2024 NLL Player Rankings: Transition Player of the Year
While The Lax Mag’s National Lacrosse League Player Rankings typically orders the league’s Top 30 players from #1 to #30 since soon after the league’s opening weekend and right up to the end of the regular season, now that we’re in playoff mode, we’re shifting focus to our NLL year-end awards.
Specifically, who our rankings system (more on that here) says should win all of the NLL’s most important end-of-season honours (our award-winning history here), although expect an extra one from the league this year.
Zach Currier, Calgary Roughnecks (Photo: Jenn Pierce)
Transition Player of the Year
Since 2019, this award, at least at the league level, has been dominated by two players that play the position (even though it’s more of a role or style versus proper position) fairly differently. Calgary’s Zach Currier was voted the NLL’s TPOTY the past two seasons, Toronto’s Challen Rogers the two years prior to that.
Neither made our Top 5 this year.
Currier saw a dramatic decline in his offensive production (scored just once all season versus 25 combined during his award-winning campaigns, a 2024 goal-scoring average that ranked him 222nd in the league) and Rogers missed a third of the year due to injury (never do players that miss more than a few games garner year-end accolades).
So, if not them, who were this year’s top transitional players?
Using our season-long NLL Player Rankings math (again, more on that here), The Lax Mag recognizes our five highest ranked two-way players this year, including our pick for 2024 NLL Transition Player of the Year.
Jordan MacIntosh, Georgia Swarm (Photo: Asher Greene)
5. Jordan MacIntosh
Age: 34
Team: Georgia Swarm
Seasons: 12
From: Oakville, ON
Of the nearly 20 names submitted to the league by teams for voting consideration, Georgia Swarm captain Jordan MacIntosh was not one of them, but The Lax Mag’s in-depth NLL Player Rankings analysis says the long-time vet should most certainly be in the conversation for 2024’s TPOTY. Why? Two seasons ago, Georgia Head Coach Ed Comeau called MacIntosh the team’s most important player for the variety of roles he serves for the Swarm and lengthy list responsibilities he has there. That same statement is still very much true in 2024. Earlier this year, we extracted the players whose per-game averages for the following T-tracked stats ranked within the Top 100: goals, assists, loose ball, caused turnovers and blocks. At the time, Ian MacKay was the only one to land on each list, although he no longer does. No player placed in all five per-game category countdowns after a full season, but one forward and two transitional players did find their way into four of those five statistical sorts: Dhane Smith (who is always all over our player rankings posts), Nick Weiss (who finished sixth in our TPOTY tally) and… Jordan MacIntosh. Looking at the league’s three TPOTY Finalists, both MacKay and Jake Withers ranked in three of those five categories, but Shane Simpson only one (tied for 88th in goals). In fact, 2x TPOTY and Calgary teammate Zach Currier had much higher averages in all but one of those five categories often quoted when talking about today’s top two-way talents.
Mike Messenger, Saskatchewan Rush (Photo: Steve Hiscock)
4. Mike Messenger
Age: 30
Team: Saskatchewan Rush
Seasons: 7
From: Surrey, BC
This season, Messenger had arguably his strongest offensive campaign yet (set new goals and points personal bests), finished fourth in the league in caused turnovers (only the NLL’s three DPOTY Finalists had more than Messenger this year) and saw his blocked shots double (16). It’s a stat line worthy of serious TPOTY consideration, but for some strange reason, Saskatchewan’s most versatile defensive player gets little to no love come awards szn. Rarely has a player as physically imposing as Messenger won this award – Brodie Merrill 3x, Andrew Suitor once, and like Messenger, Geoff Snider was shutout of the honour (or even a finalist mention) he should have had multiple times. As the Rush continue to re-climb the ranks, hopefully so do Messenger’s chances of finally being recognized as one of today’s hardest working transitional players. Rush teammate Jake Boudreau, who played in just his second season this past winter, finished seventh here.
Matt Gilray, Rochester Knighthawks (Photo: Micheline Veluvolu)
3. Matt Gilray
Age: 28
Team: Rochester Knighthawks
Seasons: 5
From: Oshawa, ON
Although we’ve yet to publish our final Top 30 of the year (it comes out when we name our 2024 MVP later this month), Matt Gilray was one of only one two transition players to appear on TLM’s weekly ranking since the start of the season (Withers was the other). While Gilray’s offensive output slowed in the second half of the season (was held scoreless over the last six games of the season) the defensive production he provided Rochester with all year was about as consistent as you could ask. In fact, his 174 loose balls (the stat most often quoted when talking about two-way players, or at least it used to be) were the highest of any non-face-off taker (he took one all year). Since the Knighthawks’ (2.0) first season in 2020, the only Rochester player to appear even just as a finalist for any NLL year-end hardware was Curtis Knight, a final three for the never-talked-about Sportsmanship Award, which Lyle Thompson has won five years straight, and is again in the running this year. Seemingly a contender for this honour all year, Gilray was not named a finalist for the NLL’s TPOTY.
Ian MacKay, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Michael Hetzel)
2. Ian MacKay
Age: 29
Team: Buffalo Bandits
Seasons: 5
From: Port Elgin, ON
Like we mentioned earlier (see Jordan MacIntosh above for more), throughout most of the season, Ian MacKay was the only player in the league to rank in the Top 100 in the following per-game stats, highlighting both an offensive and defensive skill-set: goals, assists, loose balls, caused turnovers and blocks. While he wasn’t able to maintain that ridiculous run all year, it’s still wildly impressive that he did for so long. Prior to last year, MacKay was already one of the league’s top true transition players (a defensemen that, and this is shock you based on how past votes have gone, transitioned the ball up the floor). As is often the case, it wasn’t until he started playing more straightforward O minutes and bulking up his goals & assists that others around the league finally noticed how valuable he was to Buffalo’s overall on-floor success. A year later, although he played less front-door ball (went from 80 to 48 shots) due to a healthy Buffalo offense, MacKay still stood out as a pain-in-the-ass defensive presence that was (and continues to be during the playoffs) always problematic for the opposition on the press.
Jake Withers, Halifax Thunderbirds (Photo: Trevor MacMillan)
1. Jake Withers
Age: 30
Team: Halifax Thunderbirds
Seasons: 5
From: Peterborough, ON
Previously listed and always seemingly referenced as a defender on broadcasts, the Halifax Thunderbirds submitted Jake Withers as a transition player for this season’s award considerations, which based on the honour’s history, kind of makes sense. Teams can submit a player for DPOTY or TPOTY consideration, but not both, which is a tad confusing since many players have excelled in both roles, but we’ve discussed that to death in the past, so let’s move on. While Withers’ offensive numbers are a bit behind a majority of players on the league’s year-end ballot, his defensive digits most certainly were a sizeable step ahead. Withers set a new loose balls scooped in a single season record this year, his 282 grounders a significant 36 more than previous record holder Jay Thorimbert. Two-way GOAT Jim Veltman was surely impressed. For the second straight season, Wither finished with 360 face-off wins, which were only three FOWs short of bettering Trevor Baptiste’s one-year record set in 2019. Will Withers win the league’s official award? Hard to say. As previously mentioned, Geoff Snider, who like Withers was a record-setting dot dominator who got into plenty of PIM problems (Withers led the league in that column this year too), but put up even bigger O numbers, was never acknowledged likely (actually, for sure) due to award decision makers not being enamoured by his overly aggressive approach (AKA pummeling the piss out of their players). Do enough around the league not dislike Withers enough to have submitted a first-place vote for him? Whichever way the league’s BFF-motivated vote goes, The Lax Mag is more than alright in naming Jake Wither’s our 2024 NLL Transition Player of the Year.