July 15, 2019
By Evan Lepler

Throughout the 2019 season, the AUDL’s weekly honor roll will be revealed each Monday, honoring seven players whose individual exploits merit recognition. The players are listed alphabetically by last name.

1. Alec Arsenault, Ottawa Outlaws — With five assists, four goals, one block, and no turnovers, Alec Arsenault registered a game-high +10 in his team’s narrow 20-19 triumph over Philadelphia on Saturday. He also happened to be the only member of the Ottawa Outlaws among the team’s nine busiest throwers who did not finish with a single throwaway, completing all 21 passes in the slim win, Ottawa’s fourth game decided by just one goal in 2019. DC and Montreal, with five apiece, were the only teams in the league this season to play more one-goal games than the Outlaws.
2. Quentin Bonnaud, Montreal Royal — Despite getting beaten out alphabetically by Arsenault, Quentin Bonnaud’s on-field performance surpassed the field in 2019, leading the league with 83 goals, a Cameron Brockian gap where Bonnaud scored 24 more than the second-highest individual total across the entire landscape. In the Montreal Royal’s season finale, he contributed 10 more strikes, boosting his goals per game average to 6.9, which surpassed Mischa Freystaetter’s 6.8 goals per contest from the 2016 season, the previous benchmark in AUDL history.
3. Ryan Chard, Tampa Bay Cannons —Though the Tampa Bay Cannons ultimately fell short on Saturday night in North Carolina, the veteran Cannon Ryan Chard may have had the most impactful game of his career, closing the season with five goals, two assists, and three blocks on Saturday against the Flyers for a career-best +8. In his 60 previous AUDL games, the 33-year-old had only recorded more than two goals in a game once, back on April 19, 2015, when he scored three against Charlotte in just the second game in Cannons’ history. 
4. Thomas Edmonds, Pittsburgh Thunderbirds —Thomas Edmonds helped anchor the Pittsbrugh Thunderbirds’ O-line to a pair of Week 15 wins on the road, completing all but one of his 78 throws as Pittsburgh impressively finished 8-4 and secured a home playoff game this coming weekend. Beyond his throwing, Edmonds also contributed mightily in the downfield space, snagging eight goals to accompany his seven assists across the pair of victories. On Saturday in Chicago, in particular, Edmonds went 44-for-44 with five goals and four assists, good for a career-high +9.
5. Jacob Fairfax, Raleigh Flyers —Before the season, the Raleigh Flyers coaching staff, confident in his ability to distribute goals along with simply skying for them, shared their desire for Fairfax to become more of a throwing threat in 2019. Several months later, that mission has clearly come to fruition, as the still-not-even-23-year-old striker Jacob Fairfax concluded his 2019 campaign with 39 assists and 30 goals, a significant contrast to his past two years when he recorded 19 assists and 84 goals. In Saturday’s regular season finale against Tampa Bay, Fairfax accumulated a career-high six assists and led Raleigh with a +8 in the Flyers’ 25-24 triumph over the Cannons.
6. Himalaya Mehta, Philadelphia Phoenix —The Philadelphia Phoenix leaned heavily on Himalaya Mehta throughout their two-game Canada trip, and the 26-year-old UPenn alum delivered with 13 goals, two assists, and two blocks between the two contests, both of which were down-to-the-wire one-goal outcomes. On Saturday, despite his team falling 20-19 in Ottawa, Mehta was the only player among the Phoenix’s 13 busiest throwers that did not have a single turnover. On Sunday, the Phoenix emerged victorious in overtime against Montreal as Mehta erupted for a career-high eight goals, as Philly capped its season with a dramatic win.
7. Max Sheppard, Pittsburgh Thunderbirds —With stats from the final weekend that would be super solid season-long numbers for several players in the league, Max Sheppard easily surpassed the 50-goal, 50-assist plateau, becoming just the fifth player in AUDL history to reach those figures in regular-season action. On Saturday in Chicago, the versatile 24-year-old sniper racked up six goals and eight assists, leaving him a couple goals shy of the 50/50 mark, which he easily blew by in Sunday’s action against Indianapolis, erupting for nine goals and four assists to give him 57 and 55, respectively, for the season. Sheppard, much like the Thunderbirds team that has won eight of their last nine, enters the postseason red hot; since mid-June, he has tallied 31 goals and 34 assists in just his last five games, moving him to +93 for the season, second-best in the entire league, trailing only Montreal’s Bonneau.