Every sport has a rivalry that cuts deeper than the standings. In the PLL, it’s Chrome and Atlas. Not because it’s the most lopsided or the most hyped — but because every time these two programs share a field, something real is on the line, and the lacrosse world knows it.
How This Rivalry Was Built
Chrome Lacrosse Club came into the PLL in 2019 carrying the bones of the old Rochester Rattlers — battle-tested veterans, a blue-collar system, and a coach in Tim Soudan who’d been grinding the pro lacrosse circuit since before half the current roster was in high school. The Atlas, meanwhile, were built with flash and pedigree. They were the team that consistently showed up at the top of early power rankings. They had the stars. They had the brand.
For the first few years, Atlas played the part. In the 2020 postseason, they dismantled Chrome 17-8, with Connor Buczek going off for nine goals in a performance that felt like a statement. Atlas was averaging 15 goals per game in those two wins over Chrome that year. It wasn’t even a competition — it was a coronation.
But the best rivalries don’t start with parity. They start with a power imbalance that slowly, painfully corrects itself.
Chrome Builds Something Real
The 2022 PLL Draft was a turning point. Chrome grabbed Maryland attackman Logan Wisnauskas first overall — the Tewaaraton winner, the guy who just led Maryland through an undefeated national championship season. That pick signaled that Chrome wasn’t just filling roster spots. They were building a contender, and they were being aggressive about it.
The 2022 regular season gave fans the first glimpse of what a close Chrome-Atlas matchup looked like: a 14-13 Atlas win, tight enough that you couldn’t dismiss Chrome as the also-rans they’d been in 2020. The gap was closing.
The 24-23 Game That Changed Everything
If you want to understand this rivalry, you have to understand February 26, 2023.
The inaugural PLL Championship Series at The St. James outside Washington, D.C. had Chrome entering as the 2-seed and Atlas as the 4. They met in the final. What followed was the best game the PLL had produced up to that point — a 24-23 Chrome victory built on a late-game comeback that nobody saw coming. The scoreline alone tells you what was happening on that floor.
Chrome won the first-ever Championship Series Cup. Their first title of any kind since the PLL launched in 2019. And they did it by going through Atlas to get there.
That game matters for a specific reason: it reframed the power dynamic completely. Atlas was no longer the program Chrome was measuring itself against from below. They were equals — two teams capable of beating each other in a championship game when everything is on the line.
What Each Program Represents
The reason this rivalry resonates beyond just the results is that these two clubs stand for genuinely different things.
Chrome — now playing as the Denver Outlaws since the 2024 rebranding — built their identity on roster construction and system. The 2023 title wasn’t won on superstar heroics alone; it was won because their whole operation was clicking. That’s the Chrome DNA: the belief that if you build it right, the hardware follows.
Atlas is built around transcendent individual talent. Jeff Teat, a three-time PLL All-Star and 2021 Rookie of the Year, has been the heartbeat of this roster. And then Connor Shellenberger arrived. The 2025 PLL MVP posted 46 points in the regular season — 23 goals, 23 assists — with a 47.9 percent shooting percentage that shouldn’t be physically possible for an attackman taking the shots he takes. When Atlas is rolling, they have two genuinely unguardable attackmen and the defensive infrastructure to protect a lead.
That Atlas roster cashed in during 2025, beating the Denver Outlaws 14-13 in the championship game, with Teat claiming MVP honors. The two programs — Chrome’s successors and Atlas — met again in the most important game of the season, and this time Atlas got the last word.
Why It’s the Rivalry That Defines the PLL Era
The PLL still doesn’t have a rivalry that casual sports fans know by name the way they know Duke-Carolina or Army-Navy. That’s the work the league still needs to do. But inside the lacrosse world, Chrome-Atlas (and now Denver-Atlas) is the matchup that generates real stakes every time it comes up on the schedule.
It has history. It has a champion-versus-champion dynamic. It has two different philosophical approaches to team-building colliding on the same field. And it has produced the two most memorable PLL championship moments so far — Chrome’s 24-23 comeback in 2023 and Atlas’s one-goal thriller in 2025.
Every rivalry needs a through-line — the reason fans care about this specific matchup beyond just “two good teams.” The Chrome-Atlas through-line is that neither program has ever been able to fully bury the other. Chrome built a title-winner. Atlas came back and took their own. The series keeps resetting because neither side has found a way to make it definitive.
That’s exactly what makes it worth watching.
What Comes Next
The 2026 season has the Denver Outlaws and Atlas both in the mix, though Carolina Chaos made some noise of their own by winning the 2026 Championship Series. The rivalry isn’t going anywhere — if anything, it’s still accumulating chapters.
The lacrosse community has been waiting for the PLL to produce a rivalry that feels earned rather than manufactured. Chrome vs. Atlas didn’t need a marketing campaign. It needed a 24-23 comeback, a one-goal championship game, and six-plus years of two programs refusing to let the other get comfortable at the top.
That’s a rivalry. And it’s the most important one in professional lacrosse right now.