The roar of the crowd swells like the restless jungle as Blaze Riorden takes his place between the pipes. In his stance, every movement is deliberate, the turf is his hunting ground and the crease is the heart of his territory.
Opponents circle, probing for weakness, but his eyes track every stick, every twitch of a shoulder and every change of hand. The ball is his prey, and in this arena, there is no escape.
Blaze is not merely a goalie; he is the apex predator, the standard that all others want to reach.
However, before he became the industry standard in net, Riorden wanted to be a shell of what Professional Lacrosse Hall of Famer Brian “Doc” Dougherty was in the cage.
Doc’s swagger and bold personality quickly caught the attention of a young Riorden, but the skill Dougherty mastered, which Blaze absorbed, was shot baiting. Doc knew where a shooter was going to shoot the ball before they took a shot, and was known for shouting “Break!” to alert his teammates to get ready for outlets before an opposing player had even fired a shot.
Carolina Chaos defensive coordinator and Hall of Famer Kyle Sweeney was teammates with Dougherty on the MLL’s Philadelphia Barrage and a firsthand witness to the netminder’s swagger.
“Kyle Harrison told a story about it on a podcast, and people thought it was a joke. Like, no, that was real,” Sweeney said. “As the shooters started shooting the ball, I would hear ‘Break!’ and I would legit break up the field and throw my [stick] head over my shoulder and that thing would drop right in the basket like I was running a go route on the football field.”
The tales of one of the position’s prominent pillars are wild and true. And now, Sweeney gets to witness how they’ve molded the current great, Riorden. The similarities between Doc and Blaze are “pretty wild” by Sweeney’s measure.
Both are lefties that play deep in the crease and utilize hand speed instead of a high arc and the body. But what sets them apart is their brain. They are always one of the smartest players on the field.
“Blaze doesn’t save the ball with his body all that much, and Doc didn’t either,” Sweeney said. “They stop the ball with their stick because their hands are so quick, and they are so smart. They’re both very smart dudes, so they know the game in and out, which is so difficult to shoot against, because it’s this crazy chess match that’s going on mentally. But the goalie is the one sitting there who gets to make the last move in the chess match, and you, as the shooter, have to go, hoping that he does something else.”
Riorden is winning that chess match 57.3% of the time this season, and it has helped him stop 1,190 shots in his career (sixth-most all-time).
All goalies can bait a shooter, but the ability to track a ball when the five-ounce rubber sphere is traveling 110 mph is what separates the amateur from the greats of the position.
Everyone’s heard of Colin Kirst’s “Kirsty Eyes,” which he gets when defending the Boston Cannons’ goal from an onslaught of shots from opposing offenses. But behind the scenes, in the Chaos locker room, there are crazier eyes in action — eyes that have earned five Oren Lyons Goaltender of the Year Awards, a Most Valuable Player Award in 2021 and many more incredible achievements.
They’re the crazy eyes of Blaze Riorden, or what he calls “the eye of the tiger,” that once tracked Doc’s every movement.
“His crazy eyes, he takes the ball and starts tracking the ball,” Troy Reh, Riorden’s former UAlbany teammate and current Chaos teammate, explained about the goalie’s pregame routine. “His eyes follow the ball, almost similar to when you put a finger in front of your eyes and you have to work on tracking without moving your head, just your eyes doing the work.”
Riorden has followed a similar routine since his college days, but the method of getting his eyes dialed has varied. From reading paragraphs with small words to enhance focus, squirting water into his wide-open eyes and even the ever-simple eye drop, the five-time First-Team All-Pro goalie has always had a niche method to engage his eyes before a game.
Eye stretching wasn’t a thing in Doc’s time. He entered every game prepared with a great scout on opposing shooters, which allowed him to bait as much as he did. That’s another thing Riorden has taken from his idol, so he, too, can be great.
“[Riorden is] actually probably the most prepared goalie that I’ve seen in terms of understanding shooter tendencies, where he wants that shooter to shoot, from knowing what they’re looking at and what they’re trying to accomplish,” Sweeney said. “And because of that, it appears like guys are shooting right to a stick. And it’s not. It’s because that’s the bait that he set for him. The shooter took the bait, and boom, it’s saved by Blaze.”
But the routine doesn’t begin and end with eye tracking. The same pearl Riorden uses to stretch his eyes, he beats into his body. He grew up watching boxers hit themselves before a fight to get used to the leather gloves they’d feel from their opponents in the ring.
“I watched it once, and it freaked me out, so I stopped watching,” Sweeney said. “The first time I saw it, I looked at Roy [Colsey], we both smiled, and just shook our heads and walked out of the locker room.”
“If that guy is going to do that to get himself ready to take 110-mph shots off the chest,” he added, “all the power to him.”
Riorden does it all for one reason: It’s his job – the job he fell in love with while watching Doc.
“Ultimately, as a goalie, the lacrosse ball is going to be your main focus when push comes to shove,” Riorden said. “My single job is to keep the lacrosse ball from getting in the net.”
And the Chaos are going to rely on their backstop to continue to get in front of shots as they tread into the playoffs. Riorden can carry Carolina across the finish line and to victory on his own. Earlier this season, he set a PLL record when he made 25 saves against the Denver Outlaws. It was another moment – in the long line of many moments – that Blaze did something magical and shocked nobody.
Dougherty backstopped three MLL title-winning teams. Riorden still sits two trophies behind his idol. In 2025, he can climb one closer, and it will take a similar effort from his first trophy run.
In 2021, Riorden was named Championship MVP after slamming the steel door during the Chaos’ first title run. As Carolina hunts down its second title, nobody will be more pivotal than the industry standard in net.
