Brett Dobson, Georgia Swarm (Photo: Nick Iwanyshyn)

After the first several weeks of the 2025-26 National Lacrosse League season are complete, The Lax Mag publishes a weekly NLL Player Ranking, examining the league’s Top 30 players from Week 1 right up until the end of the regular season.

TLM’s Top 30 NLL Player Rankings have nothing to do with reputations, career resumes, success in past seasons, whether we know a player personally, recognizing deserving players who’ve previously been passed over, player popularity, the size of their social media following, whether you slide into their DMs, or who others around the league tell us should get hype.

Our rankings, which only take into consideration only a player’s performance for the current regular season, will be calculated using both our star-rating system after each game, but also a player’s season-long statistical position (based on per-game averages) across the league. Only players who have played two-thirds of their team’s games or more will qualify.

Click here for an even more in-depth breakdown of our scoring system.

First-ever NLL Goalie of the Year, Bob Watson (Photo: Ward Laforme Jr.)

In today’s NLL Player Rankings post, we take an early look at this year’s top tendies (AKA Goalie of the Year frontrunners) by highlighting some of the stats we use as part of our overall rankings analysis.

Below, we pulled the Top 5 starting goalies in the following stats: Goals Against Average (GAA), Save Percentage (SV%), Wins (W), Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA), Points (PTS), Shots on Goal Per 60 Minutes, Saves Per 60 Minutes, plus our current Top 5 rated NLL starting stoppers.

Goals Against Average

GAA is very much a defensive unit + goalie stat, but still has some value when analyzing tendies, so we’ve continued to keep it in as part of our overall analysis. Brett Dobson, who has been our highest ranked goalie since our opening edition in Week 7 (he’s ranked no lower than sixth so far), leads here, by a lot. The lowest season-ending GAA ever recorded was Aaron Bold with Edmonton back in 2014, and that was 8.73, almost two full goals more than the ridiculous number Dobson owns right now.

1. Brett Dobson, Georgia (6.89)
2. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (8.76)
3. Dillon Ward, Colorado (8.89)
4. Warren Hill, Halifax (9.50)
5. Frank Scigliano, Saskatchewan (9.72)

Brett Dobson, Georgia Swarm (Photo: Victoria Adkins)

Save Percentage

Dobson again leads here, and again, by a sizeable statistical span. Past just how incredibly impressive his straight stat line is this year, is just how much Dobson has improved his netminding numbers since last season. In fact, we dropped Dobson from our annual preseason NLL TOP 100 (had ranked #50 and #61 in the two previous hundos) after what was, at least statistically, his worst season in the league in 2025. Although there’s a lot of lacrosse left on the regular season schedule, check out his high-as-hell improvements in both GAA and SV% as of Week 9…

GAA

2025: 11.82
2026: 6.89
Diff: -4.93

SV%

2025: .763
2026: .867
Diff: +.104

Admittedly, maintaining unheard of high numbers like this for the remainder of the season seems almost impossible, but we’ve also never seen a goalie jump out to this kind of start, maybe ever. Like his Week 9 GAA, Dobson’s SV% is significantly better than the current single-season record held by Doug Jamieson (.829 during the COVID-cancelled 2020 season).

1. Brett Dobson, Georgia (.867)
2. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (.830)
3. Dillon Ward, Colorado (.829)
4. Warren Hill, Halifax (.828)
5. Nick Rose, Toronto (.806)

Frank Scigliano, Saskatchewan Rush (Photo: Candice Ward)

Wins

Again, Wins even more than GAA is very much a team-specific stat, but we’ve got it in the mix since traditionally any sport with a goalie also (oddly) shares their standings record with them. As we noted last year, just like the NLL’s MVP vote (and actually most of their individual accolades), past Goalies of the Year always play on a team with a ton of wins, no matter what their full stat line reads. Since 2009, no goalie on a team that finished lower than fourth has won the award (12 of the last 16 have been on teams that finished first or second). So while Wins should seemingly mean very little when analyzing an individual goalie, in the NLL, it’s arguably the most important metric. Get this though… Since the NLL first starting handed our GOTY hardware in 2001, only twice has a goalie been voted top tendy, and then also went on to win the NLL Cup. It’s actually the same goalie both times: Matt Vinc in 2013 and 2014 with the Rochester Knighthawks.

1. Frank Scigliano, Saskatchewan (6)
2. Dillon Ward, Colorado (5)
T3. Brett Dobson, Georgia (4)
T3. Zach Higgins, Ottawa (4)
T3. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (4)
T3. Rylan Hartley, Rochester (4)

Dillon Ward, Colorado Mammoth (Photo: Heather Barry)

Goals Saved Above Average

This revealing stat still hasn’t really broken into most NLL circles when talking top tendies, so if you’re unaware of GSAA, here’s what it means (courtesy of Dobber Hockey)…

Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA) is the metric that measures the difference between the number of goals a goaltender has allowed versus how many they were expected to allow, given the league average save percentage and the number of shots faced. In essence, it quantifies a goalie’s performance relative to the league norm. A positive GSAA indicates that a goaltender has saved more goals than the average goalie would have, given the same number of shots, signaling superior performance.

Again, Dobson’s lead length here is straight up silly, especially so early in the season. Nick Damude, who consistently gets criminally overlooked while playing for always-in-last-place Philadelphia, cracks the Top 5 here, which speaks volumes of how important he is to the Wings, no matter what their record says.

