Events

Take in a playoff triple-header featuring pro lacrosse’s top talent

The Premier Lacrosse League will open its postseason at Gillette Stadium, with three games to determine who'll advance to the semifinals.

Gillette Stadium has hosted Premier Lacrosse League regular-season and all-star games in the past, and the PLL will return to Foxborough in September for its playoff quarterfinal.

By Dave D'Onofrio

1 minute to read

A couple months after holding its all-star festivities in Foxborough, the Premier Lacrosse League returns to Gillette Stadium over Labor Day weekend with a little bit more on the line.

While bragging rights and individual brilliance were the order in July, September’s visit from the PLL is for the purpose of holding the quarterfinal round of the league’s playoffs, with six teams battling over three games for the right to advance.

The games are slated for noon, 2:30, and 5 p.m., with competitors determined after the eight PLL clubs complete their 11-week regular season, which is spent barnstorming through different cities across the country. In the PLL model, teams don’t represent cities or have a traditional home base; rather, the teams all meet up at the same location for game day each week.

Before the PLL merged with Major League Lacrosse, Boston had its own team – though the Boston Cannons are now known only as the Cannons. There remains plenty of local connections, however, with rosters littered with players who honed their skills at a variety of New England colleges, and league co-founder Paul Rabil is famously friendly with Patriots coach and lacrosse junkie Bill Belichick. (Rabil has also made headlines for suggesting Belichick could have a desire to be a PLL coach some day.)

Tickets start at $44, but they’re good for the full day, which means three games that promise to be both intense and entertaining. Seats are limited to one side of the field, in Gillette’s lower bowl, and as of late July there were plenty of seats available. That said, attendance at the All-Star Game in Foxborough was the highest-attended in league history, up 38 percent compared to the previous year, so apparently Belichick isn’t the only local sports fan with an appreciation for lacrosse.