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Every week this season at NLLinsider.com we’re going to be putting our heads together to argue and exchange threats over email bring you the All-NLLinsider Team of the Week. Quite simply, the All-NLLinsider Team will consist of the six best players to step foot on the floor in any given game every weekend. 3 F, 1 T, 1 D, 1 G, all awesome. While I hate to load up the All-NLLinsider team with a bunch of All-Stars, the wild performances of week eight had me thinking that they must be doing something right, so without further ado:

Forward: John Tavares

Much will be made of Mark Steenhuis’s efforts to secure Buffalo’s 7th win Friday night (uh, see below) but where would the Bandits have been without John Tavares’s third quarter spree? It was all so predictable, the dependable veteran stepping up in Buffalo’s quarter of need to score four goals in the third and open scoring in the fourth to erase a mess of a first half, but we’ll forgive him his unsurprising ways when they manifest themselves in six goals and one assist.

Forward: Mark Steenhuis

Lacrosse is a team game, absolutely, but on Friday night Bandits fans had to once again be thanking the lacrosse gods that Tavares and Steenhuis are wearing black and orange because 14 of their 17 goals came courtesy of these two. Eight goals for Steenhuis including the final three Bandits goals of regulation and then the long-bomb overtime winner. Can this guy be stopped? This isn’t some cutesy rhetorical question. Can somebody stop Mark Steenhuis please I am running out of things to write about him.

Forward: Dan Dawson

There’s a lot going right with Boston these days and you can’t pin all the successes of their 4-game winning streak on one player, but even if you did out of frustration or petty jealousy of their sole possession of second in the east, at least Dan Dawson makes it look like a believable claim for you. 19 points in two games this weekend. That’s nice of him. In any game where Dawson is setting picks like they’re giant plates at a Morgan family thanksgiving, the Blazers will not lose, and it’s because he makes everyone around him better. A great leader makes for a greater team effort, and that greater team effort has made for a record of 6-3.

Transition: Geoff Snider

Classic Snider on Saturday night, and nary a roughing penalty to be seen. Snider is at his absolute scariest when he’s in control of his every action and has you thinking that he can blow the game wide open off of any given face-off or fast-break pass. With the flick of a stick he can rob an entire team of their momentum; silence a road barn or blow up the Wachovia. And then he can beat the crud out of you, but he doesn’t have to. Two goals, two assists, 22 of 29 face-offs won, 25 looseballs, and zero minutes in penalties. Would I have given him this honor based solely on his encyclopedic knowledge of Back to the Future II? Yes. But it never came to that.

Defense: Eric Martin

I’m just going to say it: if I were on a professional lacrosse team playing at HP Pavilion and I found out before the game that I was paired up against Eric Martin I wouldn’t even go out there. I’d be like oooh, yeah, really wanted to play in this game guys it’s just that I’ve got this lego stuck up my nose so I guess I can’t. I don’t want to tell you why this would be a believable excuse, it just would be. Eric Martin can go harass someone else. Stick to them like a Lake Huron leech. I’ll watch him pick up a game-high eleven looseballs and assist on a goal from my spot in the stands, thank you very much.

Goalie: Mike Poulin

So Mike Poulin finally gets a start and it’s against the Calgary Roughnecks. If you’ve ever sat around wondering why goaltenders are so wacky, well, this game would have been the answer to your question. Except that he beat them. 38 saves on 48 shots including one in the final 20 seconds that over 10,000 people were holding their breath for in an 11-10 win that’s struck fear into the hearts of Champion’s Cup contenders everywhere. Was it enough to convince people that the Blazers would have been fine if Poulin had remained their number one? With everyone just starting to see Boston as the legitimate threat that they are we might have to settle for one step at a time here.

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