June 24, 2024
By Evan Lepler
Part 1: Interview with Detroit's Head Coach Brent Steepe
Part 2: Tuesday Toss
1. The Beasts Of The East
Boston, DC, and New York, all playing at home, outscored their overmatched opponents 73-48 in Week 9, and the closest game, the Glory’s 20-14 victory over Toronto, didn’t really feel that close. All of the results together enabled the Glory, Breeze, and Empire to all punch their playoff tickets, though the seeding and exactly how the postseason will unfold between these three quality squads remains quite uncertain.
Among this East Division triumvirate in Week 9, the Empire took the field first on Friday night, though not exactly on time.
“The biggest story from Friday night was the Toronto bus getting delayed by a few hours,” recalled New York’s Ethan Fortin. “Their offense was efficient and turnover-free until the end of the first quarter. From there, our D-lines got into a rhythm and we started to pull away.”
The Empire converted 12 breaks compared to the Rush’s one in their 29-18 win, their biggest margin of victory so far this season.
“I’ve heard wins like these phrased as a ‘get-right game’ or a ‘confidence builder,’” said Fortin. “Confidence is not something this Empire team lacks. We’ve had a few ups and downs this year, but we still go into every game expecting to win. We’re confident that we can get to the level we need to by the end of the season and these three games against Salt Lake, Minnesota, and DC will be instrumental in helping us get there.”
Taking an updated look at the remaining schedules for each of the East’s top three, along with the combined records of the three opponents, clearly shows that Boston has the inside track on the top seed, even with their final three games being on the road
Glory: at Montreal 7/6, at Toronto 7/20, at Montreal 7/21 — Combined opponents record: 4-22
Breeze: vs. Carolina 6/28, at New York 7/20 — Combined opponents record: 12-4
Empire: vs. Salt Lake 6/29, at Minnesota 7/12, vs. DC 7/20 — Combined opponents record: 21-4
For the moment, however, the Breeze are still sitting in first place at 8-2, a half-game ahead of the 7-2 Glory, following their dominant first half on Saturday against Montreal. The Breeze built a 14-4 lead, were up 15-6 at halftime, and cruised to a 24-16 victory over the Royal, one week after needing a borderline-miraculous comeback to win by one in Quebec.
“We’re starting to dial in the small details we’ve been working on, like winning the end-of-quarter situations and communicating on defense,” said DC’s AJ Merriman. “We’re also starting to do better with the more high level concepts we’ve been working on like understanding the dangerous spaces, how they change, and how we can best position ourselves for success as individuals and a team of defenders. It’s that time of the year where every game is a test to show us where we are on the journey of becoming the best Breeze we can be. Clinching a playoff berth with two games remaining reminds us to be in our championship mindset every day.”
2. Salt Lake Stays Strong Atop the West
Two weeks after suffering their first loss of the season, the Shred overpowered the Los Angeles Aviators in a 23-19 victory on Friday evening in Utah, improving to 7-1 on the season. With Jordan Kerr missing his first game in team history after breaking his right hand in the loss to Colorado, Luke and McKay Yorgason were phenomenal orchestrating the offense, combining to complete 120 passes without a single throwaway.
“McKay is one of the best possession keepers and stabilizers out there,” said Salt Lake’s Jacob Miller, who also went 38-for-38 passing and recorded six hockey assists in Friday’s win. “Him and Luke know each other as well as two people can, so it’s definitely nice to have [them playing together] consistently.”
With Kerr sidelined and Will Selfridge also out on Friday, the Shred featured a balanced attack against LA, as no player had more than three goals or more than three assists.
“We played well enough to win while missing some key players, but we underperformed relative to our potential, which is exciting in some ways because we’re still winning, but disappointing too,” assessed Grant Lindsley, one of three Shred players who tallied three assists on the night.
Kerr’s status for this week’s Super Series trip to New York is uncertain, but he is hopeful that he’ll be able to play.
