NLL returns to Edmonton for first time in more than 10 years

The Calgary Roughnecks and Georgia Swarm lacrosse teams will face off in Edmonton for an exhibition game on Friday.

The sights, sounds and action of professional lacrosse are returning to Edmonton on Friday night after more than a decade.

The National Lacrosse League is staging a regular-season game at Rogers Place, pitting the Georgia Swarm, the ‘home’ team, against the visiting Calgary Roughnecks.

The Swarm have a record of 2-3 on the young 2025-26 NLL season, the Roughnecks a record of 1-4. The league’s 14 teams play an 18-game regular-season schedule that runs from December through April, followed by playoffs.

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Tickets for the 7 p.m. game can be purchased via the Rogers Place website or Ticketmaster.

It is a part of the NLL’s Unboxed initiative, which was introduced in 2024, to promote lacrosse at the grassroots level across North America through branded efforts in communities that don’t currently have a team.

The first NLL Unboxed Series game took place in Montreal in November 2024, with the Toronto Rock facing the New York Riptide.

The second one is being held here because Edmonton is “a great sports town,” league commissioner Brett Frood said Friday morning.

“A lot of passion,” he told media at Rogers Place while the Swarm did their morning shootaround. “Obviously, from an endemic standpoint, lacrosse is huge in Alberta and growing, and we’ve got phenomenal crossover with hockey fans, so if you think about the synergies, it’s a great place to be.”

Framing the only Alberta team in the league as Friday’s hated Swarm opponent is purposeful, Frood added.

You know, Battle of Alberta. Edmonton vs. those sports teams representing those varmints from the south.

“We certainly were strategic bringing in Calgary,” he said. “We know how much fun the Edmonton fans have with that fan base. We’re excited to have Georgia as the home team and hopefully create a little bit of rivalry.”

And 11 years ago, there was an actual provincial rivalry: the then-Edmonton Rush clashed with the Roughnecks in the NLL over a 10-year span – from 2006 to 2015 – while playing out of Rexall Place, which is scheduled to be demolished this year.

Friday night’s game marks the first time the city has seen live NLL action since the Rush hoisted the championship trophy at Rexall Place in 2015.

The Rush were formerly the Ottawa Rebel until businessman Bruce Urban bought the dormant franchise in 2005 and moved it to Edmonton.

In their first season in 2006, the Rush went 1-15, with their only win coming on the road in Calgary. They made the playoffs for the first time in 2010 and won the league championship five years later before moving to Saskatoon after failing to secure a lease to play in Edmonton’s Rogers Place, which opened a year later.

For 10-year veteran Swarm forward Lyle Thompson, whose brother Jeremy once played for the Rush in Edmonton, holding a game in the Alberta capital is “a good way to expand the growth of lacrosse.”

“Edmonton used to have a professional lacrosse team. My brother used to play up here and did a lot of community work with the Indigenous tribes around here,” Thompson said. “Something was built here, and I’m sure they’re missing lacrosse, so it’s good to be back.”