July 10 – Toronto acquires F Mark Matthews from Saskatchewan for F Zach Manns, D Adam Jay, and the 12th overall pick in the 2023 NLL Draft

The first player movement of the NLL offseason was a major splash, as the Rush parted ways with the leader of their offense over the past 10 seasons. The 33 year old goal scoring has dropped off since his 40-goal campaign in 2018-19 but his distributing prowess has kept him in the 90-100 point range post-COVID seasons. It’s another piece of their dynasty seasons that has moved on, joining Ben McIntosh who was traded to Philadelphia in a closer-to-home move before the 2021-22 season, and Jeff Shattler who retired following that season. Matthews is set to be a non-franchisable UFA next summer, so the Rush looked to sell for pieces that can help them retool more quickly. Zack Manns and Adam Jay will play closer to their Western Canadian homes with the Rush, with Manns looking to breakout leading the left side alongside Ryan Keenan next year, and Jay getting a larger role on the typically solid Rush defense.

And Derek Keenan wasn’t done for the week.

July 11 – Saskatchewan acquires F Patrick Dodds, F Cam Wengreniuk, and a conditional third-round draft pick in either 2024 or 2025 from Panther City for the non-franchisable UFA negotiating rights to D Matt Beers, the 5th Overall Pick in the 2023 NLL Draft, and a conditional second-round pick in either 2024 or 2025. The conditions of the draft pick involve whether or not Beers re-signs in Panther City.

In a non-Jeff Teat rookie season, Dodds probably wins the 2022 Rookie of the Year with a team-leading 26 goals and 58 assists. However, with the additions of 2023 rookie of the year, Jonathan Donville, and Callum Crawford saw the PCLC offensive ball share change drastically for Dodds, who dropped to 22 goals and 28 assists in 2023. Despite turning 39 in November, Crawford has not indicate being ready to hang it up, meaning the room for Dodds to get the same volume of touches as his first season was small. From the Rush perspective, this was an opportunity to help their right side get stronger and younger simultaneously to pair with Robert Church coming off a 103-point season in his age 31 campaign. Moving the 5th overall pick for Dodds allows them to get the return of value the pick slot provides a year earlier with the chance that selection would be headed back to college for their COVID season, and allowed the Rush to also get value more quickly from the rights to Matt Beers, who was unlikely to re-sign with the re-tooling Rush. Bob Hamley will get the chance to negotiate with Beers for an extra couple of weeks before the August 1 start of UFA and while he can (and did on July 24) reject the franchise tag, PCLC gets the extra insurance of a second round for third-round pick swap if they don’t get him to join their defense-core in his age 34 season. As for Wengreniuk, the Rush get another young piece on the left side that was stuck behind a plethora of lefties in PCLC.

July 18 – Vancouver Warriors announce Curt Malawsky will be their next HC/GM

As of writing this, I’d find it hard to anticipate a bigger move this offseason and maybe the next handful than this one, as the ripple effect here could be long-lasting.

Since the Vancouver Stealth moved from Langley to downtown and rebranded to the Vancouver Warriors in 2018, the move came with the thought that it would over time attract BC native free agents to come home and play at Rogers Arena. That road starting of a 2-16 season in 2017-18, part of a 25-65 tenure as the Vancouver Stealth after rebranding from the Washington Stealth after a finals loss in 2013, made it known that there wouldn’t be a quick turnaround that would attract free agents easily, and the first handful of those seasons of the Warriors included a barren cupboard of draft assets which made it harder for the team to have a quicker turnaround. And after a 6-12 2022, which would be the final season of Chris Gill and Dan Richardson’s tenures as coach and GM, a Troy Cordingley-led Warriors squad in 2023 took another step back and finished 4-14.

The next hire at HC and GM would be huge for the direction of the Warriors, and they swung for the fences and hit a home run.

After 15 seasons in Calgary, his final two seasons of his playing career, and a handful of seasons as assistant coach before becoming head coach in 2013, the Warriors offered the 53-year-old 2023 coach of the year with the dual GM/HC position to help them move forward on a path towards winning becoming the standard in Vancouver.

(Read Adam Levi’s interview with Curt Malawsky on this move. It’s really good.)

For years, the thought in Vancouver is that they could be the Western hotspot that the Toronto Rock has become for Ontario-born players, and if things work out under Malawsky, it could change the future landscape of the NLL for a long time. We’ll see if the UFA migration starts as early as August 1st.

July 24: Scigliano tagged (but going to Sask?)

