The Minnesota Swarm have had an extremely productive camp thus far. With the new youthful look to the team most would expect a few stumbling points, but the Swarm have put all the pieces in the right spot and seem to have the right ideas heading down the stretch to the beginning of the season.
The Swarm have been able to win both of their preseason games so far, both were come from behind wins.
Players like Logan Schuss, Scott Jones, and Zach Palmer have really stepped up during their time at camp. Schuss had two goals in the first preseason game against Colorado and then had four goals against the defending NLL Champion Knighthawks. Schuss’ biggest question was going to be consistency in his rookie season and it seems that he will easily have points this season and a lot of them. Scott Jones, in the Knighthawks game, was the one who scored the winning goal at the end of the game. Jones also got a little exuberant in his celebration and pulled out a championship belt celley that has garnered some animosity from the Knighthawks fan base. Palmer was less of a stat sheet monster like Jones and Schuss, but he played an all around game at forward that looked to be an indication of a long and productive career in the NLL.
The Swarm’s most pressing matter was in net this offseason. Tyler Carlson has improved quite a bit since last season, he looks to have figured out his consistency problems from last season. Carlson will seems to be the one to pencil in as the starter for the season. Although Carlson has settled into the starting spot, Zach Higgins has shown that he is more than capable of taking that starting spot from Carlson should he falter in this upcoming season.
The Swarm look to be the team that no one will want to play this coming season. I would rate the Swarm as either the number one team or the number two team in the league in the preseason. This could be the year that everyone in the Hive have been waiting for over the last 10 seasons.
