A 3rd Round Offensive Player of the Year? A 6th round MVP? An Undrafted Defender of the Year? It's all happened. The late round picks that won pro lacrosse's biggest honors.
- Dan Arestia
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
We are now less than two weeks away from the 2025 PLL draft. While all signs point to the first pick being CJ Kirst, after that, questions abound. Some positions are deeper than others, a healthy number of trades pre draft have shuffled the order, two teams have new leadership, it all adds to an unpredictable air about the event. The 2025 class doesn’t have the depth of the 2024 class. At least, it doesn’t have quite the hype. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t gems to be found. For as long as pro field lacrosse has been played, late round picks have become successful pros. Some are even award winning. I went back through lacrosse draft history to find some of the latest picks to ever win a major MLL or PLL award. I limited my search to players selected outside of the first round, and then noted their overall draft position because round sizes fluctuated over the years. We also have the 2019 and 2020 seasons where there were two drafts. For this exercise, I stuck to the draft position in the league in which the player won the award. So Tim Troutner, despite going second in the MLL draft, counts as a 4th round pick in the PLL draft because that’s where he played and won his award. Here are some spectacular steals from draft history.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
This award has had some serious variance. The first overall pick does not win often. Ned Crotty won it in 2010, Rob Pannell in 2013, Alex Woodall as the first pick in the MLL draft in 2019, and Jeff Teat in 2021. It should be noted that 2019 had two drafts and Woodall went first in one of them, and no 2020 Rookie of the Year was awarded in the bubble. Safe to say it would have been first overall pick Grant Ament had it been given. Since 2001, that’s just five first overall picks to win it if you give one to Ament. Other notable late winners, listed chronologically:
2007 - Kevin Huntley, 17th overall
2011 - Jeremy Boltus, 43rd overall
2012 - Matt Gibson, 38th overall
2016 - Jack Kelly, 53rd overall
2017 - Josh Byrne, 19th overall
2018 - Chris Cloutier, 29th overall
2019 - Tim Troutner, 20th overall (PLL Draft)
2024 - TJ Malone, 17th overall
Jack Kelly is the latest selection to win Rookie of the Year. Jeremy Boltus and Matt Gibson aren’t too far behind. Since 2011, the Rookie of the Year has come from outside the first round nine times, that’s more than half the time.
GOALIE OF THE YEAR
Goalies, in pro lacrosse, can famously come from just about anywhere. Historically they get drafted late, as offensive firepower has always come off the board first. As a result, there’s a lot of award winners who were selected late, including five different multiple time winners of the award. Blaze Riorden has won the award five times in the PLL and went very late. Sean Sconone went undrafted in both the MLL and PLL drafts, but won MLL Goalie of the Year twice. Here’s some notable late round winners, chronologically by the year they won the award, or their first win for multiple winners.
2005 - Chris Garrity, 14th overall
2009, 2013 - Jesse Schwarzmann, 39th overall
2011, 2012, 2015 - Drew Adams, 19th overall
2017 - Jack Kelly, 53rd overall
2014, 2016, 2018 - John Galloway, 20th overall
2018 - Niko Amato, 29th overall (Galloway and Amato split the award in 2018)
2019, 2020 (MLL) - Sean Sconone, undrafted
2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 - Blaze Riorden, 51st overall
Blaze continues to be a marvel. There were 50 players selected ahead of an MVP and five time Goalie of the Year winner. There are Hall of Fame level netminders here. It’s interesting that the narrative of “wait to take goalies” late has never changed; nobody seems interested in disrupting this trend.
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
In the MLL days, this was strictly Defensive Player of the Year. PLL award structure is different and position based. There’s an award for a close defender, long stick midfielder, and short stick defensive midfielder. I considered the MLL winners, and then the winner of each positional PLL award to find the late round award winners. This didn’t matter much for LSM of the Year because Michael Ehrhardt, a first round pick, won the award five straight times. I once again stuck to picks outside of the first round of the draft. Interesting that for this award, the late round players winning the award is a recent phenomenon. One main reason for this is literally just Brodie Merrill. He was the 3rd overall pick, and he won every MLL DPOY award from 2006 through 2011. Nicky Polanco, a first round pick, won the two before him, and Lee Zink, a first round pick, won the two after him. That’s 2004 through 2013, ten years of the award, going to three different highly drafted players. It wasn’t until 2019 that the mold got broken. And it got REALLY broken. Two different undrafted players won positional awards in that time. Notable winners really began to emerge in the split league and ultimately PLL era.
