The Bandits entered the 2025-26 season the kings of the NLL universe with three consecutive championships. However, losses of players like Chris Cloutier and Chase Fraser to free agency and Justin Martin to retirement casted doubts about the sustainability of the Bandits’ success.
That uncertainty continued into early February as a 3-1 start was followed by losses in five of six games. The Bandits’ season record was 4-6 following a loss in Vancouver on Feb. 20.
The lacrosse world seemingly thought the proverbial “Last Dance” – the moniker used to refer to the final season of the Chicago Bulls dynasty in the 1990s – had already happened in Banditland.
But the Bandits rattled off seven consecutive wins despite facing their toughest stretch of the season. They’re back in the playoffs for the sixth straight season and their championship aspirations are back on the forefront.
This is the story of how the Bandits turned their season around.
How a loss turned the tide
During the four-game losing skid in January and February – fueled by an injury to defenseman Mitch de Snoo and inconsistent offensive play – the Bandits fell to 3-3 after a 20-9 loss to the Colorado Mammoth.
Head coach John Tavares said the team morale hit a low point after that game, which saw the Bandits allowed the most goals in a game since 2017. They then lost to the Philadelphia Wings, which was the third time they blew a second-half lead.
A win against Halifax on Feb. 14 halted the four-game losing streak, but an 11-9 loss to a talented Vancouver team saw the Bandits go more than 25 minutes without a goal.
The Bandits found themselves 4-6 with the NLL trade deadline less than a month away. Their upcoming schedule at that point included six consecutive games against teams in playoff position, beginning with a rematch of the 2025 NLL Finals against Saskatchewan.
What happened next was a team meeting that changed the season.
“When we were 4-6 we had a team meeting and guys made a commitment to treating every game like it’s a playoff game,” Tavares said. “And just be very gritty and stingy and make the other teams earn everything that they get. We’re looking to win playoff style games, which are 7-6, 8-7, 9-8, games. You got to learn to win if you’re not going to score more than 10 goals. The guys have made commitments to being a little bit more disciplined and not taking as many high-risk, low-reward plays. It seems to be paying dividends right now, and we’re finding ways to win with scoring under 10 goals. If we score over 10, great, our principals still remain and keep the other team under 10.”
Byrne’s heroics inject belief
Dhane Smith – who had his ninth 100-point season and fifth in a row in his 13-year career – said the Vancouver game reaffirmed to the group that they had a team capable of winning against the top teams in the league.
The Bandits – who had de Snoo and defenseman Matt Spanger back in the lineup – saw what kind of team they could be and it was a reminder that their championship DNA was still there.
“I feel like our turning point was the Vancouver game even though we lost,” Smith said. “They’re one of the top teams in the league and we were close with them. Felt like we could have won that game, and that kind of gave us some momentum.”
“The game in Vancouver was a well-fought game,” Tavares added. “They’re a really good team and we were right there. We had a lot of opportunities to score, and unfortunately, we didn’t capitalize on them. But I watched that game back, and we could have easily won that game. … We’re looking at this like, ‘Guys, this is one of the best teams in the league, and look, we’re right there.’ And that was kind of like the beginning of, ‘Hey guys, we’re not that bad.’”
The Bandits bought into their identity prescribed by Tavares and carried over the lingering belief they established against Vancouver into a matchup against the then-first-place Saskatchewan Rush.
The Rush entered the first of two meetings back in late February with a dynamic offense led by Robert Church, Ryan Keenan and Zach Manns. The Bandits recognized the Rush wanted revenge for last seasons’ finals.
Buffalo led 8-4 at halftime with Ian Mackay’s first-half hat trick as the catalyst. The Rush fought back and scored six of the eight goals in the second half, including the equalizer with 57 seconds to play in the fourth quarter. The Bandits had blown another lead.
MacKay was injured for most of the second half and the Bandits were headed to overtime, which lasted for nearly seven minutes until Byrne blazed on past Rush goaltender Frank Scigliano. There was rapture in Banditland and belief back on the Bandits bench.
JOSH BYRNE OT WINNER‼️#LetsGoBandits | @Joshbyrne94 pic.twitter.com/pIoaw8XQ5X
— Buffalo Bandits (@NLLBandits) February 28, 2026
“To put it bluntly, we have guys who came back to play to make another run at this thing,” Byrne said after the Saskatchewan game. “You may not understand how big of a commitment that is when you’re 35-plus and (have) kids and a family. You’re asking your wife and kids to allow you to go and live out your dream, but in the same moment, these guys are missing moments in their kids’ lives and being away from their wives, and that’s a big thing to do, especially when we’ve had success that we’ve had. We all had to kind of look ourselves in the mirror and be like, ‘Hey, it’s not about us, it’s about some of these guys that have come back, and at the end of the day, you got to fight for them in what they’re giving up, and I’m just proud of our guys.”
