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Who Will the Swarm Swat Away in 20152015 ScheduleAugust 28, 2014The Hive = Xcel Energy CenterSchedule
The Minnesota Swarm announced their 2015 schedule for their eleventh season of play. They will open at The Hive on Saturday, January 3rd against the Colorado Mammoth. It will be the first time that the Swarm open the regular season at home since 2011 when they played the Rocheter Knighthawks on January 8th. The home opener on January 3rd is the earliest home opener in Swarm history beating the January 6th opener in 2006 against the Philadelphia Wings. The Swarm will make their first visit to Uncasville, Connecticut on January 24th to play the new Connecticut team (no nickname yet) who moved from Philadelphia during the off season. Connecticut will play their home games at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville. Minnesota and Connecticut will play each other four times this season. The last time the Swarm played the same team four times in a year was 2008 when they played the Chicago Shamrox, a rivalry that yours truly misses dearly. This year the Swarm play both the Buffalo Bandits and the three-time defending NLL Champions, the Rochester Knighthawks, three times each. In the reverse from last year, the Swarm host Rochester twice and Buffalo once while they visit Rochester once and Buffalo twice. The last home game of the year is on May 2nd against Rochester. It is the latest that the Swarm will have finished a regular season and will be the first May regular season game in team history. With the Swarm playing Connecticut four times, the third game against Toronto was taken away leaving a home and home series on Febuary 13th and 14th between the Swarm and Rock, with the first game at The Hive on Friday and the second game in Toronto on Saturday. I would rather play Toronto three times and reduce the Connecticut games to three. That would give the Swarm three games against all division foes aka balance. The Swarm once again play Colorado twice, once at home to open the season and later on in Denver. This year the Swarm only play Calgary once and that will be at home on April 18th. This will be the first time since 2008 that the Swarm will not travel to Calgary. The Swarm pick up an extra game against the Edmonton Rush and will play them once in Edmonton early and late in the season at The Hive. The Swarm will play the Vancouver Stealth only once this season and that will be in Langley, BC. This is the second straight year that the Swarm will not host Vancouver. The last time the Swarm hosted the Stealth was 2013 when the Stealth was known as the Washington Stealth. The Swarm have three doubleheaders. The first is the home and home with Toronto mentioned above. The second is a Sat/Sun hosting Buffalo and then traveling to Colorado. The third is a Fri/Sat hosting Connecticut and then traveling to Rochester. The Fri/Sat doubleheaders I always prefer us hosting on Saturday nights as the team always has to leave earlier on Friday to catch their flights to the Saturday game. Just personal preference. The Swarm will have six Saturday and three Friday games at The Hive. This will be the first year without a Sunday home game since 2010. Keep in mind that they might change a Saturday night game time later on if they have another Rollergirl doubleheader. The Swarm will have only one home game each in January, March and May and finish with four straight (five of the last six) at The Hive. The Swarm have two three-game road trips, the first in January and the second in late March. The Swarm have one road game each on Friday and Sunday. The remaining seven are on Saturday. Former 2014 Swarm players returning to The Hive in 2015. Of course this list may grow as we get closer to the season:
The NLL Playoffs as far as we know will be the same as last year, when the league for the first time had best of two series with ten-minute tiebreakers in the Division Finals and Champions Cup which together with a single first round game in each division was spread out over five weekends. So look for the following playoff schedule, that we expect the Swarm to rejoin after missing the playoffs last season.
2015 NLL Champions Cup Winners | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
