Buzzer Beater: Who Wants to Win the East Division? [UFA Week 6, 2025]

The UFA’s “most competitive division” has just two teams above .500

June 3, 2025 by Alex Rubin in Rankings, Recap

Hi everyone, welcome back to my weekly Buzzer Beater column. Here I will focus on one major storyline each week. The column will also share some news and notes beyond that big story and will be the place to share our most up-to-date power rankings. If you have questions about the UFA, you can also write in to [email protected] to fill up the mailbag.

At the beginning of the season, a certain author wrote: “Already considered the toughest division in the league, the East Division will see at least one playoff-caliber team sitting home in August…”

Well, we might have anywhere from one to three playoff-caliber teams, as Montreal and Philadelphia have proven to be tougher outs than expected, while New York, DC, and Toronto have not reached their highest highs yet this season.

Right now, the Boston Glory look like the class of the division with a sterling 4-0 record. With wins already over DC and Toronto, the Phoenix are 3-2. Nobody else in the division has better than a 3-3 record. There is a legitimate (though admittedly unlikely) world in which we see a Montreal at Philadelphia playoff game. Doesn’t anyone want to challenge Boston and get back to Championship Weekend?

Who Wants to Win the East Division?

The Breeze held off a Toronto Rush comeback this week to remain in the playoff race. Jacques Nissen is playing his first full season now that he has graduated college and isn’t spending his springs in Providence, Rhode Island, and his ascent into the center handler role vacated by Jonny Malks is going well, but it’s really hard to replace a talent and a leader like Malks. With Thomas Edmonds joining the offense more and more often and Christian Boxley back with the team after a year away, the Breeze have enough talent frankly to run the best offense in the league. But without Malks stirring the drink, it seems like DC is falling more flat than fizzy.

One day after eking out the one goal win over Toronto, the Breeze fell to Montreal. And they fell. The score was 22-17. DC never led, and despite coming back to tie the game at one point, saw their deficit enlarge by the end of each quarter. Though DC brought back the bulk of a team that was the Championship favorite deep into August last season, the Breeze are just not playing as well as we all know they can, and they’re making their goals harder and harder to accomplish with each subpar showing so far this season.

On the other hand, Montreal has earned wins against New York and DC in back-to-back weeks. If they can beat Boston a few weeks from now, they’ll be well on their way to a playoff spot, but the Glory have had their number recently. Quentin Bonnaud’s six goals and three blocks against DC reminded fans that he’s a top player, and Jakob Brissette’s five assists are another reminder of the potential he has as an all-star center handler in the Association. Montreal passed the toughest test they could, with wins over the last two divisional winners in the last two weeks…and they’ll have to keep winning because nothing is really secure this early in the season. The Royal will firmly entrench themselves in the playoff picture if they can make adjustments based on their early season success and continue to win games that they “shouldn’t.”

Back to Toronto, though they couldn’t beat DC as Montreal did, the Rush were able to beat New York. Toronto has the easiest excuse of the expected playoff teams in the East, as they have the most new players to integrate. Arvids Karklins finally showed his MVP potential with seven assists against the Empire. Tom Blasman added five more, and Ty Barbieri tallied six goals. Players are finding their roles and getting more and more comfortable playing together. That’s a scary thing for the East, even with Toronto sitting at 1-5.

New York also finds themselves at a crossroads. In previous seasons, their offense felt automatic and their defense could feed off the nervy precision with which opponents felt like they needed to play. Now, with the Empire offense seeming vulnerable and other teams not quite as scared of turning over the disc, New York’s opponents are playing looser and the Empire D-line seems to be losing its mental edge. This means they are playing more close games–and losing more than they have since 2018. In fairness, this week the Empire were missing Marques Brownlee for a World Games obligation, and Jack Williams is clearly affected by an injury. But every other team has to play with whoever they have available, and the Empire are no exception. They will need to figure out how to win without all of their stars available if they’re to get back to Championship Weekend.

