How Lake Erie Utilized Pace Against Greenwich

 

Despite losing to the Grizzlies in their first match of the season, the Lake Erie Beacons shocked the NSL world. Their lineup of Tom Walsh, Ben Smith, and David Baillargeon came together to give an uber-talented Greenwich lineup all they could handle. This weekend, Smith and Baillargeon return for Lake Erie alongside World #35 Yannick Wilhelmi to take on a Newport Dragons team with the 1 seed in their sights. Could Lake Erie spoil the party for Newport?

 

It’s easy to dismiss them based on the on-paper talent discrepancy, though we already have proof of concept that the Beacons won’t go gentle into that good night. Ahead of their match, let’s dive into how they got the most out of their lineup against Greenwich. 

 

Know Your Role

 

I’ve written extensively about the three different positional roles an NSL player can occupy: attacker, defender, and utility player. Lake Erie stayed in this match because the coaches understood their players’ strengths and how they could apply to each role. Ben Smith’s attacking role in this match has been well-documented. Smith ended up playing all four of Lake Erie’s power plays and scored 14 points. Smith was encouraged to loosen his wrist and take the ball in short as often as he could in the hopes of winning his minutes. Tom Walsh and David Baillargeon played much more conservatively as defenders. Each player clearly knew their role in this match, and thus felt empowered to execute it. 

 

The Lake Erie coaching staff displayed excellent command over NSL strategy regarding player roles. But, upon rewatching the match, something new caught my eye: utilizing a slow pace. I’ll explain. 

 

Pace in the NSL

 

Most sports fit into one of two categories: either what I’ll call a time-constant sport, or an opportunity-constant sport. Individual squash vs NSL squash perfectly illustrates this contrast. Individual squash is an opportunity-constant sport. Each game of squash is played to 11, and the game is won once that target is reached. It does not matter if it takes 2 minutes or 30 minutes. The target is always the same. Another example of an opportunity-constant sport is baseball. It doesn’t matter how long the game takes; each team gets exactly nine innings to score runs. In short, the time is unknown, the amount of opportunities to score points is known. 

 

Time-constant sports are any sport with a clock. Basketball, football, and hockey all qualify. So does NSL squash. In these sports, the amount of time each team gets to score points is constant. The number of opportunities to score points within that time varies. For example, look at the difference between the two matches from April 11th. Chicago vs Nashville contained 138 total points, while Greenwich vs Newport had just 93. Both matches were the typical 70 minutes of the NSL format, just with wildly different point totals. 

 

I mentioned the term pace. Faster pace means more scoring opportunities per unit of time (minute, period, match, etc); slower pace means fewer scoring opportunities. Lake Erie expertly utilized a slow pace to keep the match close against Greenwich. 

 

Why was this important? Lake Erie was at a talent deficit. When you’re essentially David going against Goliath, the best way to combat the NSL equivalent of Goliath (the Panthers) is to limit the number of opportunities they get to realize that talent advantage. In other words, slow down the pace!

 

Tom Walsh’s Immense Impact 

 

Tom Walsh led Lake Erie with 34 minutes played. He also had by far the least amount of points per minute on the team. 

 

	Points	Minutes	Points/Min
Ben Smith	22	20	1.1
Tom Walsh	25	34	0.74
David Baillargeon	15	16	0.94

 

You could look at this chart and say Walsh was clearly the worst player, but that’s a woefully incomplete analysis. Lake Erie wanted to play at a slow pace and limit Greenwich’s scoring opportunities. They tasked Walsh with doing so, and he did a phenomenal job. In Period 1, 10 total points were scored (Greenwich 6-4 Lake Erie) in the 9 minutes Walsh was on court. 27 were scored in the following 11 minutes. In Period 2: 16 points scored in the 10 minutes Walsh was on court and 21 in the 10 minutes Walsh was off. Walsh meaningfully slowed the game down and limited the opportunities Greenwich had to realize their talent advantage. 

 

In Period 3, Walsh was forced to play faster, as he was playing from behind to close out the match. Walsh was forced into a utility role in Period 3 against Mostafa Asal, who played lights out. That was always a tall task for Walsh. In addition, slow pace becomes much tougher to achieve in Period 3. Ten more minutes on the clock and two additional power plays means an unavoidable and substantial increase in scoring opportunities compared to Periods 1 and 2. Winning Period 3 requires a degree of clinical attacking play and outplaying your opponent as a result. Greenwich was always the favorite in that context. Still, Lake Erie had to slow things down in Periods 1 and 2 to give themselves a fighting chance to win. They did just that thanks to Tom Walsh. 

 

Fans and league personnel alike have crowned Ben Smith as Lake Erie’s MVP in their inspiring performance against Greenwich. For me, Walsh was the MVP. His impact on the pace of play in this match gave Lake Erie a real chance to win despite everyone counting them out. The coaching staff had a phenomenal game plan, and the players executed it perfectly. The only thing that prevented them from winning was Mostafa Asal playing like the World #1. 

 

What innovative plan will Lake Erie cook up against Newport this weekend? I’m excited to find out.