Colorado Mammoth Message Board

Steve
What players can we expect to see living in Colorado for the season? It seems like in recent years, we have had an emphasis on getting players who are or could live in Denver. Does that factor into how you make your roster? What players can we expect to see in the community this season? Thanks

At this point in time we are evaluating all the players. Regardless of their living situation, we will select the best team in order to compete for the Championship in 2011.

Once selected, I might have better information for you in order to answer your question.

SG

Hey Steve,
Given some of the moves today, (Conn, McFayden, etc...) I'm looking forward to hearing more about what went into these desicions. Conn particularly is a big name player, so my curiosity is piqued.

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--V

Thank you for the question. I am sure many people are asking similar questions so this is a good forum for me to address these concerns.

As I said in the previous response, we will select the best team in order to compete for a championship in 2011.

Hopefully my response can bring some clarity to the restless.

Just so we are all on the same page and no one is confused, lefties may play on the right side, but we say the lefties play on the left side because we are fairly simple lacrosse folk, and itÂ’s just easier. This is pretty standard Canadian lingo in box lacrosse.

I can assure you; the decisions up to now have been challenging and won't get any easier as we get to the 23. Good players around the League are being released this season, we are down to 10 teams from last season, everything is a factor: salary, fly in status, age, health, etc. all will be contributing factors as well as the player's relative contributions. This has been a tremendously competitive training camp here and throughout the NLL.

We feel our left side right now is the strength of our team, John Grant, Jamie Shewchuk, Cliff Smith, Dan Carey are all very solid. Dan Carey is progressing quickly and MAY be ready soon. Ned Crotty has had a very successful camp and is turning into quite an indoor player. Time will tell. Jason Jones continues to impress and has done everything to stay on this team. All 6 give us great depth.

Our right side continues to be very solid. Brian Langtry has had a great camp and looks like he is ready for another stellar campaign, Alex Gajic is ready to go, Mike McLellan is exactly what we are looking for, an amazing finisher, he may have the ball in his stick for 25 seconds all game but will have 4 goals, Coach Ed Comeau calls him 7-11, he is always open, call him a throwback to Dan Stroup. Jamie Floris popped three goals the other night on Richardson and Roik in Washington, just because he kept working and getting open inside. Connor Martin also continues to impress, a goal in each of the two preseason games, great hands and just never stops working.

On offense itÂ’s very important not to have a bunch of players that do the same thing; we have strived very hard this offseason to create chemistry with a group of offensive players that all complement each other by doing something that will make someone else better. As the offense comes together you will find that you need 4 on one side and 3 on the other, for us it looks like our depth is with lefties so we will keep more of them to go 4 left/ 3 right. Keeping 6 and 4 is the most logical for the Mammoth right now. Keep 10, 7 play.

Craig Conn was a tremendous player, great at one point in his career. Coach Hamley loves him as a player from his experience in Arizona, as do I, and he has had some phenomenal games in the NLL. We had very high expectations for what we thought Craig could bring to the table, we just feel that he has more physical limitations than what we thought and wasnÂ’t able to play the type of up tempo style that we are looking for this season from our players. We know his heart and mind are there but just werenÂ’t able to see it in the on-floor contribution during the training camp process. Craig is a good man and I wish him all the best in his future whether it be in the NLL or not.

After a great competition by four outstanding netminders, Levis and King have emerged as the two that will carry the mail. Regardless of what some might say, both have different styles and can show different looks to the opposing offenses. I have a great respect for Curtis and wish him well in his retirement.

With 10 forwards and 2 goalies, we have a competition for the remaining 11 spots. We are still evaluating in areas like the back end and transition but things are coming clearer. Ilija is moving to a more transition type role, where his skills can better translate in both ends of the floor. Ilija thrives in between the lines and we are anticipating great things from him as a healthy player this year.

The remaining players have made for a tremendous camp and have pushed everyone to see greater possibilities. Unfortunately there are casualties in a 10 team League on a team that has added talent on the reamining teams.

Ryan McFadyen became one of those casualties. I like Ryan a great deal, he is an outstanding young man, but after evaluation of his play in camp and the two preseason games it became evident that he was not going to mesh with the current group of Mammoth defenders. We have to be able to defend in the two man game and experience is key in that process, and although his great athleticism and size was a huge bonus, he struggled in the 5 man defense of indoor lacrosse. Certainly we know that inexperience played a role but we just donÂ’t have available time to develop his raw talents in a world where winning is a priority. Ryan played 6 games last season and made some solid progress, he also lived here last season and was able to commit fully to the Mammoth, his personal life took him back east this year with a new job and we feared that flying in from the east coast every week was taking a toll on the challenge of competing in the NLL. No doubt Ryan should find his way back into the NLL soon, it just wasnÂ’t in the cards for us right now.

