NLL Player Rankings: The Dietrich, Del Bianco and Rose Edition
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.
Nick Rose, Toronto Rock (Photo: Dave Fryer)
So far this season, we’ve had Toronto Rock goalie Nick Rose ranked either #1 or, like this week, #2 in our NLL Player Rankings. Now in our third season of publishing this post, no NLL netminder has suffocated the very top of our weekly player list anywhere near to the degree Rose has this year. Not even close.
A four-time Goalie of the Year nominee, Rose has never won the award, which based on his regular season resume with the Rock, is a bit surprising.
Toronto’s first choice between the pipes for over a decade now (no active goalie today comes close to Rose’s consecutive GPs with the Rock), Rose never garnering GOTY also means no MVPs on his mantle either. If he continues playing to the career-best level he has after eleven weeks this season, he should almost surely be awarded both year-end accolades.
Why?
Christian Del Bianco, Calgary Roughnecks (Photo: Christian Bender)
Since the NLL first started naming an MVP in 1994, only two goalies have been deemed good enough to be voted the league’s most valuable player: Steve Dietrich with Buffalo in 2006 and Calgary’s Christian Del Bianco just last year.
How do Rose’s almost-half-season results rate against both Dietrich’s and Del Bianco’s best-in-the-league campaigns? Actually, as good if not better.
Below, we’ve pulled a series of stopper stats for Dietrich in 2006, Del Bianco in 2023 and Rose’s eight games in 2024: save percentage, goals against average, goals saved above average, wins and even points. Most are self-explanatory and regularly used to grade goalies.
Steve Dietrich, Toronto Rock (2010)
GAA is often regarded as more of a defensive-unit stat and wins an overall team total, but as Jeff Teat found out last year (NLL voting history tells us he lost many first place votes because he didn’t play for a playoff-placing team) and Connor Fields may this year (has by far the best overall offensive stats in the league right now - highest points-per-game total & absurd defensive digits for a forward - but is already MIA in mid-season MVP convos because he plays for a severely struggling side), your team’s record matters to many when it comes to MVP consideration.
GSAA, a goalie stat lacrosse media like Ty Merrow and Graeme Perrow track and highlight regularly, provides a more in-depth crease-to-crease comparison. Taken from Perrow’s recent series examining the careers of Rose and Matt Vinc (how an 8x GOTY has never won MVP is an analysis article for another day), here is a full rundown of what GSAA actually calculates:
To calculate the GSAA, we perform the following steps:
We calculate the average save percentage for the entire league. In 2023, there were 10,651 saves made on 13,729 shots, which comes to a save percentage of 77.58%.
Next we subtract that number (as a decimal) from 1 to give the percentage of shots that DID score. In this case, we take 1-0.7758 which gives us 0.2242.
Then we multiply that by the number of shots faced by the goalie in question. This is calculating how many goals an average goalie would have allowed on the number of shots faced by this goalie. This gives us 182.5 for Rose and 207.2 for Vinc.
Finally we subtract the number of goals that the goalie DID allow during that season to find out how many more or less than average they allowed.
Perrow goes onto say in his Rose vs. Vinc analysis:
In 2023, Rose had a slightly higher save percentage but a slightly lower GSAA than Vinc. Why? Shots faced. Vinc faced an incredible 110 more shots than Rose did over basically the same amount of time (1,056 minutes for Rose, 1,047 for Vinc). So even though Rose saved a slightly higher percentage of shots, the total number of shots he faced was less than Vinc’s. When we do the math, it turns out that Vinc prevented more goals than Rose did.
The thing to understand here is that this stat is not “if each goalie faced the same number of shots, how many saves would they make (or how many goals would they allow)?”. That’s save percentage; the idea of that stat is to be able to compare goalies regardless of how many shots they faced. But this one is “how many less goals did this goalie allow than if an average goalie faced the same number of shots?”. We’re not factoring out the number of shots here, we’re explicitly using it in the calculation.
Goalie points (so, really rare goalie goals & outlet pass assists) were more of a talking point last year than likely any other previous season due to Del Bianco’s way above average assists total. With that said, rarely do goalies that lead in this stat win GOTY or further more, MVP. It was brought up a lot last year, so let’s included it.
