This Friday begins the first round of matches taking place in the North American Floorball League. The NAFL seeks to bring the highest level of floorball North America and will begin with 4 teams this summer taking part in a 4 game week schedule with the playoff finals taking place on the Sunday of the 5th gameweek to decide the overall and inaugural champion of the NAFL.
The format for the NAFL will begin play with 4 teams after a delay of two years due to the pandemic. The season will be played over the course of four weekends, with four teams hosting the other teams for round robin play. Each team will play the other three teams once per weekend. Games will be played spaced across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of each weekend. The teams will each play 12 regular season games, and the top four teams will advance to the playoffs, which will be held on the final Sunday of the season. The regular season begins this Friday, June 24th, 2022, and the championship game will be played on July 24th, 2022. The weekend of July 8th will be a bye weekend so that all eligible players are available to play for their home countries at The World Games in Birmingham, Alabama. The NAFL will be played under the rules promulgated by the International Floorball Federation. All games will consist of three 20 minute periods with clock stoppage on every whistle. Games cannot end in a tie. Overtime and then a penalty shootout will take place in the event of a tie. A 15 second shot clock will also be implemented for penalty shots.
The 4 teams taking part in this inaugural season are the Fort Worth Jaguars (from Fort Worth, Texas), Fresno Force (from Fresno, California), the Utah Raptors (from Salt Lake City, Utah)and the Florida Vikings (from Orlando, Florida) with Fresno hosting week 1 and Fort Worth hosting week 5 and the playoff finals. The matches will be streamed live on solidsport.com/nafl. The first match begins Friday night in Fresno at 7pm local time (PDT) between Fresno Force and the Fort Worth Jaguars
For more things NAFL check their website at nafloorball.com or the league can be followed on both Twitter and Instagram at @nafloorball.
