AUDL Honor Roll: Week 9

June 3, 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. Quentin Bonnaud, Montreal Royal — Quite simply, Quentin Bonnaud’s goal-scoring heroics are almost singlehandedly maintaining the Montreal Royal’s slim puncher’s chance at the playoffs. In splitting road games at Ottawa and Toronto this past weekend, the 23-year-old Frenchman caught 16 goals, surging him into the league-lead. He now has 46 strikes on the year, an average of 6.6 per game. For perspective, the only player to average more than six goals per game for a season while playing at least 10 games was Mischa Freystaetter, who gobbled up a ridiculous 6.8 goals per game in his insane 2016 scoring spree for the Cannons.
  2. Travis Carpenter, Indianapolis AlleyCats — Travis Carpenter led his team his points played (22), completions (37), assists (3), and blocks (3) as the Indianapolis AlleyCats overcame a five-goal first quarter deficit to earn their first ever triumph at Madison’s Breese Stevens Field. Previously, Carpenter’s Indy squad had been 0-9 at the home of the Radicals, with five of those setbacks coming by fewer than five scores. But after struggling mightily early on Saturday, Carpenter’s ‘Cats outscored Madison 16-8 in the final 37 minutes of the game, lifting Indianapolis into first place in the Midwest heading into the All-Star Break.
  3. Travis Dunn, San Diego Growlers — A nod to the best player on the West Division’s top team, Travis Dunn’s performance enabled the San Diego Growlers to become the first team in 2019 to officially lock up a playoff spot, as San Diego rose to 7-1 with a dramatic comeback victory over rival Los Angeles on Saturday night. For the season, Dunn has produced multiple goals AND multiple assists in seven of his eight games, while dishing at least four assists in every game of the 2019 campaign. And in his four-goal, four-assist display on Saturday, the Growlers virtually ensured themselves a home playoff game; in order to not host the West Division final, San Diego would have to go 0-4 or 1-3 in its final four, an unlikely proposition for the deepest roster in the division down the stretch.
  4. Jacky Hau, Toronto Rush — After Toronto’s offense got broken early in the third quarter, the Toronto Rush trailed Montreal 10-9 on Sunday afternoon. But then the Toronto defense, led by several key contributors, including Jacky Hau, basically took over the game. The Rush broke Montreal’s O-line five times in the second half en route to the 19-13 victory, denying the Royal’s upset bid. Hau finished with four blocks, the sixth time in his career that he recorded at least four D’s in a game. Hau added three assists for good measure and completed all 11 of his throws against the Royal, helping the Rush win their second straight after previously losing two in a row.
  5. Conor Kline, New York Empire — After only playing six points of offense in the New York Empire’s first six games, Conor Kline was thrust back into an O-line role on Saturday in DC, and goodness, did he ever deliver! Kline stepped up in a huge way by scoring nine goals against the Breeze, including four in the fourth quarter of New York’s crazy comeback win. The 24-year-old UMass product was actually a goal-scoring machine two years ago, with 52 scores in 12 games for the Empire, but had only caught 19 goals in his last 17 games over the past year and a half until erupting for the nine-spot on Saturday. Kline’s reemergence enabled the Empire to narrowly remain as the AUDL’s only undefeated team, at 7-0.
  6. Quinn Snider, Minnesota Wind Chill — For lengthy stretches of the most recent Stadium Game of the Week, Chicago’s defense was virtually helpless in attempting to slow down Quinn Snider, a 20-year-old Canadian wunderkind who was playing in just his third AUDL game. Snider scored the Minnesota Wind Chill’s first four goals and either caught or threw all eight of the Wind Chill’s first-quarter scores. By the end of the night, the 6’2” cutter had collected 10 goals and three assists with zero turnovers, registering a tidy +13, the highest plus/minus for any Minnesota player since Ben Jagt accomplished +14 against Cincinnati on July 2, 2016. Most importantly, Snider’s electrifying performance helped Minnesota eke out a one-goal victory, a critical result for the Wind Chill to keep them in the thick of the chaotic Midwest race.
  7. Jerrod Wolfe, Austin Sol — It’s been a disappointing season for the Austin Sol, who have won just two of their 10 games, and for Jerrod Wolfe, who was unable to play in any of Austin’s April games because of injury. This past weekend, however, Wolfe helped to will the Sol to a dramatic overtime victory over Atlanta on the second game of Austin’s back-to-back, avoiding a winless weekend. On Sunday against the Hustle, the 35-year-old veteran led his shorthanded team in goals (6), assists (5), and finished with the second-most points played (25), producing a career-high +10. Amazing, the Sol were without regulars like Matt Bennett, Kyle Henke, Jeff Loskorn, Ethan Pollack, Mick Walter, and Josh Zdrodowski, yet still eked out the one-goal win thanks, in large part, to Wolfe’s heroics.