“Beating Saskatchewan in overtime put us over the edge,” Tavares added. “We just played two of the top teams, and we’re in both games. Lost the one, won the other. I think that kind of opened up the players’ eyes and said, ‘Hey, we’re still a really good team here, so we can believe in ourselves.’ And I think that if we’re feeding the positive side, we’re gonna be a lot more confident than feeding the negative side of we’re not that good, we’re an older, slower team. We lost Chase [Fraser], we lost [Chris] Cloutier, we lost Justin Martin, and just dwelling on the negatives. Once we start thinking about the positives, I think things started to turn around a lot more for us.”
To sell or not to sell
The Bandits played the Toronto Rock less than 24 hours after beating the Rush and made the trip up the QEW to Hamilton immediately following the win. However, the Bandits remained 5-6 and on the outside looking into the playoff picture.
“At that time we’re looking, ‘Are we blowing this team up? What’s going on here?’” Tavares said.
Simply put, the Bandits needed another win to cement themselves as a team capable of making some magic in the second half of the season. They were tasked with playing a young, athletic Rock team headlined by star rookie CJ Kirst and savvy veteran Mark Matthews.
A 7-7 game midway through the third quarter was blown open by the Bandits – who were without MacKay – as they scored seven of the final nine goals to win 14-9. The Bandits’ energy in the back rooms of TD Coliseum in Hamilton was palpable as Carter Coffey made his NLL debut and Smith and Byrne each had a hat trick.
“It’s no secret that if we didn’t go on a run this weekend, we’re probably getting dismantled,” Byrne said after the game. “At the end of the day, we’re just fighting for another game with each other, and that’s hard to beat.”
The wins on back-to-back days changed the course of the Bandits’ season and it showed general manager and defensive coach Steve Dietrich that this was a team worth investing in.
“If we would have lost those two games, that would have put us at 4-8, basically making us have to go almost undefeated down the stretch to have a sniff to get in,” Dietrich said. “As an aging team, we would have been looking to find homes for some of our older guys to give them a chance to compete in the playoffs maybe one last time. Those two wins showed that , on top of the character in our room, we still have that championship mentality that we can compete with anybody when we want to play with the passion and basically the desire that we played those two with go. It proved to me that there’s still something there that this group deserved an opportunity.”
“That double header weekend when we played Sask and Toronto, we were at a bit of a crossroads,” Byrne added. “You look around the room and the writing’s on the wall, and it was even said, ‘Hey, listen, if we don’t go 2-0 this weekend, we’re probably gonna be looking at selling guys.’ You build such a bond with guys that you’ve been playing with for seven years, eight years, whatever it is. It’s really hard to think about. Like, it gets real, fast. I’m not gonna see this guy every week. When that kind of hits and that reality sets in, it forces you to really take a look in the mirror and play for each other. We’ve been doing that over the last however many weeks.”
A streak is born
Dietrich made a splash at the deadline, bringing Buffalo native Joe Resetarits back to his hometown from the Philadelphia Wings for Lukas Nielsen and a 2026 second-round pick. Dietrich also acquired Tyler Hendrycks from Calgary to solidify depth.
The Bandits faced a rematch against the Mammoth – the same team that scored 20 against them less than two months prior – on March 13. The Bandits won their third game in a row 13-10 after nine-point games from Smith, Byrne and a hat trick from Tehoka Nanticoke.
Buffalo then traveled to San Diego for a game that went down as an all-time classic. The Bandits trailed by four with 5:26 remaining in the fourth quarter until Smith scored with 44 seconds left and had the winner in overtime to cap the improbable comeback.
Dhane Smith wins it in overtime‼️#LetsGoBandits | @NLL pic.twitter.com/BUJeDrH1Ki
— Buffalo Bandits (@NLLBandits) March 22, 2026
“That’s one of those games that I never thought maybe we’d come back and win,” Smith said. “At the beginning of the year, there’s no way we’re going to win those games. And we kind of even almost lost a few of those games that we’re up two or three and finally, now we’re winning those games, and we’re riding that high and we just got to continue to kind of better. We set the standard where we should be playing at and each week we want to raise the standard.”
“It’s a combination of trust and belief,” Byrne added. “I think at the end of the day, we all know what we’re capable of. We know that realistically we probably shouldn’t have been down by that much in that game. But also understanding that we have the players and the firepower on the offensive end to go on a run like that and just score in punches and score quickly but also on the back end to kind of lock it down as well and give us the ability to go on a run.”
