The National Lacrosse League announced that Rochester Knighthawks forward Connor Fields has been named the Gatorade Canada NLL Player of the Week for Week 21.
Fields saved his best performance for the final weekend of the season, recording 16 points (11+5) while commanding a desperate Knighthawks team to a pair of must-wins, including a dominating 12-3 victory over the Philadelphia Wings in Sunday’s season finale which secured the team a playoff berth for the second straight year.
With Sunday’s win, the Knighthawks, who entered the weekend with a slim 3.13% percent chance of qualifying for the postseason, locked up the eighth and final playoff spot in the NLL.
After an eight-point (4+4) performance in Friday’s 11-10 win at Georgia, Fields single-handedly led Rochester to its most dominant win in franchise history on Sunday afternoon, scoring a franchise-record seven goals, including all four in the second quarter. He also tied a season-high with 21 shots en route to setting the NLL’s single-season record for shots with 267, surpassing the original mark of 255 set by Toronto’s Tom Schreiber.
Fields, who earns the NLL’s weekly honors for the second time this season following his 11-point effort Week 15, finished the campaign leading the Knighthawks with career-highs in goals (55) assists (64) and points (120). He ranked second in the NLL in goals behind only New York’s Jeff Teat and fourth in overall scoring while pacing all forwards in shots (267) and loose ball recoveries (158), making him a strong candidate for NLL MVP.
He closed out the campaign as the first player since John Tavares in 2001 to record more than 115 points and 150 loose ball recoveries in the same season. Additionally, Fields became just the second American-born player in league history, joining Philadelphia’s Joe Resetarits, a former Knighthawk in the previous organization, to reach the 100-point mark in back-to-back seasons.
In 67 career NLL games with Rochester, Buffalo and San Diego, Fields has amassed 348 points (160+188) and 478 loose ball recoveries.
The 6-foot-0, 180-pound forward was originally a first-round selection (10th overall) of the San Diego Seals in the 2018 National Lacrosse League Entry Draft.
