NLL Player Rankings: Week 15
After the first full month (four weeks of completed games more specifically) of the 2021/22 National Lacrosse League season were completed, The Lax Mag started publishing weekly updated NLL Player Rankings, examining the league’s Top 30 players from Week 1 until the end of the regular season.
The rankings only take into consideration how a player has performed for this specific season. TLM ranks the top six players from each team for every completed regular season game, utilizing an average star rating system. For a full breakdown of how players are evaluated and more on our scoring system, click here.
NLL Player Ranking Highlights: Week 15
Over the past month, we’ve received a ton of (usually negative) feedback on this year’s NLL Player Rankings. Over the last couple weeks, which included our highly viewed Mid-Season Awards Edition and last week’s thorough breakdown of how this year’s goalies have performed under significant shooting pressure, we’ve most definitely had the most criticisms hurled at us.
Here are our findings…
90% of the players in the NLL this year are underrated. We’re not too sure by who, but from the number of names we’ve heard elsewhere or been told directly, it’s 90%, maybe more.
At least 75% of the league this year is overrated.
You’d think there’ be some sorta overlap there, but we don’t math so good.
For every player we’re told weekly we’ve missed, often by team staff or players themselves, we’d likely need 30 more spots within the Top 30 to fit them all in. Seems reasonable. Maybe like a 1.a and 1.b (eventually c and d surely) system would work?
Moments matter more than a player’s full-game effort, because clearly a six-second highlight > impact over 60 or more minutes.
Even though a player might have minimal impact over the first two-thirds of their season, because they had some really good recent games, they should slot into our season-long Top 30.
We’re always biased to the East, but we’re also constantly favouring the West. Actually kind of an impressive achievement.
Statistics really matter, but those same stats also apparently don’t matter. Depends on the day. That’s how data works we’re told.
Most have not read our criteria or formula on how we calculate where a player ranks (we’ve asked), because it’s so much easier to simply scroll to the weekly list at the bottom of the post. Reading is pretty overrated though, so we get it.
In short, our NLL Players Rankings highlight the Top 6 players for each team in every game, and have a pretty simple point-scoring system (6 points for the player rated #1, 5 for #2, etc.) that gets added up and then averaged based on games played. Only players that have played two-thirds of their teams’ season are included. Honestly, it’s not that much more complicated than that. Week 1 is as important as Week 15. And if you missed our rankings announcement, here’s everything it’s not supposed to be.
Jeff Teat, New York Riptide
NLL Official 3-Stars of the Game (and Year)
Since many throughout the NLL dump on us daily (and honestly, we love it, so keep it coming), below is who teams themselves have deemed this year’s best through the league’s Official 3-Stars of the Game selections (found near the top of every NLL game sheet). Although they rank only a quarter of the players TLM does after games, we applied our same point-scoring style to determine who NLL clubs consider the Top 30 right now. Crazy that 20 of the league’s below names match this week’s updated TLM tally. Guess we got lucky.
1. Lyle Thompson, Georgia Swarm
2. Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits
3. Jeff Teat, New York Riptide*
4. Joe Resetarits, Albany FireWolves
5. Dillon Ward, Colorado Mammoth
6. Austin Staats, San Diego Seals
7. Ryan Lee, Colorado Mammoth
8. Wes Berg, San Diego Seals
9. Nick Rose, Toronto Rock
10. Josh Byrne, Buffalo Bandits
11. Austin Shanks, Halifax Thunderbirds
12. Holden Cattoni, Rochester Knighthawks
13. Warren Hill, Halifax Thunderbirds
14. Tom Schreiber, Toronto Rock
15. Curtis Dickson, Calgary Roughnecks
16. Patrick Dodds, Panther City Lacrosse Club*
17. Shayne Jackson, Georgia Swarm
18. Callum Crawford, New York Riptide
19. Rob Hellyer, Toronto Rock
20. Doug Jamieson, Albany FireWolves
21. Frank Scigliano, San Diego Seals
22. Dan Dawson, Toronto Rock
23. Alex Buque, Vancouver Warriors
24. Dane Dobbie, San Diego Seals
25. Cody Jamieson, Halifax Thunderbirds
26. Jeremy Noble, San Diego Seals
27. Challen Rogers, Toronto Rock
28. Jeff Shattler, Saskatchewan Rush
29. Kyle Killen, Vancouver Warriors
30. Jesse King, Calgary Roughnecks
A few thoughts based on how teams are essentially valuing NLLers this year…
Defenders don’t matter much. None come close to Top 30 inclusion, and only a handful have been included in 3-Star picks this year. Matt Hossack was mentioned once. That’s one more time than his brother and reigning DPOTY Graeme Hossack got. Kyle Rubisch, who’s been in the TLM Top 30 all year, like Graeme, is MIA.