The Bandits received more heroics the next week as Resetarits’ winner with 46 seconds remaining capped four unanswered goals and erased a three-goal, fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Rush 8-7.
BUFFALO JOE WITH THE GAME WINNER! 🥵#LetsGoBandits | @NLL pic.twitter.com/F2r8VsvSCR
— Buffalo Bandits (@NLLBandits) March 29, 2026
Buffalo’s offense exploded for their sixth straight win as they clinched a playoff berth with a dominant 15-5 win over the Warriors. The win was highlighted by 10 points from Byrne and fights by Steve Priolo, Nick Weiss and Zack Belter that sent KeyBank Center into a frenzy.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a PRI. 👊😤#LetsGoBandits | @NLL pic.twitter.com/YbUhRsqt7C
— Buffalo Bandits (@NLLBandits) April 5, 2026
“It’s team tough,” Smith said after the game. “Everybody is willing to stand up for a teammate. Priolo fought that one time and he was on the bench and saying, ‘Can I fight again?’ It’s just crazy, the atmosphere in there and the fans. It felt like a playoff game, and it really was for us, and we want to keep building as a group. And Priolo said it earlier, yes it matters that we won, but it matters that we’re standing up for each other and it showed.”
The Bandits won their seventh game in a row with a 12-6 victory over the Rochester Knighthawks as Kyle Buchanan eclipsed 700 career points and Smith moved into second all-time in franchise history in goals.
A potential ‘Last Dance’
The Bandits were unable to secure home floor for the first round after a 12-8 loss to Oshawa to close out the regular season, but it was still one to remember.
There was one key motivator for the Bandits as they flipped their season around: the willingness to play for the players who may not be here next year.
“Guys like Vino [Vinc], Bucky [Buchanan], [Paul] Dawson, they all made the decision to come back this year when they could have stepped away on top,” MacKay said after the first Saskatchewan win. “As much as it should have been known that they did that and acknowledged that earlier in the year, we haven’t played like that. If you can’t really find it to get up for a game, look at those three guys, because who knows what they have after this year. I just challenged our guys to find it within and to look to those guys if you need inspiration at all, and think about those guys in the game, and how would you play Game 3 of the playoffs.”
“Every year you bring back a lot of the same guys but there’s also an integration of a lot of new faces,” Byrne added. “Naturally it takes time to get to know some guys, for other guys to get comfortable and just for everyone to kind of be on the same page. There’s a bit of, ‘Oh, we’ve won the last three, this is kind of that storybook ending, and last dance. Is this how it’s supposed to end?’ You forget that we can’t be taking dumb penalties. Every team’s gonna give us their best and if we’re even slacking 10 percent, we’re gonna lose that game. It’s just taking us a little bit of time to get used to each other and to kind of have that bond, and really strap down, understand that there’s a certain level of focus that needs to be had when playing these games.”
A “Last Dance” usually implies uncertainty of futures, and that’s the case for many of the Bandits veterans who could be part of their last playoff run.
That thought process has been a motivator for Byrne, who said the group rallied around the idea of playing for each other instead of trying to play an individualized style of lacrosse.
“That was the frustrating part,” Byrne said. “We knew what kind of team we were, and we knew the guys that were in this locker room were capable of so much more. And it wasn’t necessarily during those first 10 games, the way that other teams were playing us, but it was the way that we were playing. Just not playing disciplined, taking stupid penalties, forcing things, and just really not buckling down and understanding that there’s some guys on this team that this will be their last season, no matter what happens. And you have to look yourself in the mirror and understand, ‘Hey, if this was your last season, how would you play?’ Would you take that extra penalty? Would you maybe take that slash to be better for the team?’ Like, yeah. As a group, I think we’ve all kind of put reality to the forefront and understood that this is the last season for a lot of these guys, and we got to do what’s best for the group.”
The home regular-season finale against Rochester gave players like Buchanan and Vinc – who was dominant during the seven-game surge – a chance to reflect on what this season, with all its crazy twists and turns, has meant to them.
While this could be their final run, they still want one more thing: a record-breaking fourth championship in a row.
“You just build these bonds that last a lifetime, and then we add new guys into it and new flavors and continue to evolve,” Buchanan said. “But it’s certainly been a really special time in my life that I’ll cherish.”
“When you don’t know the future, you want to soak up those memories and that’s what you’re doing out there,” Vinc added. “Playing here is a special place and having that opportunity to go out there on a regular basis with a great group of guys. You don’t take it for granted. Your career goes by pretty fast and pretty fortunate to have a special group here, and we’re just trying to hang on and keep playing the way we have the last couple of games, and hopefully we can ride that momentum going in the playoffs.”