“I’m gonna try my best to suit up for New York,” he said. “The hand doesn’t need surgery, which is good, so the plan is to keep it wrapped and try to play. We’ll see how it feels during practice this week, but probably won’t know for sure until Thursday. Either way, I’ll be making the trip.”
3. Late Season Additions Propel Summit and Spiders Past San Diego
The Growlers began the weekend at 3-4, knowing that a 2-0 road trip could completely reshape the West Division playoff race. But after a pair of hard-fought losses at Colorado and Oakland, San Diego’s postseason aspirations for this season have very likely been extinguished.
“Obviously, it was a little frustrating coming up short twice, but we did battle throughout both games,” said Growlers veteran Travis Dunn. “It seems like we just had a handful of lapses in each game that cost us and either put us in a hole that we had to dig out of or stopped the momentum that we had gained.”
On Friday in Golden, the Summit were certainly buoyed by the return of Quinn Finer, who made his 2024 season debut in Colorado’s 26-22 triumph. Whereas the Summit had scored 13 goals in a half just once in their first 14 halves of the season, they produced 13 goals in both halves against San Diego.
“It seems like my presence helps give us some confidence, but it’s always hard to tell the impact a single player can have,” said Finer, who finished the night with four assists and one goal. “It’s such a team game and if all 20 aren’t playing together, adding one player, regardless of who it is, generally doesn’t change much.”
It’s hard to disagree with anything Finer said, though the Spiders were also given a tremendous boost by an individual addition who made his first appearance of the 2024 season.
“The main storyline I see [from our win over the Growlers] is having Raekwon [Adkins] back and how that makes our offense look,” said Oakland’s Chris Lung, who tossed a game-high five assists in the Spiders’ 22-19 win over San Diego on Saturday. “We now have a much more dedicated deep receiver whose confidence is larger than ever coming off a year at Oregon. He isn’t scared of anyone and people will learn who he is if they don’t know already.”
Indeed, Adkins caught a career-high seven goals and produced 408 receiving yards as the Spiders rose to 5-2. Oakland now needs just two wins in its last five games to guarantee the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2015, but Head Coach Dan Silverstein recognizes that nothing is certain considering the team has four of its final five games on the road against the Growlers and Aviators.
“In order to make the playoffs, we’re going to need to win several of our four road games in SoCal, where I have won zero games so far as a coach,” said Silverstein, earlier this month. “We know we need to grow beyond what we were last year to achieve what we want this year.”
4. Union Rally Upends AlleyCats
After falling behind 5-2 in the opening nine minutes, the Chicago Union scored 14 of the next 20 goals en route to their 19-14 victory over Indianapolis on Saturday evening in Evanston. The AlleyCats’ O-line only scored on 11 of 40 possessions, a rough day at the office even with windy lakefront conditions creating difficult circumstances.
“The Chicago game was extremely disappointing, to say the least,” said Indy’s Travis Carpenter, who endured a career-high matching five throwaways. “Not only because we know we could have played much better as a team, but personally, I had my worst game of the season. Usually I thrive in heavy wind games, and for some reason I found myself having a hard time striking a balance between when to take shots in that wind, and when it was time to stay patient.”
The AlleyCats went just 2-for-10 on their hucks and also suffered through eight red-zone turnovers, while the Union went 16-for-21 in the red-zone (76.2 percent) and successfully completed six of their 10 hucks.
“As an offensive unit, we decided we needed to play with more pace,” said Chicago’s Sam Kaminsky. “This helped us get the frisbee to the strong side of the field and not letting the defense get comfortably set. Seemed to work as we were not broken after the first point in the second quarter. Smoothish sailing from there.
“Indy’s offense thrives on the short-field, so as a team we collectively decided that if we turn it, it has to be on a long-ball. Make Indy’s offense work 80-plus yards every single time. We connected on a good chunk of those deep shots too. The Ben Preiss sky over Carpenter was a huge energy surge for us.”