2019 - Liam Byrnes, 22nd overall (MLL DPOY)
2019 - Jarrod Neumann, 25th overall (PLL Defenseman)
2019 - Dominique Alexander, 33rd overall (PLL SSDM)
2020 - Tyler Warner, 11th overall (PLL SSDM)
2021 - Graeme Hossack, undrafted outdoors (PLL Defenseman)
2021, 2022, 2024 - Danny Logan, 11th overall (PLL SSDM)
2023 - Latrell Harris, undrafted outdoors (PLL SSDM)
2023 - Garrett Epple, 16th overall (PLL Defenseman)
2024 - Tyler Carpenter, 26th overall (PLL LSM)
Canadian players like Hossack and Harris were highly regarded indoors, but not on outdoor radars. Hossack played at Lindenwood and despite being an All American, went undrafted in the MLL. Harris made the jump to the NLL essentially directly from high school, a rare phenomenon. Danny Logan went in the 2nd round and was the first SSDM taken in a draft that included Ryan Terefenko, Tre Leclaire (who has become a two way midfield weapon), and Jeff Trainor.
OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Like on the other side of the ball, this needs to be looked at differently for each league. The MLL just had the Offensive Player of the Year award, while the PLL gives awards positionally. As a result, I considered the PLL Attackman and Midfielder of the Year when checking through draft histories to find gems. To no surprise, there are very few players to win these awards who were taken late. It’s hard to find the late gem. It may be because offensive talent is better evaluated, players tend to be more pro ready, or could even have a longer leash to find success than a defender who gets exposed as a rookie. Here are some of the notable players taken outside of the first round.
2010 - Matt Poskay, 12th overall
2017 - Eric Law, 29th overall
2020 - Zed Williams, 22nd overall (PLL Attackman of the Year)
2023 - Marcus Holman, 12th overall (PLL Attackman of the Year)
That’s not a lot of names! Like with defenders, a handful of players hogged all the hardware. Tom Schreiber has won Midfielder of the Year five times in six PLL seasons. In the early MLL days, it was players who were already established stars winning the awards like John Grant Jr, Mark Millon, and the Powells. The first player who was actually in a draft to win Offensive Player of the Year was Paul Rabil in 2009 (the inaugural MLL draft is considered 2001 so I’m not counting Ryan Powell). Rabil would win the award three times in four years. Holman was drafted in 2013 and won his first Attackman of the Year award in 2023, a testament to his incredible longevity and productivity in the outdoor game.
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
The big one. Over the history of lacrosse, it’s not easy to find a player who wins an MVP and wasn’t immediately identified to be drafted early. The steals here are few and far between. Since 2001, there have been six MVPs that were drafted outside of the first round. As with offensive player awards, there’s a period in the early MLL days where the winners were never drafted at all, they were established when the league launched. Ryan Powell was the MVP in the league’s inaugural season, he was part of an initial 2000 draft to load talent into the league, along with another what’s considered the inaugural MLL draft in 2001. The first player taken in a regular MLL draft to win the award was Conor Gill, a 3rd overall pick. Gary Gait and Mark Millon, who finished college in 1990 and 1994 respectively, split the MVP in 2005. John Grant Jr won it back to back in 2007 and 2008. The notable late players:
2010 - Matt Poskay, 12th overall
2012 - Brendan Mundorf, 21st overall
2015 - Greg Gurenlian, 23rd overall
2020 - Bryce Wasserman, 62nd overall (MLL MVP)
2020 - Zed Williams, 22nd overall (PLL MVP)
2021 - Blaze Riorden, 51st overall
The first three players here were all drafted in 2006, which is amazing if you think about it. That draft included players like Joe Walters, Kyle Dixon, Sean Morris, Matt Ward, and Jack Reid going in the first round. Not only did the draft produce three MVPs, but none of them were first rounders. Without really digging into drafts in other pro sports, I have to think that’s unique to lacrosse.