The biggest beatings in National Lacrosse League history

Toronto Rock vs. New York Riptide, Feb. 4, 2023 (Photo: Ryan McCullough)

Since the National Lacrosse League’s first season in 1987 to the one we’re now in, there have been 2,299 regular season games played.

Sidebar: That’s 2,179 more regular season professional lacrosse games than the Premier Lacrosse League has hosted. That already-glaring gap would obviously be even bigger if we counted the playoffs. Anyways, back to today’s topic…

The Toronto Rock’s 22-goal night this past weekend (dropped the New York Riptide 22-14) has only been matched or bettered by 58 times during all those games over the past 36 years.

You can safely file their victory under “really rare” in the league’s record books, which are difficult to locate in one nice & neat spot these days, but The Lax Mag has done a lot of digital data deep diving this week (lacrosse-network.com via web archives, Pointstreak, nllstats.com, etc.).

Tom Schreiber, Toronto Rock (Photo: Christian Bender)

Although 58 teams have touched or topped 22, it’s only happened in 56 actual games (two teams hit 22 in the same game twice). In other words, 22 or better has only happened in 2% of regular season games since 1987.

Obviously, a team scoring 20 in a game has happened more often, with 154 games out of those 2,299 seeing that many scored (7%).

What makes the Rock’s recent 22 even more rare is how infrequently it happens in the modern era versus the rate it did during the NLL’s first 15 seasons.

1987-2002

20+ goals: 15%
22+ goals: 7%

2003-Today

20+ goals: 4%
22+ goals: 1%

It was leading into that 2002 season that the league upped the width of their nets from 4’6” to 4’9”, clearly making a massive difference to game sheets that year. Nearly a quarter of the league’s games saw teams scoring 20 goals or more (22%), which included the infamous Montreal Express vs. Calgary Roughnecks match that finished 32-17 in the francophone franchise’s favour. That gong-show game remains the highest combined score between two teams and the most goals scored by a single team in NLL histoire

It’s also worth noting that the 2002 season saw a significant spike in participating teams, the league adding four new clubs via expansion: Express (actually a unique relocation & roster split with the Columbus Landsharks), Roughnecks, Vancouver Ravens and New Jersey Storm. Expansion has definitely played a part in some of the increased score-line swings we’ve seen over the years.

Although the eight-goal gap in this past weekend’s Rock vs. Riptide game doesn’t stand out quite as much as Toronto’s 22, it’s actually kinda rare too. Well, it was.

Corey Small & Jordan McKenna, Toronto Rock (Photo: Ryan McCullough)

Again, going back to 1987 and prior to this season, only 245 games in league history had a goal differential of eight or greater. This year, however, the fourth straight the NLL has added an expansion team(s), 25% of 2022-23 regular season games are seeing an eight or more goal margin in their results. Of the Rock’s six wins so far, five have been by eight or more. While there is still slightly more than half of the season to go, the percentage of games with that much of a score-line differential hasn’t happened since the 90s when are entire NLL schedule would have 30 or fewer games.

With more teams, more games and more players, is parity in the NLL finally fading?

Last year’s regular season, which had more games played than ever before (136), saw 13 games decided by eight or more goals. This year? After only 56 games, we’re already at 14.

Similar score-line stats were seen during that previously mentioned 2002 season (teams hit 20 or more in 23 games, no other season comes close), but instead of that high-scoring trend continuing, the opposite happened. In fact, two decades since that wild season, we’ve only had 20 games with teams finishing with 20 or more goals in a game.

The early 00s were also around that time that goalie gear seemed to swell, a controversial topic that NLL Hall-of-Famer Dallas Eliuk has brought up many times since, although his opinion is shared by the minority it seems. That 2002 season also had a then-record high 13 franchises, a number that would slowly sink to nine over the next several seasons.

While the 49 goals the Express & Roughnecks ripped in 2002 (the teams also had a 23-16 final a few days later, again, won by the Express) that 15-goal gap isn’t the greatest differential seen in a single game.

Below are the biggest beatings in NLL history.

22 GD

1996: Charlotte Cobras 6 at Buffalo Bandits 28

17 GD

2009: Rochester Knighthawks 6 at Buffalo Bandits 23
2018: Toronto Rock 24 at Vancouver Stealth 7

16 GD

1994: Baltimore Thunder 9 at Philadelphia Wings 25

15 GD

1996: Baltimore Thunder 13 at Boston Blazers 28
1996: Charlotte Cobras 11 at Philadelphia Wings 26
1996: New York Saints 8 at Philadelphia Wings 23
2002: Montreal Express 32 at Calgary Roughnecks 17
2002 Columbus Landsharks 9 at Rochester Knighthawks 24
2009: Toronto Rock 10 at Buffalo Bandits 25
2018: Calgary Roughnecks 26 at Vancouver Stealth 11