The Money Ballers: Week 1

January 12th, 2010 by Paul Tutka

Gait scored three momentum shifters on Saturday night against Buffalo. (Photo: Jane Shafer)

As far as weekends go, this past one was about as lame as you could get from The Money Ballers perspective.

NLL Insider’s clutch scoring countdown rang off some ring rust after crowning Andrew Potter our Jr. A Money Baller king this past summer, last year Mark Steenhuis taking the crown in the National Lacrosse League, but with some severely, sometimes hard to watch blowouts, there wasn’t a lot of money showings coming outta Week 1. This year Insider will not only check out the leaderboard every Tuesday, we’ll also hand out our Clutch Performer of the Week, this first week’s honour going to Rochester Knighthawks legend, Gary Gait. Find our why, after the jump.

First off, just a quick catch-up for those new to The Money Ballers game. The Money Ballers tracks players that have scored either a tying, go-ahead, and most importantly, game winning goal, weighing that goal depending on what peroid of play it is scored in. We also factor in helpers, but to a lesser extent. This year we’re gonna again add a little more juice to those later goals by a point (or so). So the scoring summary for this year’s Money Ballers is as follows…

FIRST THREE PERIODS

FOURTH PERIOD

TIE

AHEAD

GWG

TIE

AHEAD

GWG

TIE

AHEAD

GWG

0.5

1.5

0.5

2.5

New this year will be our Clutch Performer of the Week nod, as stated above, this week’s award going to Gait, who came outta the Knighthawks’ season opening win over Buffalo with a hat-trick, all three goals factoring into The Money Ballers this week.

Gait’s first goal was a feed from John Grant to open up scoring on Saturday night, then knotting things up after Buffalo jumped out to a rare lead to start the second quarter, and although it was a bit buried, Gait also scored the game winner minutes later, via again, a feed from Grant.

Based on the goals Gait scored last year however though, getting his stick on momentum shifting snipes has been a recurring theme since Gait came back to the league outta retirement. His numbers might not be leading the league in scoring, but when Gait scores for Rochester, it usually matters. Tied for 59th on the NLL’s scoring charts last year, Gait ranked 14th in The Money Ballers in ‘09, scoring two fourth period winners last year that really propelled is stock on the clutch leaderboard.

Although this week’s rundown is shorter than usual due to not everyone kicking off their season last week (and those nasty blowouts), it also shouldn’t be surprising to already see guys like Dan Teat, Josh Sanderson and Pat Maddalena, all players that made the final countdown last year, Teat’s third overall placing maybe the most surprising of anyone in ‘09, in the countdown.

Anyways, this week’s shortened leaderboard is below, and check back next week with some hopeful increased clutch goal scoring during the NLL’s Week 2.

Week 1		FIRST THREE PERIODS						FOURTH PERIOD						OT
		TIE		AHEAD		GWG		TIE		AHEAD		GWG		GWG
Player	Team	G	A	G	A	G	A	G	A	G	A	G	A	G	A	Pts
Gary Gait	ROC	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.5
Josh Sanderson	CAL	0	0	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4.0
John Grant	ROC	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.5
Pat Maddalena	ORL	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.5
Eric Martin	WSH	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.0
Josh Wasson	TOR	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.0
Tracey Kelusky	CAL	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.0
Dan Teat	PHI	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.0

Several tied at 1.5 points
-