We expected the East Division to feel chaotic, but we did not expect it to feel like this. All six teams legitimately have a chance to beat any of the others in any given week. As the club season starts to ramp up and players find their commitments even more split, there will probably be more unexpected results and the standings might stay topsy-turvy. The battle for playoff positioning is truly up in the air, and that sets up as exciting a regular season as any set of fans could ask for.

News and Notes

• The Minnesota Wind Chill earned a statement victory with a 17-15 win over the previously undefeated Atlanta Hustle. Minnesota’s league-leading defense came through to slow down the Hustle’s league-leading offense. The Wind Chill ended the game on a 7-3 run. Three blocks from former-Hustle, current Wind Chill defender Justin Burnett helped clinch the victory.
• Just a day later, the Chicago Union added another L to the Hustle record. Chicago’s 19-18 double overtime victory was not without controversy, as multiple reports shared the referees erred in telling both teams they only had one timeout for the entirety of overtime, when the official rules state each team receives a timeout in every overtime period, including a timeout in double overtime. With each team recording a turnover in sudden death, a timeout may have been impactful, but the results on the field are such that Pawel Janas’ dish to Wilson Matthews won Chicago the game. With wins already over the Wind Chill and Hustle, the Union should be firmly considered Championship Weekend favorites if they were not there already.
• The Madison Radicals doubled up the Indianapolis AlleyCats, 22-11. Luke Marks notched six blocks for the Rads.
• The Colorado Summit handed the Oakland Spiders their first loss of the season. Colorado’s Tobias Brooks made his season debut, dropping six assists and two goals to lead the upset despite star handler Alex Atkins’ absence. Quinn Finer had four goals and four assists in the win as well.
• The Los Angeles Aviators earned their first win over the season, knocking off the Houston Havoc in double overtime. Sean McDougall led the game with a +10, recording a block in double overtime that gave the Aviators the chance to win.
• San Diego made sure the Havoc left Southern California without a win. The Growlers’ offensive trio of Marcel Osborn (2A/5G), Travis Dunn (4A/2G), and Matt Miller (4A/1G) were incredibly stingy with the disc. San Diego had just 11 turnovers in the entire game.
• Salt Lake made it two in a row against the Seattle Cascades, with the Shred earning a 25-20 victory this week after squeaking out a one-goal win over the ‘Scades the week before. This one was a stat farming experience as Salt Lake’s Will Selfridge tallied 7A/3G, and Seattle’s Conor Belfield had his UFA breakout game with a 5A/5G (and 0 turnover) game.
• A balanced effort gave Salt Lake a 2-0 weekend as the Shred also took down the Oregon Steel. The Shred have among the best D-line conversion rates in the league and posted 58% against the Steel. Reed Browning and Kimball Pew paced with D-line with turnover-free +4 performances.
• Carolina held off a hungry Philadelphia Phoenix team, using a scoring burst in the second quarter (capping a six-goal run) to hold off a Philadelphia comeback and give the Flyers an 18-15 win. Allan Laviolette led the way with nine assists, tying for the single-game assist record this season – with himself.
• The Flyers then made it two wins on their Pennsylvania trip. Laviolette led the team in both categories with five assists and four goals.

UFA Power Rankings Week 6

• To be totally honest, after Boston, Chicago, Minnesota, and Atlanta¹, there were so many ways this list could have shaken out. There’s no real objective way to sort out the results to this point in the season.
• How to decide if Colorado is the team that lost to a lower-ranked Houston squad or the team that beat a higher-ranked Oakland team? What about Montreal who beat New York and DC in back-to-back weeks but is still under .500 on the season?
• I decided to really just go with my gut this week and asked myself: if the two teams next to any given team were to play tomorrow, who would win.
• Think I got it wrong? Feel free to write in to [email protected]; subscribers can also DM me in the Ultiworld Discord or post their thoughts to the UFA channel.

1. And Detroit and Las Vegas at the end of the list ↩