Landon Kells of Fergus just started what he hopes is the first of two off-seasons he gets every year.
A goaltender with the National Lacrosse League’s Las Vegas Desert Dogs, in the colder months of the year, the 23-year-old is hoping to return to the Peterborough Lakers of the Ontario-based Major Series Lacrosse in the warmer months as their netminder.
“(The break) will be about a month,” he said in a virtual chat prior to the final NLL game of the season for the Desert Dogs, which didn't qualify for the playoffs. “Since I've been, I don't know, 14, I've been playing lacrosse year-round so I don't look at it as much of how much time do I get off? It's just okay. It’s like what season's next? Like what can I do to be prepared for that?”
Kells played 18 games with the Desert Dogs this season, becoming their No. 1 netminder early in the season. Although he had a 5-12 record for the second-year team. He was one of eight goalies in the league who played 1,000 or more minutes and had 704 saves, fifth-highest in the NLL.
“At the start of the year me and the other goalie went back and forth and then I kind of locked it down and took the starting job and ran with it,” he said.
Kells played two full seasons of Ontario junior B lacrosse with the Elora Mohawks, finishing with the national championship win in 2018, a year after he’d been the second pick, 12th overall, of the Ontario junior A draft by the Peterborough Lakers. He played one season with the Lakers and was selected in the third round, 46th overall, of the NLL draft in 2019 by the Calgary Roughnecks.
“So after Peterborough, I was drafted in the NLL to Calgary Roughnecks,” Kells said. “I spent a year there on the practice squad as the third-string goalie. That season was unfortunately one COVID cancelled everything. That season stopped and then we missed a full year because of the pandemic after that, but we were back the year after that and that following training camp, I made the Roughnecks as a second string. I spent a full season there as a backup and then that off season, the expansion draft came for Las Vegas. I got a call from (Las Vegas) coach (Shawn) Williams. He said, pretty much just keeping it short and sweet, ‘We're taking you, welcome to Vegas.’ This is my second year here now.”
Kells got into a single game with Calgary in 2022, but played in 17 with Las Vegas last year.
“I feel like it's progressed in a nice way,” he said of his career. “Since I've been a little kid, I've had high ambitions of playing in the NLL. From when I was in Grade 9 in (Centre Wellington) high school, you could ask me what my dreams were and that was what I would have told you. So now that I actually am playing in the NLL, I
feel like I have set higher standards and higher goals for myself. I'm happy to be where I've gotten, but I'm not satisfied. I want to continue to get better and continue to help my team get better as well because at the end of it, what I'm chasing for is a team championship, not individual awards. So I'll do whatever I can to help my team hopefully win a championship.”
Kells has, of course, improved since the championship season with the Mohawks.
“I would say probably one of the things that I've improved on the most is my ability to throw the ball,” he said. “I would say coming out of junior into the pros, one of the biggest knocks on me is I wasn't the best at throwing the ball. This year I feel like I've had a kind of a breakout year in that sense. I'm, I'm up there. I think I'm third in the league for goalies for points. I have eight points this year, which I, I was maybe lucky to get one or two before, but I've really been able to help the offense and help our transition by being able to throw the long ball to quick start transition.
“I think one thing I can improve on, and it's every goalie’s goal in the NLL, but it's just being as consistent as possible. That's a major key in this league. If you have a goalie that you know what they're going to do every night and what you need to get at as a team in order to win a game, that's hugely beneficial to any team to know what your goalie is going to give you night in and night out.”
Next up for Kells, after a few rounds of golf in Las Vegas before returning home, will be another season with the Lakers, a team full of NLL players. At least that’s what he hopes.
“So as far as I know, I'll be going back to Peterborough and playing senior A summer ball up there,” he said. “So I was fortunate enough to play there last summer where we made it all the way to the Ontario finals before losing to the eventual Mann Cup champion Six Nations Chiefs so hopefully I’ll be going back up there and competing for a Mann Cup this summer.”
And going from one season to another is one of the favourite things for Kells.
“It’s kind of a corny answer, but my favourite memory is just every year, after a long offseason, seeing your teammates again and seeing how excited everyone is to play again and how excited everyone is to get the season underway and get going,” he said. “I kind of look forward to that every year. It's almost like a fresh start every year. Maybe last year went really well or went really bad, it’s kind of all right, that's over. We're starting fresh.
“The teams aren't the same every year. There's guys that come and go so every team's different. So I guess you can say I look forward to also building those relationships with new teammates and seeing what we can do together.”
