The AUDL saw many offseason transactions that organizations would hope change their luck throughout the 2017 campaign. Now, the season is in full throttle and even though teams have not played an even amount of games, some teams are finding themselves down to begin the season.
In the west, the Seattle Cascades lead the way followed by the Los Angeles Aviators. In the preseason, it was predicted that the San Francisco Flamethrowers would stand at the top of that division, but early on
they find themselves in third place. This week, the Flamethrowers are off to LA and San Diego for their matches but they will be missing Beau Kittredge, Grant Lindsley, and Joel Schlachet; all of whom are currently practicing with team USA. Even without their USA teammates, the rest of the San Francisco squad should be able to get the job done against the 0-3 Growlers in San Diego, but the Aviators might be a problem with the team not at full strength.
Coming into the Midwest the Minnesota Wind Chill, Pittsburgh Thunderbirds, and Madison Radicals are all sitting atop the standings at 1-0. In my opinion, I feel that this division could be the most tight by the end of the season, but the Wind Chill put up a solid performance last week that begs them to see a playoff appearance.
In the East, the DC Breeze, New York Empire, Toronto Rush, and Montreal Royal are all tied for first place with a 1-1 record. In this division, the Ottawa Outlaws are the only team to have not played a game so far. The Breeze are coming off of an overtime loss to the Raleigh Flyers while the Empire took a divisional game against the Royal last week. So far, it seems that the Breeze are fit to remain above the other teams in the division after putting together a solid performance against an above average team in the Flyers.
The South is the final division and the one that is going to be the most di
fficult to predict. The Dallas Roughnecks lead the way with a 3-0 record, followed by the Flyers who are 4-1 and then the Jacksonville Canons at 3-1. All three of these teams are definitely playoff threats and even though the Roughnecks and Flyers seem like powerhouses, don’t count the Canons out. Mischa Freystaetter and Cole Sullivan are in control of that squad and hope to lead them to a playoff appearance. If not, the Roughnecks could easily make their case. Even though they lost a plethora of talent in the offseason, they had much more than enough to begin with and retained huge talents in Kurt Gibson, Jimmy Mickle and Dylan Freechild despite losing Kittredge and Cassidy Rasmussen. The men from Dallas could make a run at another title in 2017.
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