Buffalo Bandits, NLL - Case Study

When your General Manager is NLL Hall of Famer Steve Dietrich, and your Head Coach is the NLL's all-time leading scorer John Tavares, there's a good chance your team will find success. That's exactly what happened this past May when the Buffalo Bandits secured their second straight NLL Championship. 

We had the chance to sit down with Buffalo Bandits Video Coach Eric Vinc to discuss this past season and everything that went into it.

Photo Credits: Buffalo Bandits

The Bandits made the mid-season switch to GameStrat this year after experiencing some long delays with their previous system. They were looking for a live to bench replay system that would be an upgrade in reliability from what they were using before. We asked Vinc how himself and the Bandits staff first heard of GameStrat and what made them switch over mid-season.

We knew some other teams in the league were using GameStrat and we were using a competitor device. At the beginning of this year, the product we were using had some big delays and that's when we decided to make the switch to GameStrat for the remainder of the year. 

After speaking with the Bandits staff, we shipped out the GameStrat system as quickly as possible as they had just over a month left in their season. We asked Vinc what his experience was like using GameStrat for the remainder of the year.

It was great. It was really easy to use, it was much easier for me to flag things mid-game and have it ready to pull up compared to any other product we've used in the past. 

Photo Credits: Buffalo Bandits

As a video coach, the speed at which you can access the plays & send them down to the bench could be the difference between winning & losing. Vinc describes the GameStrat system's speed as a big advantage relative to what they used in the past and how it helped their staff be more efficient on the bench.

With our previous system we were sharing the viewing devices for our offence/defence. Now with GameStrat we can have multiple devices going at the same time and that allows us to be more efficient with our time making adjustments.

We were curious to see if anything about switching to GameStrat changed the Bandits video coaches workflows. He explained the biggest thing was how quickly they could access the film after a game. 

The biggest thing is we have the film available a lot faster than before. With the footage being saved locally, we're able to do our post game film review on the bus on the way back to Buffalo rather than having to wait until we get back to the hotel. That part was huge for us when we have back to backs. 

In our conversation, Vinc described some hesitancy in making the switch to GameStrat, especially being in the middle of their season. 

Honestly we were pretty hesitant because we had a pretty bad experience with a similar briefcase system in the past. But after hearing testimonials from other teams in the league and seeing how the system worked, we knew it was the way to go.

Photo Credits: Buffalo Bandits

In 2024, 7 of 15 teams in the National Lacrosse League use GameStrat. We decided to end our call with Coach Vinc by asking if he could say one thing about GameStrat to the remaining 8 teams in the league not yet using GameStrat, what would it be?

Number one it's wireless. It's much better when you're not tripping over wires on the bench. You can take an iPad wherever you want and you still have access to the video. Then when you have it up and running its very easy to use, very easy to flag certain parts of the game. It's just much easier than what we've used in the past and we really had lots of success with it throughout the end of the season.