1. Brett Dobson, Georgia (25.51)
2. Dillon Ward, Colorado (12.34)
3. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (11.28)
4. Warren Hill, Halifax (10.93)
5. Nick Damude, Philadelphia (3.32)

Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver Warriors (Photo: Jordan Leigh)

Points

Only starting his season after last year’s trade deadline, while Christian Del Bianco didn’t lead the league in total points in 2025, he did top all tendies in points per game a season ago. So not at all shockingly, Del Bianco is tops here this year with four helpers after six starts. There’s been no goalie goals, by Del Bianco or anyone else, heading into Week 10. When was the last full regular season the NLL hasn’t seen a single goalie goal? Gotta go back to 2018, when no tendies scored over 81 games. Oh yeah, Del Bianco, who was playing his first season as a starter in 2018, led the NLL in points with 17 assists.

1. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (4A)
2. Landon Kells, Las Vegas (3A)
T3. Cam Dunkerley, San Diego (2A)
T3. Ryland Hartley, Rochester (2A)
T3. Warren Hill, Halifax (2A)
T3. Drew Hutchison, Halifax (2A)
T3. Doug Jamieson, Oshawa (2A)
T3. Aden Walsh, Calgary (2A)
T3. Dillon Ward, Colorado (2A)

Nick Damude, Philadelphia Wings (Photo: Heather Barry)

Shots on Goal Per 60 Minutes

We always include shots on goal as a metric in our goalie analysis, partly to level out some of those previously mentioned more team-specific stats where some goalies benefits from having a below average amount of shots sent their way. Damude leads here easily while backstopping a Philadelphia Wings franchise that has allowed the most shots on goal in each of the previous four seasons, and are on track to do the same this year. Now, shots on goal alone only tells you half the story, which is why we also track…

1. Nick Damude, Philadelphia (60.9)
2. Warren Hill, Halifax (55.1)
3. Landon Kells, Las Vegas (53.1)
4. Aden Walsh, Calgary (52.8)
5. Dillon Ward, Colorado (51.8)

Warren Hill, Halifax Thunderbirds (Photo: David Pickering)

Saves Per 60 Minutes

While others have fallen off the list above here, Damude remains #1, meaning he sees a shit ton of shots, and is also making a shit ton of saves, which is also why he ranks so high in GSAA too.

Even though he’s had a couple rougher outings recently, Warren Hill was far and away Halifax’s MVP over their first five games of the season. Hill also finds himself on virtually every Top 5 pull today, especially the most individually important ones. When you factor in that the Thunderbirds are turning over the ball more than any other team, missing the net more than any other team, have seen offensive (and transitional) statistical declines, and are still dealing with plenty of PIM-related problems, for Hill to be posting the type of numbers he has for most of 2025-26 with all that happening in front of him, well, it’s extremely impressive. Dobson, Del Bianco and Hill are the only goalies that have appeared on every edition of our weekly Top 30 this year.

1. Nick Damude, Philadelphia (49.0)
2. Warren Hill, Halifax (45.6)
3. Brett Dobson, Georgia (45.0)
4. Dillon Ward, Colorado (43.0)
5. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (42.7)

Brett Dobson, Georgia Swarm (Photo: Jeff Crawford)

Top 5 Goalies: Week 10

These five goalies easily rank as out Top 5 goalies right now, with Rochester’s Rylan Hartley (largely due to his star ratings, not so much his stat line) creeping closer to our weekly list.

1. Brett Dobson, Georgia (2)
2. Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (5)
3. Dillon Ward, Colorado (13)
4. Warren Hill, Halifax (21)
5. Nick Damude, Philadelphia (30)

This week, Dobson comes in at the highest we’ve had him ranked in our weekly NLL Top 30, sitting second behind only Connor Fields, who’s been #1 since our opening edition. In fact, all five our our top rated goalies above crack this week’s 30, Philly’s Nick Damude making his debut ahead of Week 10. Damude is no stranger to our season-ending GOTY analysis, however, twice making our final Top 5 goalie list: 4th in 2023 and 5th in 2024.

NLL TOP 30: Week 10

TW. (LW) Player, Team (Pos.)

1. (1) Connor Fields, Rochester (F)
2. (4) Brett Dobson, Georgia (G)
3. (2) Jeff Teat, Ottawa (F)
4. (4) Dhane Smith, Buffalo (F)
5. (6) Christian Del Bianco, Vancouver (G)
6. (5) Will Malcom, Colorado (F)
7. (7) Mike Messenger, Saskatchewan (D)
8. (10) Callum Jones, Ottawa (D)
9. (12) Ryan Lanchbury, Rochester (F)
10. (9) Keegan Bal, Vancouver (F)
11. (11) Mitch Jones, Las Vegas (F)
12. (8) Rob Hellyer, Ottawa (F)
13. (17) Dillon Ward, Colorado (G)
14. (13) Tyler Pace, Calgary (F)
15. (14) Ryan Keenan, Saskatchewan (F)
16. (25) Alex Simmons, Oshawa (F)
17. (15) Tanner Cook, Calgary (F)
18. (22) Zach Currier, San Diego (D/F)
19. (16) Nick Weiss, Buffalo (D)
20. (18) Jake Boudreau, Saskatchewan (D)
21. (19) Warren Hill, Halifax (G)
22. (20) Josh Byrne, Buffalo (F)
23. (21) *CJ Kirst, Toronto (F)
24. (23) Thomas McConvey, Rochester (F)
25. (24) *Michael Grace, Georgia (D)
26. (26) Zach Manns, Saskatchewan (F)
27. (29) Nick Chaykowsky, Oshawa (D)
28. (NR) Brad Kri, Toronto (D)
29. (27) Robert Hope, Colorado (D)
30. (NR) Nick Damude, Philadelphia (G)

*Rookie