Pat Kavanagh is the Outlaws’ ace in the hole. Now they need to get him the ball
· Yahoo Sports
The Denver Outlaws are known for their tetrad of superstar, Tewaaraton-winning offensive players. All are elite in their own right, but when Denver is at its best, the game runs through one of them: Pat Kavanagh.
Kavanagh led the league in touches per game last season (45.5) and ranked second (39.5) this year. The Outlaws are 7-0 when he has at least 44 touches.
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Where Kavanagh goes, Denver goes with him.
Sunday’s U.S. Bank PLL Championship will see Kavanagh take on one of the game’s great defensemen, Gavin Adler. It’s a familiar matchup on this stage – a rematch of last year’s title game, when Adler sported the blue of the champion New York Atlas.
Pat Kavanagh vs Gavin Adler: A rematch in the @PremierLacrosse title game
— Adam Lamberti (@atlamberti) September 16, 2026
Cannot wait to watch this battle on Sunday, espicially in the pick game. pic.twitter.com/TaiioUNEKx
Adler is an elite cover defenseman who reads the game as well as anyone. It will be a heavyweight bout any time Kavanagh touches the ball. But the important thing for Denver is that Kavanagh still touches the ball.
Kavanagh was effective in the championship game last season. He finished with two goals and two assists. When he got into the offense, he did his job as one of the best creators in the game.
The best thing Adler and the New York game plan did was take Kavanagh out of the equation.
“It wasn’t the covering him situation that hurt us,” Outlaws head coach Tim Soudan said. “It was the fact that [Adler] was just pressing out on him, and we weren’t throwing Pat Kavanagh the ball.”
Look at this possession late in the fourth quarter. It ends in a pretty good look for Jared Bernhardt that gets taken away by Liam Entenmann sorcery, but notice how Adler plays it around goal line extended.
Like @atlamberti pointed out, Pat Kavanagh v. Gavin Adler will be box office. Can Denver get Kavanagh the touches for us to see it is the question?
— Topher Adams (@Topher_Adams) September 17, 2026
(unrelated, liam entenmann rocks lol) pic.twitter.com/0VCINMvJVX
Adler shut off Kavanagh and only hedged or fully slid in break-glass-in-case-of-emergency scenarios. Kavanagh finished the game with just 24 touches, the second-fewest of his Outlaws tenure.
The fewest touches of Kavanagh’s Denver career? That would be his 18 touches against… Gavin Adler and the Philadelphia Waterdogs earlier this season.
Philly’s 18-8 beatdown of the Outlaws in July is not an especially predictive result for Sunday’s championship rematch. Denver was playing on the second night of a back-to-back without Brennan O’Neill and was at the peak of a midseason slump.
But tactically, the seeds were planted for how the Waterdogs think about these matchups. In that game, Adler played Kavanagh the same way he did in the playoffs: deny, deny, deny.
A part of this is how Adler takes the best players out of the equation. This season, Adler’s matchup has averaged 25.5 touches per game. Those same players in their non-Adler matchups? 33.7 per game.
Looking into Kavanagh’s production against the Atlas last year is a microcosm of how New York limited his access to the game, but also how Denver tried to adapt.
His first goal came on a weird loose-ball scrum that resulted in a switched matchup against an unsettled defense. He had an assist on the power play. On his second goal, he got the ball via an end-line restart. On his second assist, Denver switched the offense to have Kavanagh run out of the box, changing the matchup again.
That last point is the most interesting as it relates to Sunday’s game against the Waterdogs.
There has been no shortage of discourse over the last two years about who plays attack and who plays midfield for the Outlaws. In its two games this postseason, Denver has run Kavanagh and O’Neill at attack, with Bernhardt running out of the midfield and Logan Wisnauskas and Jake Taylor platooning as the third attackman by quarter.
That balance has worked well for the Outlaws so far, and it’s certainly worked for Kavanagh (10 points) and O’Neill (seven points). But lacrosse is all about matchups, and the postseason is when the game becomes most like a chess match.
If Denver can’t get the ball to Kavanagh by traditional means, it still has to get him that ball. And that will likely come by moving him away from his traditional righty spot below GLE to spots near midfield or even coming out of the box.
In the first Waterdogs game this season, there were limited options to get creative with Kavanagh, and that was largely due to health. Kavanagh himself wasn’t fully healthy and would miss the rest of the regular season following this game. Bernhardt went down early in the game, and O’Neill was inactive.
All three players are full go this weekend, which gives Denver its full portfolio to develop real estate on Adler Island.
This season hasn’t gone the way Kavanagh or the Outlaws expected. He played only half the regular season, and even when he was in, he battled nagging injuries that kept him from his best self.
“I think we’ve had a little more doubt in our group,” Kavanagh said after Denver’s win over Utah in the semifinal. “But our belief never wavered.”
Through the adversity, Denver has come out the other side, and its talisman has a chance to add “professional champion” to one of the best resumes in the sport.