The San Diego Seals’ 2025-26 season is going to be remembered for a crease violation call that the NLL’s own officials later got suspended for. That’s the take the league handed them, and it’s fair to sit with that for a moment before moving on. Tre Leclaire’s overtime goal against Colorado in the quarterfinals should not have counted. The league acknowledged the error. The officials were suspended. That actually happened.
And yet — the Seals still earned their place in the semifinal. Both things are true, and anyone who flattens this story into a simple “they cheated their way to the next round” is being lazy. San Diego played real lacrosse after that play, and the controversy doesn’t retroactively erase it.
An 8-10 Team That Refused to Act Like One
San Diego finished the regular season 8-10, seventh in the league. Not exactly a team inspiring fear across the NLL. But the Seals were one of four lower seeds to knock out a higher seed in the quarterfinal round — a quarterfinal sweep so chaotic it looked like someone had shuffled the bracket and forgotten to tell the top seeds. Vancouver, Colorado, Saskatchewan, and Buffalo all lost. All of them. The entire top half of the bracket went home in the first round, and San Diego was part of that story.
Their quarterfinal opponent was Colorado, the second seed at 12-6. The Seals forced overtime and converted — messily, controversially, in a fashion that will follow this franchise into future seasons. But they converted. Leclaire found the net. The scoreboard said Seals. The league later said it shouldn’t have counted. Colorado went home anyway.
The Crease Call: Let’s Actually Talk About It
The NLL’s admission that the officials got it wrong is notable precisely because leagues almost never do that. When the league suspends its own officials and publicly acknowledges an error that altered the outcome of a playoff game, you don’t get to shrug it off. Colorado has every right to be furious, and Brad Self — who won GM of the Year this season — built a 12-6 team that deserved better than to have its postseason end on a blown call.
But here’s what actually happened after that: San Diego went on to win two more games in a best-of-three semifinal against Toronto before losing. They didn’t steal that series — they lost it. Toronto won 2-1. The Rock were better, and they proved it. That outcome has nothing to do with Tre Leclaire’s foot position against Colorado.
The honest accounting: San Diego’s quarterfinal win is permanently asterisked. Their semifinal run is not.
Zach Currier Made His Case All Season
Lost in the controversy is the fact that the Seals produced the NLL’s Transition Player of the Year. Zach Currier won that award, and it’s the kind of hardware that doesn’t get handed out based on one play in an overtime game. Transition POY is a grind award — you earn it across an entire season of doing the work that doesn’t show up on a scoring sheet. Currier was doing that work all year, and the award reflects a player operating at a high level regardless of what happened in one February overtime game.
That matters for what the Seals are building. An 8-10 regular season with a Transition POY and a semifinal appearance — controversial path included — is a foundation, not a fluke. The roster has pieces. Currier is a legitimate two-way threat who makes everyone around him better. San Diego isn’t a contender yet, but they’re closer to the conversation than their record suggested in February.
What This Season Actually Means Going Forward
The Seals need to reckon with the crease call the same way any organization reckons with a tainted win: acknowledge it, don’t hide behind it, and then move on by being better. Colorado deserved that game. That’s the honest take. But San Diego also deserved credit for going toe-to-toe with a team that should have handled them and forcing overtime in the first place. That’s not nothing.
The NLL suspended the officials. It can’t give Colorado its season back. And it can’t take away San Diego’s semifinal run, contested as it was. The 2025-26 Seals are a complicated story, and that’s exactly what makes it worth telling. They weren’t good enough to win the championship. They were good enough to make everyone uncomfortable — and in a season where every top seed got bounced in the first round, uncomfortable is exactly where this league needed to be.
The controversy is real. The run was legitimate. Both stay on the record.