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| The Rockyview Silvertips finished first in both the Central Division and the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League's Junior B Tier 1 overall this season. File photo/The Cochrane Eagle |
Lacrosse season is slowly approaching, and the annual RMLL AGM meeting will be held in Calgary from November 29th to December 1st.
There will be talks of expansion, rule changes, and Larry Bishop format changes. As somebody who has followed the RMLL Jr B Tier 1 circuit closely for the last two seasons, here are some changes I think would benefit the league.
These are just wishful changes, I understand there are a lot of outside factors such as travel costs and operating costs that restrict some of the changes.
Playoff Format (Best of 5)
I'd like to preface this change by stating they improved the playoff format, a lot this season by extending the series over a longer period instead of over basically 48 hours like 2023.
The North Final in 2023 was severely handcuffed by being played in 36 hours, it didn't allow for the series to gain hype and traction, and it felt like we played a long 20-game season just to finish the playoffs as fast as possible.
In 2024, they seemed to have made the change to draw out the 3-game series over a course of 4 to 5 days, which was much better pacing and allowed for the best teams in the league to get some rest between games and led to a higher level of lacrosse.
The next step? Expand the Divisional Finals to a Best of 5, they are divisional finals, the travel is pretty close in proximity for every series (aside from the Eastern Final)
The kids are out of school by the time the Divisional Finals start so playing games during the week isn't a massive hurdle in my opinion and if there are concerns about the length of the season. I don't think you'll find a single lacrosse fan in Alberta that would have an issue with shortening the regular season to 18, or even 16 games to have a longer playoff.
I'm unsure what format would be better, but I am leaning towards a 2H - 2A - 1H series, you can play the two-game sets in back-to-backs and not every single series would go to a 5th game for travel purposes.
The RMLL Jr B Tier 1 circuit is a gate-driven league and having more playoff games than regular season games would provide more revenue for the teams involved in the playoffs, more viewers on the broadcast, and would allow the cream to rise to the top as we'd more often than not see the better, more consistent team advance to the Larry Bishop.
One RMLL Representative to the Founders
I believe there are talks about the Larry Bishop format changing regarding how the RMLL decides which team to send to the Founders.
Historically, the Manitoba/Winnipeg Blizzard organization would attend the Larry Bishop tournament, already having booked their ticket to the Founders.
This sometimes, has made the Larry Bishop Final "pointless" when it comes to punching your ticket to the National Championship, as every time the Blizzard would make the Larry Bishop Final, the opposing team books their ticket automatically.
A lot of fans have looked down upon the Blizzard organization for being involved in the Larry Bishop, which I think is unfair to the organization, they are simply playing the competition they can realistically play.
A good change would be removing the Manitoba bid to the Founders Cup and making it so that whoever wins the Larry Bishop tournament is the only team the RMLL sends (aside from if there is an RMLL Founders Cup host).
Winnipeg has no realistic reason to accept this change, as it only affects them negatively, but I think as a viewer of the Larry Bishop tournament, it eliminates the possibility of an anti-climatic Final.
Standardized Viewing of Games
As a person who has worked as a broadcaster of the Jr B Tier 1 circuit the last two seasons I am going to attempt my best to speak from an unbiased point of view on this.
It's very inconsistent across the board right now on how you can both view stats and watch games, currently, the RMLL has live scoring on their website for games, the problem is right now it's up in the air on the experience you'll get during a game.
Sometimes you'll get updates literally as they happen, which is the definition of live scoring and should be the standard, sometimes you get stats dumped onto the website during intermissions, sometimes you get no stats til after the game or even shockingly, the next day.
Standardizing the expectation on the live scoring and at the very least making it consistent would be nice for fans, parents, and broadcasters so we know what to expect from game-to-game.
Currently, we have CrowLAXTV broadcasting all of the north, as well as a team in the Central and one in the South division, after that it's up in the air.
I know some teams are providing their own broadcasts like Queen City out East and the Mavericks in the Central, you wouldn't know this if you didn't follow those teams on social media, there is no direction from the league on where to view these games.
I would just like to see the league support all the broadcasters that are trying to make a difference in the space and maybe one day we can see a standardized viewing experience on the website, with links to games so fans and parents can just go to the RMLL website to see the games.
In conclusion, the RMLL in the short two years I've been following local lacrosse has made some excellent changes and it's a league that I believe is attempting to support lacrosse in the prairies and has produced some of the best lacrosse players in the world to the NLL, but I would like to see the league ultimately work toward having a smoother, more streamlined viewership experience.
It affects everybody, fans, parents, players, and even scouts.
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