A Sport Rejuvenated

From the depths of nothingness comes a season saved and a sport rejuvenated. The only question is: can the powers that be prevent history from repeating itself?

Prior to the start of the NLL season, the players and owners had trouble reaching a CBA and the commissioner Jim Jennings announced the cancellation of the season. I previously commented how disgusted I was by that and in fact, I even went as low as to suggest the NLL wanted to be like the NHL. In a way I’m sure it does, or at least did before their lockout/strike/work stoppage/cancelled season (whichever term suits you best) as the NHL was king in Canada and was growing increasingly more popular in the United States. After the CBA was agreed upon and the season was resurrected from the great beyond, a bad taste continued to linger in my mouth.

Now that the season is heading into its sixth week, despite the scars that remain (the absence of the Arizona Sting and expansion Boston Blazers), the pre-season fiasco is almost forgotten. The action’s more intense and with the dispersal of talent from the Arizona Sting, there is even more parity in the league. This is evidenced by a third of games so far being decided by a single score (7 of 21) with five of those games being decided in overtime. Last year, only eight games in all saw an extra frame. Attendance is also up more than 800 fans per game over this time last season but I suspect that is due to the fact that Colorado, the team with the best fan support last season, has played three home games while San Jose, the worst for attendance, has only played one home game.

The cancelled season made me think long and hard about renewing my season tickets in Buffalo but now I am glad I did. After a slow start in their season opener at HSBC, the Bandits came back in the second half and made the game exciting. They gave the fans hope for a huge come from behind win but Rochester was able to hold off the charge and win it 14-9. The second home game for the Bandits saw an extremely spirited affair with lots of hits and scoring. John Tavares electrified the crowd by scoring his 596 and 597th career goal to take the all-time goals scored lead. That game was exactly what lacrosse is all about: tough physical play with lots of scoring. It renewed my excitement in the game and followed by the high scoring, high intensity games last Saturday night, it gave me hope that this type of game is becoming the norm.

These high quality games are reminiscent of the 1999 season when there were only seven teams in the league. Over the past few seasons, some people have been complaining about the NLL being watered down by expansion and now that theory seems to hold water. The degradation of the league has been so slight and so prolonged that someone fairly new to the sport, as I am, could not see the seemingly subtle changes. This year with two less teams (I guess technically only one since the new Boston Blazers team has yet to play a game) the league seems to be rejuvenated; the games are more intense and the goals more spectacular.

Hopefully Jim Jennings is paying attention to the action on the floor so he can see that right now less is more. Although growing, the talent pool of great lacrosse players is still relatively small. The time for expansion has ended, at least for now. Lacrosse as a professional sport has reached the minds of the youth and the minor league organizers and the sport has begun to grow at the grass roots level. The seeds have been planted and now it is time to sit back and watch the talent grow. After all, talent can’t be forced it must be nurtured and allowed to blossom on its own.