See where theses three goalies ranked during their MVP, or in Rose’s case, MVP-maybe seasons, and how far statistically other goalies trailed in those previously mentioned goaltending categories (only calculated if either of those three led a list during their spotlight season)…
Steve Dietrich, Buffalo Bandits
Steve Dietrich: 2006 MVP
Outside of goalie points, Dietrich was #1 in those other stopper stats during his MVP year, often with a fairly commanding lead.
Save %
1. Steve Dietrich (Buffalo) .808
2. Curtis Palidwor (Calgary) .791 (-.017)
3. Nick Patterson (Minnesota) .790 (-.018)
4. Gee Nash (Colorado) .787 (-.021)
5. Pat O’Toole (Rochester) .780 (-.028)
GAA
1. Steve Dietrich (Buffalo) 9.97
2. Gee Nash (Colorado) 10.29 (+0.32)
3. Anthony Cosmo (San Jose) 10.38 (+0.41)
4. Nick Patterson (Minnesota) 10.40 (+0.43)
5. Curtis Palidwor (Calgary) 10.69 (+0.72)
GSAA
1. Steve Dietrich (Buffalo) 24.64
2. Curtis Palidwor (Calgary) 12.95 (-11.69)
3. Gee Nash (Colorado) 7.62 (-17.02)
4. Nick Patterson (Minnesota) 7.32 (-17.32)
5. Pat O’Toole (Rochester) 5.17 (-19.47)
Wins
1. Steve Dietrich (Buffalo) 10
2. Pat O’Toole (Rochester) 9 (-1)
T3. Curtis Palidwor (Calgary) 8 (-2)
T3. Bob Watson (Toronto) 8 (-2)
T3. Matt Roik (Philadelphia) 8 (-2)
Points
1. Pat Campbell (Edmonton) 12A
2. Pat O’Toole (Rochester) 12A
3. Gee Nash (Colorado) 1G, 9A
4. Dallas Eliuk (Portland) 1G, 7A
5. Steve Dietrich (Buffalo) 7A
Christian Del Bianco and Harrison Matsuoka, Calgary Roughnecks (Photo: Sam Hiscock)
Christian Del Bianco: 2023 MVP
Del Bianco either led or was second in all stats, coincidently Rose either above or just behind him in 2023. What was most impressive with Del Bianco’s season last year was how good his GSAA was. In fact, it was the second highest GSAA in NLL history (well, going back to 2005, the furthest back NLL individual game stats are available). In case you were wondering, Vinc has the most impressive single season GSAA ever (34.46), and owns five of the top seven single-season totals too (honestly, how has Vinc never been named MVP?).
Save %
1. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) .810
2. Nick Rose (Toronto) .805 (-.005)
3. Matt Vinc (Buffalo) .803 (-.007)
4. Zach Higgins (Philadelphia) .794 (-.016)
5. Nick Damude (Panther City) .789 (-.021)
GAA
1. Nick Rose (Toronto) 9.03
2. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 9.28
3. Nick Damude (Panther City) 10.31
4. Matt Vinc (Buffalo) 10.42
5. Brett Dobson (Georgia) 10.69
GSAA
1. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 30.07
2. Matt Vinc (Buffalo) 25.16 (-4.91)
3. Nick Rose (Toronto) 23.50 (-6.57)
4. Zach Higgins (Philadelphia) 16.81 (-13.26)
5. Nick Damude (Panther City) 10.34 (-19.73)
Wins
1. Matt Vinc (Buffalo) 14
T2. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 13
T2. Nick Rose (Toronto) 13
T4. Rylan Hartley (Rochester) 10
T4. Nick Damude (Panther City) 10
T4. Frank Scigliano (San Diego) 10
Points
1. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 19A
2. Warren Hill (Halifax) 9A (-10)
T3. Nick Rose (Toronto) 8A (-11)
T3. Nick Damude (Panther City) 1G, 7A (-11)
5. Dillon Ward (Colorado) 6A (-13)
Nick Rose, Toronto Rock (Photo: Ryan McCullough)
Nick Rose: After Week 11 in 2024
Like Dietrich in 2006, Rose, at least for now, is #1 in all of those statistical categories, except (again, like Dietrich) points, where he is just two assists behind (of course) Del Bianco going into this weekend’s Week 12.