The Union are currently tied for second-place in the Central at 5-3, while the AlleyCats are in fifth place at 3-4, but obviously just one game behind Chicago (and Madison) in the loss column. The Cats are clinging to hope that they can rediscover their mojo, starting this Saturday at home against Madison.
“We have our backs against the wall and every game is critical at this point,” said Carpenter. “We expect to be battling for playoff spots with Chicago and Madison, and maybe Pittsburgh. So dropping a game to any of these three teams is killer.”
5. Hierarchy Remains Steady Among the Texas Trio
While Dallas gave Austin and Houston tough fights on Friday and Saturday, respectively, the Legion could not quite get over the hump in Week 9, falling to the Sol and Havoc by margins of five and three.
But even though they lost to Austin 26-21, they sure made the Sol sweat. The Legion led 12-11 at halftime and were tied 17-all late in the third, but the Sol closed the night on a 9-4 spurt to deny Dallas its first win of the year.
“It was frustrating to be down to one of the worst teams in the league,” said Austin’s Joey Wylie. “It was even more so because it was our fault. We were beating ourselves with poor execution, bad decisions, and low energy.”
Wylie and Kyle Henke each finished Friday with over 600 total yards, with Wylie’s 400 receiving yards and Henke’s 536 throwing yards both easily being career highs. Jake Floyd led the Legion with six assist, two goals, and 591 total yards.
“Overall, I would say winning was satisfying, but still frustrating,” said Wylie. “But if getting spanked by Atlanta and Carolina on the road and then losing to Chicago and Carolina at home were not enough to get our egos in check and realize we have earned nothing, then almost losing to Dallas certainly should do the trick.”
One day later, the Legion had a halftime lead for the second straight game, but Dallas’s 11-8 advantage disappeared quickly in the third against Houston. The Havoc D-line surged for four consecutive breaks to begin the second half and Dallas never held a lead again. Carson Wilder threw for 617 yards and Alec Wilson Holliday had six goals and three blocks, but the Havoc still prevailed 21-18, dropping Dallas to 0-8, the only winless team remaining in the UFA.
“We have proven that we have the capability to run with teams in the South quarters at a time,” said Dallas’s Jason Hustad, “[but] we fail to do so consistently throughout one full game. As the game runs on, we start to play outside of our roles, do too much, and the result is errors caused by ourselves. I think if we kept our team mindset and played like we were down, we would find ourselves in the winners column. We seem to be able to thrive when we see strings of good points, but we take quite a huge turn when we face any sort of adversity. Being able to take a punch and keep punching would’ve kept us in both games.”
Bizarrely, it feels like the Texas trio is completely in its own league. Austin is 5-0 against Houston and Dallas, while the Havoc are 4-0 against the Legion. But collectively, they are 0-8 against everyone that resides outside of the Lone Star State.
6. Royal Get Rolled in Philly
Less than a week after nearly defeating DC, the Montreal Royal went a disappointing 0-2 on their two-game trek through the mid-Atlantic. The journey started on Friday in Philly, where the Phoenix won all four quarters and cruised to a 21-10 triumph.
“I was really happy to see players like Dima [Suvorov], [Nate] Little, Campy [Mike Campanella], and [Jordan] Rhyne all make big plays,” said Philly’s Greg Martin. “We all focused on celebrating each other and it made the game and win more enjoyable.”
Suvorov and Martin both finished plus-seven, combining for 12 goals, while Scott Heyman set a new career-high with five assists. Philly’s O-line was only broken once, but the strong overall performance from the Phoenix had some members of the team wishing the first half of the season had unfolded differently.
“We have a really interesting schedule,” said Martin. “The first half of our season, we played three of the top six teams in the league; that’s six of our first seven games. We also play Carolina, the top team in the league. So as much as we need to do to work on our overall performance and play, it doesn’t help we played all the best teams while we struggled to find our identity again.”