We are confident that things are progressing for the Mammoth and our ability to compete at the highest level in the NLL is coming together. Obviously we have some very good players in camp and there will be more cuts to come. Nothing is easy in the Mammoth camp right now, the players are making the decisions extremely difficult for the staff.

Hope that clears up some of the questions out there. Let me know if you need more!!

SG

Thank you for clueing us Americans in!

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Who has the Mic? A Doosh!

Exactly what I was hoping to hear. As always, thanks Steve. While we may agree or disagree on certain moves, it's always good to get the reasoning that went into it.

See you on the 8th .

_________________
--V

thanks for letting us in on some of these reasons. glad to see king and levis in net.

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*2006 NLL Champions*

Tee hee.

_________________
No one's taller than
the last man standing.

I am going to take some time to answers some questions that I know will be coming up so I might as well get to them early.

Last week was a very busy week for the Mammoth and our front office staff. As many of you have noted we had a number of "interesting" transactions take place throughout the week after my initial posting. I will try to make a little sense of it for those that are still following.

Early in the week we decided that we were going to cut the roster down in a few areas. Goaltending was one of those areas that we felt we wanted to move forward with the two goalies that would be with us for the season. This past weekend was the last time we will practice before the roster cut down and wanted our two goalies to get lots of shots.

We contacted the players that were being released on Monday; at that time Curtis Palidwor immediately requested that instead of being released he would like to retire. I like Curtis a great deal, he is a very genuine and professional individual, and I was happy to arrange for that press release announcing his retirement at his request.

In the NLL if a player is released they are free to go anywear they would like to try and ply their trade, if a player retires, they remain the property of the team they retired from, pretty much forever, or until they qualify to be a free agent if they are old enough and have enough years in the League.

A day after we filed the retirement paperwork with the League and announced his retirement, Curtis called me and said he wasn't sure he wanted to hang them up yet and asked if he could talk to other teams. Out of respect for him, I said yes, he spoke with a few and Calgary had an opportunity for him. At that point he asked for his release, after all that Curtis went through last season with the eye injury, I was most certainly not going to hold him back if he had an opportunity to play. We released him and he signed in Calgary where he attended camp this past weekend.

Curtis is one of the good ones in this League and I wish him all the best, he was a real professional with us for the short time he was here but I have great admiration for him and want his career to end the way he wants it to.

As that is all going on with Curtis, we get a call from Chris Levis that he had twisted his ankle while conditioning near his home in BC. Throughout the day on Thursday we spent significant time waiting for medical reports on just how bad the ankle was. Fortunately he should have a very speedy recovery and be 100% for Jan. 8, however, because of the roster decisions made earlier in the week, we would have only one goaltender for camp this past weekend. So even though we had released Blaisdell we were back on the phone with him to resign and get him back on board for the weekend.

Of course Chris' injury scare made Bob Hamley and I have flashbacks to the Palidwor injury early last season that put us behind the eightball for much of the season last year. Not wanting to be there again, we are strongly considering carrying three goalies now.

With the loss of a team in Orlando and the League back down to 10 teams, roster spots are at a premium and good players will be out of work around the League. Good players that may not hook up with a team until there is a need or injury. Goalies however are always a valuable commodity so keeping three changes the dynamic significantly if one of them gets hurt and you have to scramble to find a suitable replacement on the open market.

So this is the lesson in the current NLL, things change and you have to adapt.

We also were able to sign Josh Wasson after he was released by Toronto, he was able to participate in camp this weekend. Josh is a speedy right handed offensive threat that has a history of succes in the NLL and in Peterborough, he came highly recommended by our current "boro" boys. A different player than what we already had in camp, he brings a different complimentary element to the offense that we hope leads to more success.

This past weekend's practices were our best yet, every player on our roster was able to participate except Levis, we even caught a glimpse of a recovering Jed Prossner, (stick in hand and scoring well, no contact yet) who should be available to us early in the season. We had some great team building events as well and wrapped up what we expect to be a pivotal training camp in the history of the Mammoth. We are feeling more and more ready to compete in 2011.

We have some very challenging decisions to make for the rest of the week, some I would say, that will no doubt, create more questions here.

Thank you all for your interest, and I look forward to celebrating success on Jan. 8 and beyond.

SG

Couldn't agree more on Pally. He's a class act and it was a pleasure meeting him several times after games. I wish him all the best (except when we play Calgary, then I wish him a 24 hour flu).

Thanks again for all the insight Steve. Really appreciate it.

_________________
--V