Save %
1. Nick Rose (Toronto) .812
2. Chris Origlieri (San Diego) .799 (-.013)
3. Frank Scigliano (Saskatchewan) .795 (-.017)
4. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) .793 (-.019)
5. Doug Jamieson (Albany) .782 (-.030)
GAA
1. Nick Rose (Toronto) 9.33
2. Chris Origlieri (San Diego) 9.73 (+0.40)
3. Doug Jamieson (Albany) 10.44 (+1.11)
4. Frank Scigliano (Saskatchewan) 10.70 (+1.37)
5. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 10.75 (+1.42)
GSAA
1. Nick Rose (Toronto) 15.46
2. Chris Origlieri (San Diego) 11.09 (-4.37)
3. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 8.23 (-7.23)
4. Frank Scigliano (San Diego) 7.52 (-7.94)
5. Doug Jamieson (Albany) 2.84 (-12.62)
Wins
T1. Nick Rose (Toronto) 6
T1. Chris Origlieri (San Diego) 6
T1. Doug Jamieson (Albany) 6
T1. Brett Dobson (Georgia) 6
T5. Matt Vinc (Buffalo) 5 (-1)
T5. Warren Hill (Halifax) 5 (-1)
Points
1. Christian Del Bianco (Calgary) 7
2. Nick Rose (Toronto) 5
T3. Doug Jamieson (Albany) 4
T3. Frank Scigliano (Saskatchewan) 4
T3. Dillon Ward (Colorado) 4
Although Rose barely slipped to second in this week’s NLL Player Rankings behind as complete an individual offensive effort as we’ve seen courtesy of the previously mentioned Fields, history is seemingly telling us that Rose should not only be in the running for MVP, there’s a damn good chance he’ll get it if he continues his current super-stingy play between the pipes.
Also of note, Randy Staats was dropped from this week’s rankings after falling just under our two-thirds GP requirement. Staats, who is averaging 5.60 points per game and sat 17th in the rankings last week, is still currently on the Halifax Thunderbirds’ IR, last week missing his third game of the season. We have five new or returning names to the rankings this week: Clarke Petterson (Halifax), Eli McLaughlin (Colorado), Connor Kirst (Las Vegas), Adam Charalambides (Vancouver), and Andrew Kew (Georgia), who we confirmed earlier this week, is this season’s most cluch goal scorer leading into Week 12.
NLL Top 30: Week 12
TW. (LW) Player, Team (Position)
1. (3) Connor Fields, Rochester (F)
2. (1) Nick Rose, Toronto (G)
3. (4) Jeff Teat, New York (F)
4. (2) Josh Byrne, Buffalo (F)
5. (6) Ryan Smith, Rochester (F)
6. (5) Wes Berg, San Diego (F)
7. (7) Dhane Smith, Buffalo (F)
8. (9) Austin Staats, San Diego (F)
9. (8) Jesse King, Calgary (F)
10. (12) Mitch Jones, Philadelphia (F)
11. (10) Callum Crawford, Panther City (F)
12. (11) Jake Withers, Halifax (D)
13. (16) Mitch de Snoo, Toronto (D)
14. (15) Alex Simmons, Albany (F)
15. (14) Chris Origlieri, San Diego (G)
16. (13) Zach Manns, Saskatchewan (F)
17. (20) Lyle Thompson, Georgia (F)
18. (21) Christian Del Bianco, Calgary (G)
19. (27) Will Malcom, Panther City (F)
20. (18) Matt Gilray, Rochester (D)
21. (19) Ethan Walker, Albany (F)
22. (22) Steve Priolo, Buffalo (D)
23. (23) Brad Kri, Toronto (D)
24. (24) Doug Jamieson, Albany (G)
25. (25) Robert Church, Saskatchewan (F)
26. (NR) Clarke Petterson, Halifax (F)
27. (NR) Andrew Kew, Georgia (F)
28. (NR) Eli McLaughlin, Colorado (F)
29. (NR) Connor Kirst, Las Vegas (T)
30. (NR) Adam Charalambides, Vancouver (F)