Six teams didn’t make the 2024-25 NLL playoffs. Two of them — Ottawa and Colorado — were a bounce away from getting in. The other four? They’ve got bigger problems to sort out. Here’s a no-varnish look at where each of those franchises actually stands.
Ottawa Black Bears (8-10): So Close, So Frustrating
Ottawa finished 8-10, ninth in the league, and missed the playoffs by two games. That gap is simultaneously not a lot and absolutely everything. The Black Bears have the talent to compete — Jeff Teat is a legitimate star in this league and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t watched him operate in transition. He’s one of those players who makes things happen before the defense has time to react.
The problem in Ottawa isn’t the offensive ceiling. It’s consistency. The Black Bears would look like a playoff team for two or three weeks, then drop a pair of games they had no business losing. That’s a roster depth issue and a coaching structure issue, and ownership needs to decide which one they’re going to address first. Teat deserves to play meaningful lacrosse in April. Build around him or trade him — either way, running it back with the same result isn’t acceptable.
Colorado Mammoth (8-10): A Historic Franchise Having an Identity Crisis
The Mammoth are one of the original NLL powers. They’ve won titles. They’ve been to championships. The fact that they’re sitting here at 8-10 and watching the postseason on television is an indictment of where this roster is right now, not where the franchise has been historically. You don’t get to cash in championship capital when you’re losing games to teams below you in the standings.
Colorado’s issue is that their window didn’t close gracefully — it just kind of quietly swung shut while everyone was looking elsewhere. The core that made them dangerous has aged, and the younger pieces haven’t arrived at the level needed to cover that gap. The Mammoth brand still means something in that market. The front office’s job this offseason is figuring out whether this is a retool or a full rebuild, and having the honesty to admit which one it actually is.
Albany FireWolves (7-11): A Franchise in Transit
The Albany FireWolves finished 7-11, and here’s the context that matters most: this was their final season in Albany before relocation to Oshawa. When you’re a franchise that knows it’s moving, organizational focus splits. Players wonder about their futures. Staff changes loom. It’s genuinely hard to build a culture when the culture is about to be dismantled and rebuilt somewhere else entirely.
Rookie Dyson Williams winning the NLL Rookie of the Year award was the one genuine bright spot — and it matters. That’s a franchise cornerstone piece heading into Oshawa. The new market will get a young star and a fresh start. What they’ll do with that is an open question. But Albany as a lacrosse market deserved better than what it got over the franchise’s run there, and Oshawa is going to need to prove it actually wants a professional lacrosse team.
Philadelphia Wings (7-11): Mitch de Snoo Is the Exception, Not the Rule
Mitch de Snoo earning Second All-NLL honors is not a small thing. That’s a legitimate accolade in a league with legitimate talent, and de Snoo has earned every bit of it. The Wings have a real player there. The problem is that one elite piece and a 7-11 record tells you everything about the gap between their best player and their overall roster construction.
Philadelphia is a market that can support a winning team. The Wings have had some genuinely good runs in their history, and that history gives them credibility with the local fanbase. But they need to build a supporting cast around de Snoo that actually makes sense. Right now, they’re asking one player to carry too much of the offensive load, and when he has a tough night, there’s no safety net. That’s a roster-building failure, not a de Snoo failure.
Toronto Rock (6-12): The Blue-Blood Is Bleeding
The Toronto Rock are one of the most decorated franchises in NLL history. That sentence now reads like a warning label. Six wins, twelve losses, dead last in the East — this isn’t a bump in the road, this is a program that has lost its way. The Rock used to be the gold standard. Now they’re losing to expansion-caliber opponents and finishing below teams that have never sniffed a championship.
Toronto lacrosse fans deserve accountability from the top down. This isn’t bad luck. The roster construction is bad, the results reflect that, and it’s been a slow enough decline that ownership can’t claim they were blindsided. There’s still brand equity in the Rock name, particularly in the Ontario lacrosse community. But brand equity has a shelf life, and 6-12 seasons eat into it fast. The only acceptable response to a year this bad is a genuine organizational reckoning — not a press release, not a media tour, a reckoning.
Las Vegas Desert Dogs (4-14): The Worst Record in the League Raises Real Questions
Four wins, fourteen losses. Worst record in the NLL. There’s no soft way to say it: the Las Vegas Desert Dogs had a bad season, in a market where no one is quite sure yet whether professional box lacrosse is going to take hold. The on-court product isn’t good enough to convert casual fans, and in Las Vegas you are competing with literally everything else the entertainment capital of the world has to offer on any given night.
The market question is real and it isn’t going away. Las Vegas has made other professional sports work — the Golden Knights and Raiders proved you can build a fanbase there if you give people a winning product to rally around. The Desert Dogs have not given their market that, and 4-14 is not a foundation to build on. The franchise needs a serious influx of talent, needs a clearer identity, and — bluntly — needs to start winning games before the novelty of a new team in a new city fully wears off. That clock is already running.
Six teams out of fourteen missed the playoffs this year. That’s the league telling you something. For Ottawa and Colorado, it’s a wake-up call. For Albany, it’s the end of one chapter. For Philadelphia, it’s a challenge to build around what they have. For Toronto, it’s an emergency. For Las Vegas, it’s a fork in the road. Every one of these front offices has decisions to make. The ones who make the right ones show up in next year’s playoff picture. The ones who don’t show up here again.