On the same day that the Seals announced Dane Dobbie re-signed for another season, Patrick Merrill also placed the franchise tag on Frank Scigliano, making it appear that the team remained in line with running it back another year after a stunning first-round exit, until Scigliano sent his tweet out mere hours later.

July 25: Albany acquires Sam Firth from Las Vegas in exchange for Thomas Vaesen

The first regional trade of the summer, as the Ottawa-birth Firth heads back East and the Victoria-born Vaesen heads back West. Both lefty forwards are coming off their rookie seasons in 2022-23, where they were in and out of their respective lineups.

July 26: San Diego Seals trades Frank Scigliano to Saskatchewan in exchange for the 18th and 26th pick in the 2023 NLL Draft and the playing rights to Kyle Rubisch, who rejected the tag on July 24.

Oh hey well there ya go. So now we know the Seals are ready to move forward with the now 20-year-old Chris Origlieri as their franchise goaltender for his third season. They received the comp pick the Rush received at the end of the first round and the second of four second-round picks the Rush went into the offseason with at 26 overall (this pick started with the Rush, went to Philadelphia in the Ben McIntosh for Josh Currier 2020 trade, and then went back to the Rush in the trade that sent Eric Penney to the Rush (look I find these pick movements interesting okay?). They also receive the chance for a big boost to their defense with the negotiating rights to Kyle Rubisch, the 12-year veteran who turns 35 at the end of August, who will certainly be getting a good pitch to head South and contend for a title on the beach. As for the Rush, they get their new #1 goalie in their quest to return to the playoffs alongside Derek Keenan’s decree that another losing season would be unacceptable for the Rush’s standard. And all while still having three of the first 24 picks and the last pick of the second round as well.

July 26: The Rochester Knighthawks have traded Holden Cattoni and their sixth-round selection (90th overall) in the 2023 Entry Draft to the Philadelphia Wings in exchange for Hunter Lemieux, their fourth-round selection (55th overall) in the 2023 Entry Draft and their first-round selection in the 2024 Entry Draft.

From a Rochester perspective, this trade is about Thomas McConvey, who signed his first pro contract a day prior. With the 2022 #1 overall pick entering the fold, while a Fields-McConvey-Cattoni left side would’ve certainly had plenty of riches, it was beginning to get kind of crowded. Enter the Philadelphia Wings, whose left side is nothing to slouch at, but had room for an elite shooter to pair with Mitch Jones and Matt Rambo as ball handlers and Blaze Riorden’s inside expertise. Not to mention younger brother Taite Cattoni who filled in when Rambo started battling injuries in the second half of the season. The Wings get a 40-goal scorer for what they hope is a latter-half first-round pick in 2024, and the Knighthawks add another asset to the cabinet with no first-round pick in 2023 following the Connor Fields trade. Neither team has shown a hesitancy to move future assets to improve their team immediately, so an opportunity for the two heaviest Peterborough Laker rosters to move the Lakers’ leading scorer this regular season (79 points in 15 games) is in no way surprising. The Knighthawks also fill the hole on the left side with Hunter Lemieux, the Starpoint and Roberts Wesleyan grad who appeared in 7 games last season for the Wings after going 15th overall in the 2021 draft. Lemieux joins Austin Hasen, Thomas Vela, and Parker Pipher as young depth forwards to supplement the veteran unit that helped lead the team’s breakout into their first playoff appearance in 2023.

Status quo for the Bandits

So far it’s been a status quo offseason for the defending champs, as each of their moves have been fairly administrative, qualifying RFAs Ian MacKay and Chase Fraser and re-signing Frank Brown for another year after missing all of last season with injury. They also announced that Dhane Smith will play on the franchise tag in 2023-24, which was expected.

Two Notable Retirements

Back in June, the NLL community saluted Dan Dawson, as he announced his retirement after 21 seasons. Ryan Ireland wrote about this for NLL.com to encapsulate the career of who many consider the greatest righty forward of all time. Dawson played 5 and a half seasons for the Knighthawks and was part of the final two legs of their three-peat from 2012-2014. He moves to the Rock’s front office as Director of Player Development.

Dan MacRae announced his retirement as well after playing 12 seasons in the NLL, starting with 9 seasons in Calgary (winning a championship in 2019) before heading to New York to captain the expansion Riptide. He scored the OT game-winning goal in their inaugural win in 2020. He will remain on an NLL bench next season, joining Pat Coyle’s staff in Colorado as their defensive assistant.

Photo Credit: Bill Wippert/NLL.com