The Sunday You've All Been Waiting For Is Finally Upon Us. It's PLL Semifinals Weekend
4 teams. 3 games. 2 weekends. That's what we have left of the 2022 Premier Lacrosse League season. And the boys head down to Washington DC on Sunday for a pair of semifinal games to see who gets the pleasure of traveling to Philly next weekend to win the 4th championship in league history. Two huge games on the schedule, both of them rematches from playoff matchups last year. The Whipsnakes and Waterdogs square off in the semifinals for the 2nd year in a row, while the Archers play against the same Chaos team that has ended each of their last 2 seasons in the playoffs.
Now I don't consider myself to be a fool. I understand that it's going to be a tough ask to get people to watch lacrosse on the opening Sunday of the NFL season. But here's the thing…it's 2022. We live in a time when anybody can be watching at least like 7 different things at any given time. I'm not saying you need to put lacrosse on the main screen at 1pm on Sunday afternoon. I'm not even saying it needs to go on the 2nd screen that you'll probably already have dedicated to RedZone. But there's got to be at least one screen available on Sunday to toss at least the first game of the weekend on ABC. If you're at a bar just sneakily grab the remote and toss one of the 20 TVs onto ABC. The bartenders love it when you do that.
Moral of the story is that sure, it's a huge weekend for football. But it's an even bigger weekend for lacrosse, which is actually a better and more difficult sport than football anyway.
PLL Semifinals Schedule
#1 Whipsnakes vs #5 Waterdogs // Sunday, 1pm // ABC
Both times these two teams played so far this season it was a 1-goal game. The Whipsnakes won the first go around in week 2 by a score of 12-11. But then the Waterdogs handed the Whips their only loss of the season in week 5 by a score of 11-10. So when these two teams meet up you know that goals are going to be hard to come by, and it's always going to come down to the wire.
The only thing that worries me about the Waterdogs is the possibility that they got their nut off a little too soon. This team exploded for 19 goals last weekend against the Atlas. I'm a firm believer that every team has a finite amount of goals in the tank when it comes to the playoffs. The Whipsnakes still have all of theirs stored up since they got a bye straight to the semifinals. Obviously the other way to look at this is that the Whips had enough time for some rust to set in while the Waterdogs got themselves buzzing last week. But this league has been around for 3 seasons so far and the Whipsnakes have played in the championship game in all 3 of them. So until they prove me otherwise, the Whipsnakes are un-rustable. They'll be rested, and they'll be ready to play in their 4th straight title game. They just won't cover.
Let's thread the needle here. Waterdogs +1.5, Whipsnakes ML.
#3 Archers vs #7 Chaos // Sunday, 3:30pm // ESPN+
This is just what the Chaos do. 2-8 on the regular season and now they're playing in the semifinals for the 4th straight year. The reigning champs obviously weren't going to bow out of the playoffs without giving themselves a chance to defend their title. So now you have the 3-8 Chaos taking on the Archers in the playoffs for the 3rd straight year. They won 13-9 in the semifinals in the 2020 Bubble, and then won 13-10 last year in the quarterfinals. But the Archers have won both times the two teams have played this season by a combined score of 28-20. So it's not that these games end up being blowouts, but one team typically ends up clearly being the better team in these matchups.
I thought both teams looked great last week. Archers offense was as efficient as it gets, and Blaze Riorden looked exactly like the best goalie on the planet Blaze Riorden. So I think we'll see both teams playing their best game of the season on Sunday and because of that….well I just have to ride with hot goaltending in the playoffs. A great goalie performance in the playoffs cancels out everything else that could possibly happen. So give me Chaos ML and give me Whipsnakes for Chaos in the championship for the 3rd year in a row.
--------------------