NLL Cup: Where the champions come from
Colorado Mammoth, 2022 (Photo: Jack Dempsey)
The Colorado Mammoth continued the time-tested trend that a team with an above .500 record over the final month of their regular season almost always wins the NLL Cup (the Buffalo Bandits were under .500 in their final four regular-season weeks), but their victory also sparked something, well, something that’s seemingly never been done before.
This year’s NLL Cup winners might have sported the most diverse roster to ever chase down the championship.
Colorado Mammoth, 2022 (Photo: Michael Hetzel)
Going back to 2005, the furthest we can hit rewind for accurate NLL rosters, The Lax Mag tallied roster totals of all Cup-winning sides. Counting only players that participated in the playoffs (it would be wildly difficult to determine if non-playing players in the playoffs were actually rewarded with a ring with 100% accuracy), the Mammoth’s lineup this year featured Ontarians, British Columbians, Indigenous Peoples, Americans and Albertans. It’s the first time all five prominent pro-lacrosse-playing backgrounds were present on an NLL championship roster - definitely 2005 or later, but almost surely going all the way back to Year 1 in 1987 as well.
The five Alberta players that fit into a 2022 post-season game for the Mammoth (John Lintz, Josh Sullivan, Dylan Kinnear, Brett McIntyre and Erik Turner, Brett Craig was on the IR) are the most ever from that province to capture a Cup in a single campaign. Prior to Colorado’s Cup clinch, you would have had to have gone back to 2009 to count up five Alberta names that played in the playoffs and won a Cup (Lintz, Dan Taylor, Blaine Manning, Kaleb Toth and Devan Wray). The most Cups claimed by an Albertan is Sherwood Park native Manning, who won four with the Toronto Rock (2002, 2003, 2005 and 2011).
As we pointed out in our season-opening roster breakdowns, those five previously mentioned backgrounds have long made up a majority of NLL rosters, with Ontario easily leading the way. Here’s a look at how many each has placed on championship clubs going back to, you guessed it, 2005.
NLL Cup Rosters 2005-2022
If your peepers prefer pie charts versus bars to digest all that data (your iPhone likely does), we’ve also further flagged each background below for every NLL Cup winner since Toronto topped the Arizona Sting in 2005 (also the NLL’s most attend game) with one of the heaviest Ontario-loaded lineups (90%) in league history. Of the 312 roster spots listed above (and below), 57% are owned by players from the province of Ontario, 22% B.C., 10% Indigenous, 7% USA, and 4% Alberta.
And remember, only players that played a post-season game were included in any of these totals.
Toronto Rock, 2005 (Photo: Graig Abel)
Toronto Rock - 2005
Colorado Mammoth - 2006
Rochester Knighthawks - 2007
Pat McCready, Buffalo Bandits, 2008 (Photo: Larry Palumbo)
Buffalo Bandits - 2008
Calgary Roughnecks - 2009
Tracey Kelusky, Calgary Roughnecks, 2009 (Photo: Larry Palumbo)
Washington Stealth - 2010
Toronto Rock - 2011
Johnny Powless, Jarrett Davis and Joe Walters, Rochester, 2012 (Photo: Larry Palumbo)
Rochester Knighthawks - 2012
Rochester Knighthawks - 2013
Rochester Knighthawks, 2013 (Photo: Ward Laforme)
Rochester Knighthawks - 2014
Edmonton Rush - 2015
Saskatchewan Rush, 2016 (Photo: Josh Schaefer)
Saskatchewan Rush - 2016
Georgia Swarm - 2017
Saskatchewan Rush, 2018
Saskatchewan Rush - 2018
Dan Taylor, Calgary Roughnecks, 2019 (Photo: Candice Ward)
Calgary Roughnecks - 2019
Colorado Mammoth, 2022 (Photo: Jack Dempsey)