Colorado Mammoth An Elite NLL Team?
by Marisa Ingemi on Jan 24, 2012 4:00 PM EST
in Lacrosse Speculation and Rumors
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It has been under much debate in the past few days- are the Colorado Mammoth elite? The NLL is tougher than ever with nine teams and so much talent on those teams, but the top teams in the league never seemed to include Colorado. Going into this season, most of the picks have been Toronto, Calgary, Buffalo or Washington, maybe with Edmonton or Rochester sneaking in there by a few people. But has anyone even included Colorado as their top team or close to it?
In fact, most had Colorado at the bottom of the pack. Chris Levis had a good finish last season but at 36 years old, is he a championship goaltender? John Grant is aging, and their offense doesn't see many top scorers outside of Grant and Prout. However, the Mammoth at 3-0 sport the best record in the NLL.
The Mammoth lead the NLL with 43 goals for and John Grant is currently on pace for 160 points. Both of those things likely will not be the case in week 17. However, it is a good sign to see Colorado win their first three games in a tough NLL. They defeated Minnesota, a team most project to miss the playoffs, Calgary, a top NLL team and Edmonton, a team with high expectations. Other than Minnesota, those teams were expected to have a top offense.
Colorado has also given up the most goals in the league with 36 goals allowed. This is where that comes into play. Calgary is an elite scoring team and Edmonton was projected to be better. Those teams did score goals, as they should, but Colorado scored more. Against Edmonton, the Mammoth won on a grant goal with 14.5 seconds left. Against Calgary, Prout scored in overtime. They only scored one more goal than the other team, but that one goal got them the win.
Some say it is luck, but could there be an intangible there? Could the Mammoth clutch play rally their team around and make them believe that they do have that intangible that other teams lack?
The question is, whether they won these games by one goal or ten, they won these games, so are the Mammoth an elite NLL team?
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The Mammoth are clearly a good team. It is pretty tough to sort out “elite” after three games though. Some people still don’t think the Roughnecks were elite last season.
There is no such thing as repeatable clutch. Short of goaltending, on average if you give up more shots and more shots closer to the net, you will lose. If I had to bet today on a game between Colorado and Buffalo, I take Buffalo and between Colorado and Calgary I take Calgary. Those teams have, so far, shown more in those areas than Colorado.
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