Friday, March 23, 2012

A Look at the 2012 OLA Junior A Schedule

The OLA Jr. A Schedule is out and it's going to be an action packed 2 months before Canada Day. The schedule was condensed to accomodate the large contingent of players heading to Finland for the Junior World Field Lacrosse Championships. The best of 5 Opening Round of playoffs will take place from July 1st to July 7th.

May Highlights:
KW hosts Peterborough on May 6th to kick off the season.
The Beach (aka- Northmen farm team) looks to impress their new leadership (Northmen alumni, Brodie Merrill and Bruce Codd) when they visit Tony Rose on May 11th.
Six Nations looks to avenge their two defeats to Brampton in 2011, starting with a visit to the rowdy Powerade Centre on May 18.
Our first rematch of the 2011 championship has the Minto Champion Warriors in Orangeville on May 20th.
The second game is back in Whitby on May 29th. Two great games to get out and watch.
The Beach visits Mississauga on May 27th. Two teams enter, one team leaves...victorious.
Six Nations plays a gruelling 3 games in 4 nights starting in Orangeville on May 25, then at home vs Burlington May 27 and on the road to Peterborough on May 28. That will be a real test for the Arrows.

June Highlights:
June begins with Peterborough at Orangeville on the 1st. Will the Lakers still be feeling the sting from the Game 7 heartbreaker in last year's playoffs?
June 3rd has two big matches as St. Catherines heads to Brampton and Orangeville visits Six Nations.
Peterborough travels to Brampton on June 8th after knocking the Excelsiors out of last year's playoffs with a surprising sweep. Brampton will be looking for a measure of redemption
Six Nations visits the home of the 2012 Minto Cup and sight of their demise last year, when they head to Whitby on June 23rd.
June 29th is the busiest day of the season with 10 of 11 teams playing. With the playoffs starting a couple of days later, watch for this day to be the determining day for seedings.
The regular season ends on June 30th with the always entertaining Six Nations vs St. Catherines derby. This could be a potential playoff matchup by this time of the year so look for both teams to battle tooth and nail to the finish.

The full schedule will be posted shortly, once it has been properly formatted.

For your OLA Junior A scoreboard, visit the league's website: http://www.pointstreaksites.com/view/olajralacrosse

Friday, March 9, 2012

Peaks and Valleys- A weekly look at the NLL

After a hiatus to handle some family stuff (a little blogger on its way), we are back this week with a look at the Buffalo Bandits. Coles notes version: Time to rebuild the team!

Peaks and Valleys- Buffalo what?


Oh how quickly a 2 and 0 start can evaporate. For the first 11 quarters of action, the Buffalo Bandits looked like they would run away with the East Division. They had soundly beaten Toronto and Rochester and were on their way to beating Philadelphia (leading 9-7 heading into the 4th quarter). Suddenly, the wheels fell off. Philly outscores Buffalo 6-1 to steal a win on the road and Buffalo hasn’t won since then.

The Bandits have dropped 5 straight games and look awful in doing it. They have trailed heading to the 4th quarter in their last 4 games (not a recipe for success). They traded for the rights to Anthony Cosmo thinking that goaltending was an area they needed to improve. Cosmo was rusty in his first action and didn’t last the whole game.

But what is the real issue for the dreadful results of late? Are there other issues that are getting missed? Let’s take a look at how they got here.

Step 1- Whiff the Boston Dispersal Draft
Buffalo took 2 players in the Boston Dispersal Draft, Kevin Buchanan and Damon Edwards. Edwards is now in Toronto after a stint in CLax and it looks like Buchanan left his game in Boston. For Boston in 2011 he had 24 goals and 33 assists. For Buffalo he has 2 goals and 10 assists. His points per game average has dropped from 3.8 to 2.0 this season. That is two picks that were misses for the Bandits and mistakes like that in a very competitive league doom a team to failure.

Step 2- Bad drafting
On top of whiffing the latest dispersal draft, Buffalo has been anemic in the Entry Draft too. They had no first round pick in 2011 and their 2010 first round pick (Travis Irving) has dressed for 2 games this season. In 2009 they took Kyle Clancey ahead of Stephen Leblanc and Scott Tinning, both of whom are contributors for their respective teams today. Clancey isn’t even on the Bandits active roster. They had no first round pick in 2007 or 2008. That’s five straight years without any influx of youthful talent.

Step 3- Keep on, keeping on
Darris Kilgour has been the coach since 2003. Mark Steenhuis has been a Bandit since 2003. John Tavares has been a Bandit his entire career.
The point? That’s a long time! These 3 are the core of the team but they are all now a little long in the tooth.

Steenhuis has gone from 101 points and 117 Looseballs in 2009 to 61 points and 82 Looseballs in 2011. This season he is on pace for his lowest point total since 2004. Like Buchanan, his point production has dropped by half over time. When your best player is over 40 and your second best player has production dropping like a stone, you are in a lot of trouble.

Step 4- Additions that are not adding much
Luke Wiles has had a fantastic season in Buffalo. His stats are up after his move from Washington and it looks like he is hitting his peak producing years. That is good for Buffalo.

What about another recent addition though? Tracey Kelusky has had a miserable year. In 2011 with Buffalo he had a respectable 54 points with a 3.37 per game average. In 2010 with Calgary he averaged 4.9 points per game and in 2009 he averaged a fantastic 5.25 points per game.

In 2012? Kelusky is on pace for 36 points (a career low!) with a measily 2.25 per game average.


Conclusion- A call for rebuilding
What now for Buffalo? It’s clear that they have an aging and underperforming roster in need of changes. It is also clear that they have few assets in the pipeline right now that will help them change that (Their 2012 first round pick was also traded away).

Do they move a player like Steenhuis while he still can draw some value in return? (Yes)

Do they change the coach in order to effect some changes in their organization and make a youth movement? (Yes)

Is this a team built for short term success? (No)

They may not want to hear this in Buffalo, but the Bandits need to move into rebuilding mode. They have some good pieces to build around (Wiles, good young defenders and Cosmo) and there several real quality players coming up in the next few years to draft to help speed the process.