2024 NLL Player Rankings: The six serious contenders for this year’s MVP
After the first several weeks of the 2023-24 National Lacrosse League season are complete, The Lax Mag will publish a weekly NLL Player Ranking, examining the league’s Top 30 players from Week 1 right up until the end of the regular season.
TLM’s Top 30 NLL Player Rankings have nothing to do with reputations, career resumes, success in past seasons, whether we know a player personally, recognizing deserving players who’ve previously been passed over, player popularity, the size of their social media following, whether you slide into their DMs, or who others around the league tell us should get hype.
Our rankings, which only take into consideration a player’s performance for the current regular season, will be calculated using both our star-rating system after each game, but also a player’s season-long statistical position (based on per-game average, not full-season totals) across the league. Only players who have played two-thirds of their team’s games will qualify.
Click here for an even more in-depth description of our scoring system.
With just three short weeks of regular season lacrosse left, our weekly NLL Player Rankings suggest that there are probably only six players that are in serious contention for this year’s NLL MVP Award.
Why?
Well, over the past month, the same six players have consistently placed in our Top 6. While Wes Berg has firmly held the six spot over that four-week stretch, the others – Josh Byrne, Jeff Teat, Dhane Smith, Nick Rose and Connor Fields – have swapped spots regularly, but have ranked no lower than five.
In fact, since Week 9 (so ten weeks ago), our current Top 6 have been ranked within the Top 10 that entire time.
Again, for those unfamiliar with our ranking system click here.
While The Lax Mag’s weekly NLL Player Rankings weigh a Week 1 performance equally to whatever happens during the upcoming Week 19 (or any other week), many NLL MVP voters are clearly swayed by a player’s late-season heroics.
Below, see how each of our long-standing Top 6 have done statistically (their most obvious stats, not our complete lengthy list of statistical analysis) as the season has progressed, a few seeing a surge in a specific stat (i.e. Dhane Smith’s shooting and goal scoring over the past month) and others staying crazy consistent (i.e. Pretty much everything Nick Rose is doing) as we creep closer to the end of this year’s regular season.
Josh Byrne, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Colleen Shaw)
Jeff Teat, New York Riptide (Photo: John Harrison)
Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Ryan McCullough)
Connor Fields, Rochester Knighthawks (Photo: Micheline Veluvolu)
Nick Rose, Toronto Rock (Photo: Ryan McCullough)
Wes Berg, San Diego Seals (Photo: John Harrison)
NLL Top 30: Week 19
TW. (LW) Player, Team (Position)
1. (1) Josh Byrne, Buffalo (F)
2. (2) Jeff Teat, New York (F)
3. (5) Dhane Smith, Buffalo (F)
4. (4) Nick Rose, Toronto (G)
5. (3) Connor Fields, Rochester (F)
6. (6) Wes Berg, San Diego (F)
7. (7) Mitch Jones, Philadelphia (F)
8. (9) Austin Staats, San Diego (F)
9. (8) Ryan Smith, Rochester (F)
10. (10) Mitch de Snoo, Toronto (D)
11. (11) Jesse King, Calgary (F)
12. (12) Callum Crawford, Panther City (F)
13. (13) Will Malcom, Panther City (F)
14. (14) Alex Simmons, Albany (F)
15. (15) Doug Jamieson, Albany (G)
16. (16) Christian Del Bianco, Calgary (G)
17. (20) Robert Church, Saskatchewan (F)
18. (18) Clarke Petterson, Halifax (F)
19. (17) Jake Withers, Halifax (D)
20. (19) Chris Origlieri, San Diego (G)
21. (21) Matt Gilray, Rochester (T)
22. (22) Lyle Thompson, Georgia (F)
23. (23) Mark Matthews, Toronto (F)
24. (24) Brad Kri, Toronto (D)
25. (25) Graeme Hossack, Halifax (D)
26. (27) Andrew Kew, Georgia (F)
27. (28) Tom Schreiber, Toronto (F)
28. (30) Keegan Bal, Vancouver (F)
29. (29) Eli McLaughlin, Colorado (F)
30. (NR) Joe Resetarits, Philadelphia (F)