they have done, but for what they haven’t. To start things off, they very quietly released all-time faceoff wins leader Geoff Snider to become an unrestricted free agent. They have also let free agents Daryl Veltman, Travis Cornwall, and Jeff Moleski move on as well. While they have re-signed transition players…
In October of 2000, Tony Gwynn was granted free agency from the San Diego Padres for the first time in his Major League career. A year earlier, on Aug 6, 1999, he had become a member of the 3,000 hit club, assuring him of a future spot in baseball’s Hall of Fame. Needless to say, when word got out that Gwynn was on the market, it was front page…
The Buffalo Bandits have signed unrestricted free agent Daryl Veltman to a two-year deal, drawing the leftie forward away from the Calgary Roughnecks. This ends a five-year relationship between the Roughnecks and Veltman, who they acquired after the Boston Blazers folded. In five seasons with the Riggers, Veltman contributed 265 points (87 goals, 178 assists) with his biggest impact coming on the powerplay where he notched 30 goals and 75…
Following a disappointing 2015 regular season that saw them squeak into the playoffs on the last day of the season, the Calgary Roughnecks had a good playoff run that took them all the way to a tie-breaking mini-game in the West Division Finals against eventual Champion’s Cup winners, the Edmonton Rush. Now Calgary’s front office needs to look back at what transpired in 2015 and figure out how to move…
The New England Black Wolves finished the 2015 campaign with a league-worst 4-14 record. They won their first two games, meaning they went a horrible 2-14 after the quick start. Their last win of the season came on Apr 4 when they squeaked past the Buffalo Bandits 12-11 and then they wrapped up the season with six straight losses. Needless to say, the team has some things to work on…
Mark Matthews tore it up in the NLL in 2015, setting the Edmonton Rush franchise record for points in a season (115) while leading the team to their first-ever Champion’s Cup. The former first-overall pick for the Rush has lived up to the advanced hype and then some, drawing comparisons to other similar stars, such as the Colorado Mammoth’s John Grant Jr. But is Matthews really the next Grant Jr.?…
The nominees for the NLL Head Coach of the Year Award—also known as the Les Bartley Award—have been announced and now it’s a matter of waiting until September to see who the winner is. The nominees for 2015 are Mike Hasen of the Rochester Knighthawks, Derek Keenan of the Edmonton Rush, and John Lovell of the Toronto Rock. Lovell and Keenan faced each other in the Champion’s Cup this year,…