NLL Player Rankings: 2023 Most Valuable Player
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 our focus to 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.
Last year, The Lax Mag’s Player Rankings math correctly predicted 2022’s MVP (Dhane Smith), Defensive Player of the Year (Mitch de Snoo), Goalie of the Year (Matt Vinc), Transition Player of the Year (Zach Currier) and Rookie of the Year (Jeff Teat).
How about this year? We’re starting with 2023’s rookie class and working our way to MVP prior to the NLL Cup being awarded. Our Player Rankings: Best Dressed Edition, which generated more traffic than the other five combined, will come out after the playoffs.
Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Ben Green)
First off, our Top 5 year-end finishers in The Lax Mag’s weekly Top 30 were just a handful of the nearly 450 players that competed in the NLL this year to be on the list from our opening week (Week 6) and all the way to the league’s final week (Week 22). Although our graphic likely tipped you off, Buffalo’s Dhane Smith finished first, with Calgary’s Christian Del Bianco & New York’s Jeff Teat closely (really closely!) following, and Rochester’s Connor Fields and Toronto’s Tom Schreiber just a bit further behind those first three. Here’s where those five players ranked across our 17 published weekly rankings this year…
NLL Top 5 Players: Week 5-Week 22
The Top 5 players traded positions within those first five spots for the final five weeks of the regular season, no other player creeping in the very top of our Player Rankings system during that time. Smith sat first for an incredible nine of those 17 ranked weeks. Teat was next with five, Fields twice at the top, and Josh Byrne owned #1 early on in the season, prior to missing some time due to injury.
Del Bianco was voted the NLL’s MVP, Smith coming second, and Teat third. Calgary’s starting netminder was our highest ranked goalie for most of the season and our choice for Goalie of the Year too.
So why is Smith our #1 (aka MVP) while a majority of league voters went with Del Bianco?
While virtually all the players in our Top 5 were extremely consistent for a majority of the year, Smith was just that much more by our math (more on our Player Rankings calculation here). His ability to somehow even further elevate his game and succeed under differing demands while Buffalo’s offense was banged up for a lot of the year, consistently positioned him as one of the team’s top-rated players on the floor. While Del Bianco also received many first stars in our game-by-game ranking of a side’s Top 6 stars (again, more on that here), teammates like Zach Currier, Jesse King, Tyler Pace, Eli Salama and others sometimes sat higher than him. Byrne beat out Smith early, and Vinc did a few times throughout the season (for these reasons), but Smith’s play, often on both sides of the floor, regularly ranked him higher than most Bandits over 18 games.
From looking at our chart above and more specifically Smith’s fairly straight line, would it surprise you that Bryne did not play a game (due to injury) from Weeks 10 to 14?
While neither broke the single-season points record (Smith 137 in 2016), both Smith (132) & Teat (136) came incredibly close. Smith did, however, break his own assists-in-a-single-season record with 96 this year. This season is only the second time in the NLL’s modern era (those records were more regularly broken in the 90s when the league was still settling in) that a player that set a new solo-season goals, assists or points record was not voted MVP (unless the same record was also broken by another player that year). As we mentioned during our thorough review of NLL seasons worthy of MVP accolades, it was Garrett Billings in 2012 that missed out on an MVP mention after doing exactly what Smith did this year. Guess voters don’t like apples.
Smith (7.33) & Teat (7.56) were also the only players in the league to average over seven points per game, although if you looked at just Mitch Jones’ stats in twelve games with the Philadelphia Wings, he just barely bettered them (7.58). What gave Smith the edge over Teat (the next nearest runner), who also obviously had an incredibly high star rating, in our Player Rankings was where the two players sat across the league in turnovers (Teat gave up the ball at a higher rate, but in his defense, also had fewer positive passing options than Smith), caused turnovers (Smith forced fumbles more often), and even in our Clutch Kings rating (Smith scored more combined game-trying, go-ahead and game-winning goals than Teat, plus finished sixth overall).
Look, while their seasons played out in very different ways both positionally and in the standings, the debatable difference between who 2023’s more valuable player was between Smith, Del Bianco and Teat is an argument a supporter of any of those three could win.
Many feel Teat’s inability to get the New York Riptide into the playoffs cost him his first MVP. Earlier this year we reviewed how rare a non-playoff player winning the award in the NLL was, but also how Teat’s totals compared to every league leader, ever.
The postseason doesn’t factor into this ranking, but Smith is giving a repeat performance in the playoffs and is on the verge of setting more single-season records (we looked at where he ranked ahead of Game 2, then he put up eight more) during yet another incredible run by arguably the greatest player going right now. Also, Smith was our #1 last year too.
Revisit our Rookie of the Year, Transition Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, and Goalie of the Year breakdowns, plus see our final Top 30 of 2023 below. We’ll see you later this month for our NLL Best Dressed list (see last year’s ranking), maybe a Junior A Top 30 like in the old school LAXMAG days (stay tuned), and in December for our most visited post every year: The NLL Top 100.
NLL Player Rankings: Week 22 (Final)
TW. (LW) Players, Team (Position)
1. (1) Dhane Smith, Buffalo (F)
2. (2) Christian Del Bianco, Calgary (G)
3. (3) Jeff Teat, New York (F)
4. (4) Connor Fields, Rochester (F)
5. (5) Tom Schreiber, Toronto (F)
6. (7) Zach Currier, Calgary (T)
7. (6) Nick Rose, Toronto (G)
8. (8) Mitch Jones, Philadelphia (F)
9. (10) Wes Berg, San Diego (F)
10. (9) Josh Byrne, Buffalo (F)
11. (11) Andrew Kew, Georgia (F)
12. (12) Reid Bowering, Vancouver (T)
13. (14) Robert Church, Saskatchewan (F)
14. (15) Lyle Thompson, Georgia (F)
15. (13) Dane Dobbie, San Diego (F)
16. (17) Jesse King, Calgary (F)
17. (20) Matt Vinc, Buffalo (G)
18. (21) Joe Resetarits, Philadelphia (F)
19. (16) Curtis Dickson, San Diego (F)
20. (18) Will Malcom, Panther City (F)
21. (19) Graeme Hossack, Halifax (D)
22. (23) Kyle Rubisch, Saskatchewan (D)
23. (26) Randy Staats, Halifax (F)
24. (24) Brad Kri, Toronto (D)
25. (22) Eli McLaughlin, Colorado (F)
26. (29) Challen Rogers, Toronto (T)
27. (25) Steve Priolo, Buffalo (D)
28. (28) Latrell Harris, Toronto (D)
29. (27) Eli Salama, Calgary (D)
30. (NR) Nick Damude, Panther City (G)