The Buffalo Bandits had three goals coming into the season.
Make the playoffs. Check. Get home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Check. Win a championship.
The Bandits’ next step toward a third consecutive NLL championship begins on Friday night with their first-round playoff matchup against the San Diego Seals, but they aren’t thinking about the big picture. They’re thinking in terms of right now.
“It’s one game at a time, and the goal is to win a championship,” Josh Byrne said. “If we do that, it’s a three-peat. It has nothing to do with, ‘Hey, we have to win a three-peat.’ We have to win one game at a time, and the goal all season has been to win the championship and that’s it.”
While the team’s full focus is on Friday, they’re well aware of the weight that comes with being the back-to-back champs going into the playoffs.
This narrative has been around since the very beginning of the season, when the Bandits first began their run for a seventh championship in franchise history. But now, in the playoffs, the intensity ratchets up with just five wins separating the Bandits and the NLL Cup.
“It becomes a little bit more real now that you’re in the playoffs than when you’re in the regular season,” defenseman Paul Dawson said.
Who’s your pick to win it all? 👀🏆 pic.twitter.com/VtFy4nm3py
— NLL (@NLL) April 22, 2025
Making their way back
Coming into the season, the Bandits already had a large target on their back as two-time reigning champs. That target only grew with every win as they started the campaign 7-0, and it’s now larger than ever after they finished atop the league, winning the NLL regular-season title and capturing home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
Instead of being the ones being “hunted” by other teams, the Bandits are looking to flip the script.
“I don’t look at it as a target on our back, I look at it as if we’re the ones on the attack,” Byrne said. “We can’t be sitting there worrying about other teams and how they’re coming for us. It’s whoever’s standing in the way, we have to go and hunt. We have to go and attack them. We have to put the target on their back.”
San Diego was the team that first knocked the target off the Bandits’ back. The Seals handed the Bandits their first loss of the season, 14-13 in overtime, on Feb. 15. The loss snapped a 16-game regular-season winning streak for the Bandits that spanned back to 2023-24.
After starting 7-0, the Bandits fell off their pace following the San Diego game. They managed to rebound and beat the Seals the following week in San Diego but finished the regular season with a 6-5 mark in their final 11 games.
Despite their record, the Bandits had a decorated second half of the season, winning the inaugural Tucker Out Lymphoma Cup and clinching the top seed in the playoffs.
Head coach John Tavares still felt the Bandits were on their game through that latter stretch of the season, which was considerably busier than the first half. They played just seven games in the first 11 weeks of the season as opposed to 12 games in the final 10 weeks. The second half was heavy with close contests, with five games decided by a single goal.
Laborious as the stretch was, both of those elements – two-game weekends and one-goal games – could pop up in the playoffs. The Bandits will be ready.
“The first seven games, we were on fire, 100 percent,” Tavares said. “We’re still playing just as well as we did the first seven games of the season. Maybe our opponents have been playing better, maybe they’re more prepared, but I do know that our guys have been committed all year long. Our guys have been giving us 100-percent effort night in and night out. They’re bought into what we’re trying to accomplish here in Buffalo.”
Record-breaking performances
The Bandits will once again be leaning on a star-studded cast headlined by Byrne and Dhane Smith at forward, NLL all-time wins leader Matt Vinc in goal, and shot-blocking veteran Paul Dawson on defense.
Smith tallied 103 assists to break his own NLL single-season record for the fourth consecutive season. He now holds the four highest single-season assist totals in league history. The fifth highest belongs to Byrne, who set a career high in the category with 90 this season.
Smith and Byrne tied for the NLL lead with 134 points each. Byrne’s 44 goals led the Bandits and ranked sixth in the league.
Along with Byrne, Ian MacKay (37), Kyle Buchanan (34) and Smith (32) all passed the 30-goal mark.
Dawson, meanwhile, broke the NLL blocked shots record by nearly double, blocking 53 shots in front of the legendary goalkeeper Vinc, who also holds the career records for saves and minutes played by a goalie.
This season, Vinc had the second-most minutes played for a goalie in a season, falling short of the record by a single minute.
Officially @NLL Playoffs week. 😤#LetsGoBandits | @ConnorFarrell41 pic.twitter.com/RlT2q1pHwU
— Buffalo Bandits (@NLLBandits) April 21, 2025
Keys to a three-peat
The Bandits have made four consecutive NLL Finals under Tavares, having lost to Calgary in 2019 and Colorado in 2022 (there were no playoffs in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) before winning the last two titles.
While that experience is invaluable, Tavares’ message going into the playoffs is to focus solely on the moment at hand.
“I want to continue to get the guys to play the best that they can like I have in the past,” Tavares said. “We’ve been successful making the NLL Finals four years in a row and we’ve been fortunate to win the last two. Going into the playoffs, nobody cares about the past. We can’t let the past dictate what happens or how we approach it.”
Brad Ralph has experience in the three-peat business, having coached the ECHL’s Florida Everblades to three consecutive Kelly Cup championships from 2022 to 2024. Ralph echoed Tavares’ sentiment about not leaning heavily on prior success.
“You know what it takes if you’ve won a couple, and you know you’re trying to almost do what you’ve done in the past with knowing that it isn’t going to be the same,” Ralph said. “It’s going to be equally as hard, if not harder, but you keep hunting the same goal.”
Mark Speir helped guide Appalachian State to three straight FCS championships as a member of the program’s coaching staff from 2005 to 2007.
“We used to say it takes consistency, having a little bit of luck and staying healthy,” Speir said. “There have been a lot of good teams that have the wrong player get injured at the wrong time.”
In this sense, the Bandits are particularly set up for success. While playing 12 games in the final 10 weeks, injuries started to impact their lineups and the chemistry they were building. Players like Tehoka Nanticoke, Chris Cloutier, Dylan Robinson and more spent time on injured reserve, forcing the Bandits to dip into their practice squad.
However, the injuries ended up opening spots and giving chances for rookies like Clay Scanlan, Taylor Dooley and Lukas Nielsen to excel in their absence, allowing them to gain experience in a regular-season atmosphere. All would be ready to contribute if their name is called upon in the playoffs.
“Obviously, you wish everyone could be 100 percent, but that’s not the reality of sports either,” Dawson said. “You just take on who’s available and if someone’s banged up, then it’s a next man up mentality and it gives other guys a chance to shine.”
While each championship, players come and go, the Bandits have managed to keep their core together, a reason why they’ve been able to chain together success in the past five seasons, according to Tavares.
Ralph noted that the first championship win provides a blueprint for future playoff runs.
“The first one is the hardest because you’ve got a group of men together that haven’t won anything together, so you don’t know if what you’re doing works; the second time around, you believe it a little more because you’ve got a track record,” Ralph said. “Not that they get easier, but your level of confidence, if you truly believe in what you’re doing, will go up.”
The Bandits, with 17 returnees from last year’s championship, have the benefit of that belief. They checked off two goals during the regular season, but their third goal is the one that truly matters.
It all starts with a win-or-go-home game against the Seals.
“It’s going to be a tough battle and there’ll be two good teams playing,” Tavares said. “It’s anybody’s game and the team that makes the least mistakes and capitalizes on the other’s mistakes is going to win.”