At 2-6, the Phoenix head to Canada this weekend with pride on the line at Toronto and Montreal before facing Carolina and Pittsburgh in a pair of interdivisional contests to close their season. The Royal also now sit at 2-6, and despite some promising moments throughout the first two-thirds of the season, they have also been officially eliminated from playoff contention with four games left.
7. Home Teams Surging
Through the first six weeks of the season, home teams had gone just 29-32, a winning percentage of just .475.
But the landscape has shifted dramatically over the past three weeks. Home teams went 8-4 in Week 7, 7-5 in Week 8, and a resounding 12-1 in Week 9. That’s 27-10 (.730) over the past three weeks.
Through nine weeks and 98 total games, home teams are now 56-42 (.571), which is in the same ballpark as last season’s home/road splits, when home teams went 80-64 in the regular season, a winning rate of .556.
The Hammer
The final weekend here in June is shaping up to be a mammoth set of meaningful matchups, with three games Friday, eight on Saturday, and three more on Sunday. Four games pit a pair of teams that are presently in playoff position, while 11 of the 14 contests feature at least one team that’s competing for seeding, home-field advantage, or more.
Personally, I’m most excited about two marquee interdivisional battles, both of which we’re fortunate to be pretty familiar with by this point.
On Friday at 7:00 PM/ET in DC, the Breeze host the Flyers in the eighth all-time meeting between the two franchises. And what I wrote back in March still stands: Few rivalries have consistently delivered thrilling moments and stunning highlights quite like the Flyers and the Breeze. Since their first collision back in 2017, every single showdown has been competitive, meaningful, and memorable. They squared off twice in 2023, with both prevailing on the road, but this is the lone scheduled matchup in ’24, only adding to the importance of the result. Obviously, the Flyers and Breeze are firmly embedded in the thick of their own divisional races, but their interdivisional results, particularly this late-June tussle, will significantly affect their standing in pursuit of home-field advantage and postseason success.
“Coming into Friday’s game, we’re extremely hungry,” said DC’s Jonny Malks. “We’re concerned with putting together four quality quarters, and the way forward for us to do that is to keep pushing ourselves and one another to not be satisfied with flashes in the pan.”
About 14 hours after this Flyers-Breeze battle concludes, the Salt Lake Shred and New York Empire will reunite in unfamiliar territory, as the Empire host their first game at Trinity Health Stadium in Hartford. The game will also start at 1:00 PM/ET in the afternoon. Thankfully, the current forecast is for just the mid-upper 70s, far cooler than it is expected to be on the surrounding days in the region.
The Empire know they are not the undefeated juggernaut of the past couple seasons, but they are still filled with belief and confidence heading into their daunting final three-game stretch against Salt Lake, Minnesota, and DC.
“At the end of the day, we are confident we can beat any team in the league in a given game, and that’s all that the playoffs are,” said New York’s Ryan Drost. “So these three games will be of course about winning to get the best playoff spot possible, but also about being the most prepared to win those games when we get there.”
Obviously, the Empire had Salt Lake’s number in 2023, winning the infamous Ben Jagt triple-spike game in mid-July before they also handled the Shred comfortably in last year’s championship game. But the nuances of this current season should create a new batch of fascinating wrinkles to follow on Saturday afternoon.
“I think both teams are similar enough personnel-wise to last year, but with just enough pieces that are different on both sides to create an interesting dynamic,” said Salt Lake’s Jacob Miller. “Is it possible to expect more of the same but also not know what to expect at all? I guess we’ll see.”
Having had the privilege of calling each of the previous two matchups between the Shred and Empire, I’m especially grateful for the chance to be on headset again this Saturday, when I’ll be joined by Charlie Eisenhood and Keith Raynor, the dynamic duo from the Deep Look podcast, on this week’s Super Series broadcast, which will be free to watch for all viewers.
Thanks for reading, cheering, and jeering, and I’ll talk to you again Saturday afternoon from Connecticut.
