2023-2024 Record: 11-7, fourth place, defeated Albany in the NLL championship.
New Faces: F Taite Cattoni, T Clay Scanlan, T Thomas Whitty.
Key Loses: Justin Robinson, Brandon Robinson.
The Buffalo Bandits are looking to do something that hasn’t been done since the 2012-2014 Rochester Knighthawks. That’s to win three consecutive NLL Championships. And, oh yeah, the goaltender for Rochester during that era was none other than Bandits goaltender Matt Vinc. We’ll get back to that later.
When you’ve won two straight championships, you don’t need to fix much if it isn’t broken. They did lose Justin Robinson and Brandon Robinson in the offseason but otherwise their core has stayed intact.
To take the point even further, the Bandits opted not to take any players in the deep Panther City dispersal draft.
Once again you cannot discount this team as a championship contender. The only glaring weakness maybe the age of the lineup as they aren’t getting any younger.
Offense
Buffalo kept the core of this offence together and it is still a deep group. On the right hand side, you have Dhane Smith, Tehoka Nanticoke, Kyle Buchanan, Chase Fraser, and Sam La Rue. Add in Luka Nelson and Christian Watts as camp bodies and the Bandits are in good shape.
On the left, the depth drops off and don’t be surprised if the Bandits make a move to bring in another lefty. After Josh Byrne, Chris Cloutier and Taite Cattoni, it really drops off after that.
Defense
Once again, there is a ton of depth and a lot of hard decisions that will need to be made at training camp.
Connor Farrell is back and will likely be the Bandits faceoff guy. You can add into the mix on defense Ian MacKay, Nick Weiss, Steve Priolo, and Paul Dawson.
You also have the younger contingent in Justin Martin, Matt Spanger, Thomas Whitty, Clay Scanlan and Dylan Robinson. Buffalo is more than set on defense.
Goaltending
Everything lays with 42-year-old Matt Vinc. He’s still playing at the top of his game and will no doubt go down as the greatest goaltender of all time.
The biggest question make is what’s behind him. If Vinc get hurt, Buffalo’s chances of winning diminish greatly. The Bandits have Steve Orleman, who is a veteran, but has been a journeyman and has never shown to be a number one goaltender. They also have Evan Constantopoulos. He’s young and still coming into his own. He may be the future but he isn’t a starter right now.
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