Challen Rogers, the NLL’s fifth ranked Rock player in 2022, is the only T talent in their 30. Zach Currier, who is having a career year in Calgary, was named a second star once this year. That’s it. Mike Messenger was a second once, plus has a third-star sighting too. The most versatile, often most impactful & important players on the turf, have rarely been revered.
Reid Bowering, likely everyone’s #2 behind Jeff Teat for ROTY now, doesn’t exist in the league’s weekly acknowledgment of each game’s (and ultimately season’s) best. Be better, Reid.
And for those jumping outta their jeans screaming, “No one cares about the league’s 3-Star Selections when they pick them,” well, maybe they should.
TheLaxMag.com has barely been around for four months (well, 2.0 at least), yet when you google “NLL Players” or dozens of variations of that search, this site ranks as high as #2 behind NLL.com and almost always on Google’s first page of results. Our NLL Top 100 gets daily looks via Google, the rate of visits even higher right after games (when newer NLL fans are likely looking to find out more about the league’s best players) . Again, we launched the site less than four months ago.
Below is our Week 15 NLL Player Rankings. We might have got 20 “right”, but depending on who you talk to, we probably got all 30 wrong - loudly crying face emoji :(
While you’re doing that, we’re going to check the other similar media rankings that put a heavy spotlight on NLL Players every week and see what they’re saying about them. Oh right. Jeez, wonder where they all went over the past decade? Hey, but what do we know…
Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits (Photo: Joe Hrycych)
NLL Player Rankings: Week 15
Rank. (Previous Week) Player, Team, Position (Average Star Rating)
1. (1) Lyle Thompson, Georgia Swarm, F (5.25)
2. (2) Zach Currier, Calgary Roughnecks, T (5.22)
3. (4) Jeff Teat, New York Riptide, F (4.78)*
4. (5) Dhane Smith, Buffalo Bandits, F (4.64)
5. (6) Joe Resetarits, Albany FireWolves, F (4.62)
6. (7) Austin Staats, San Diego Seals, F (4.57)
7. (8) Tom Schreiber, Toronto Rock, F (4.50)
8. (9) Ryan Lee, Colorado Mammoth, F (4.50)
9. (15) Wes Berg, San Diego Seals, F (4.50)
10. (12) Callum Crawford, New York Riptide, F (4.45)
11. (3) Dillon Ward, Colorado Mammoth, G (4.40)
12. (18) Shayne Jackson, Georgia Swarm, F (4.36)
13. (11) Reid Bowering, Vancouver Warriors, T (4.36)*
14. (17) Jesse King, Calgary Roughnecks, F (4.22)
15. (21) Kiel Matisz, Philadelphia Wings, T (4.17)
16. (25) Kyle Rubisch, Saskatchewan Rush, D (4.16)
17. (14) Challen Rogers, Toronto Rock, T (4.08)
18. (10) Mike Messenger, Saskatchewan Rush, T (4.00)
19. (13) Warren Hill, Halifax Thunderbirds, G (4.00)
20. (16) Graeme Hossack, Halifax Thunderbirds, D (4.00)
21. (19) Steve Priolo, Buffalo Bandits, D (3.89)
22. (22) Curtis Dickson, Calgary Roughnecks, F (3.83)
23. (20) Holden Cattoni, Rochester Knighthawks, F (3.70)
24. (27) Frank Scigliano, San Diego Seals, G (3.63)
25. (26) Dane Dobbie, San Diego Seals, F (3.60)
26. (NR) Doug Jamieson, Albany FireWolves, G (3.54)
27. (29) Mitch de Snoo, Toronto Rock, D (3.50)
28. (NR) Matt Vinc, Buffalo Bandits, G (3.45)
29. (NR) Josh Byrne, Buffalo Bandits, F (3.36)
30. (30) Brad Kri, Toronto Rock, D (3.33)
NR = not rated in previous week’s Top 30
*Rookie