Simulation Hockey League

Option 2

I would like to give credit to my first junior team, the Kelowna Knights. They managed to improve significantly, going from 169 GF, 278 GA, 29.9 shots for/GP, and 35 shots against/GP to an impressive 264 GF (!), 243 GA, 38 shots for/GP, and 36 shots against/GP (well... that’s worse, but still). Last season, they finished 15th with 19 wins and 43 points (0.326). This season, they finished 7th overall and 4th in the conference, with 34 wins and 69 points.

What’s worth mentioning is that not many players from the S78 draft class have max earned, so the team had to rely on a new generation of rookies. The S81 class has been exceptional, with all players actively max earning and many playing big minutes. Erik Johnson played on the 1st pair and PK1 for most of the season. David Corrigan scored 31 goals and finished with 76 points, many of them on the power play. Jordan Lafrenière and Khalfani excelled on the penalty kill and managed to score 52 and 50 points, respectively. Meanwhile, Levi Bedrock and Cutter Gauthier are already playing important minutes and performing well.

I hope @ThePyroAlpaca and @Froste39 get at least a GMOTY nomination.

WC: 198.

Graphic Option #2 - NEW's decline[attachment=711]

In an insane situation such as the “Food Poisoning Scandal”, there’s only one real thing Scar Bealey would do: Sabotage. The first thing Scar would do though is immediately call the SHL HO, and let them know that we simply can not play because everyone is incredibly sick. Knowing that would somehow go poorly, we get to the sabotage. Scar would take a massive pick axe and go down into the room that controls the freezing lines under the concrete that the ice sits on, and he would beat the ever loving shit out of the machines in that room until they couldn’t work anymore. There’s no way he’d be able to find a team ready to play an SHL Playoff game quickly, so it's easier to just take out the ice itself. I mean, we surely can’t have a game if the ice is melting, right? And even if the game started on the ice that was melting, it would end up being called pretty quickly, and we’d just re-sim it anyway. (173)

Written Prompt #2:

The Seattle Argonauts have been a team on the rise and one that has, quite frankly, surprised me over the course of the past few seasons.
A team mired at or near the bottom of the league standing for the past several seasons, their rise to prominence has caught many by surprise.
You'd have to go back as far as S72 to find the Argos finish higher than 15th in the overall standings (where they finished 14th) prior to their 13th place finish in S79, as well as making a playoff appearance before S78.
To be sure, as with all rebuilding teams, there were some lean years for the teams and it's fanbase.

S78 saw Seattle make their return to the SHL playoffs, which was short-lived after a sweep delivered by the hands of eventual champions, the LA Panthers. While that season saw them finish 17th overall in league standings, it was enough to qualify, despite an abysmal -95 goal differential.
Seattle fared better in S79, jumping up to 13th in the overall standings and improving their goal differential to -66. Another trip to the postseason ended quickly again, though they did  manage to secure a win in overtime in game 3 of the first round to avoid a sweep from the Renegades.

Which brings us to S80, where the Argonauts exploded offensively. A 39-win season propelled them up the standings, finishing second in their division to perennial league powerhouse San Francisco and 5th overall in the league. With a +31 goal differential on the year, it was an improvement of 97 from the year prior and a huge reason for their success.
Although maybe not considered a breakout year as they had finished the season before with 79 points, but Shadow Fenix set career highs in assists and overall points with 50 and 81 respectively. Perhaps the most important statistic for Fenix was his +17, finishing as a positive player for the first time in their short 4 season career.

It was a solid team-wide effort from top to bottom for Seattle, with everyone buying into the system and contributing. Worth noting are an impressive 21 goal season for d-man Kal Akar Kekkonen and a tremendous debut for rookie goaltender Bishop Van Apeldoorn who had a .907 sp% in 27 games played. Speaking of goaltending, Henri Losanov won 25 games and finished with a .900 sp%, his first season above .899.
All of these factors combined played a big part in Seattle's success in S80. However, they were unable to slay the dragon as it were in the playoffs as they once again lost in the first round, this time to Calgary.

The progress is plain to see. Seattle has improved season over season since S77, and with players like Prince Marius, Squidwardo Tentacles and Will Tomlander beginning to enter their primes, as well as the aforementioned Fenix, Kekkonen, Van Apeldoorn and Losanov to go along with their young and talented roster, the Argonauts are poised to take another big step in S81 and are a great example of how teams should be patient and ride out the rough times while they wait for the better times ahead.

Written Option 1

With all the players out with that nasty puke and shit thinghy Tom Pedersen would need to find some new players rather quickly. And an hour isn't really enough to find that many good players so Tom Pedersen would just use this hour to get a few players ready. First thing you need is a goalie. Just get that reserve goalie that has somewhat experience and knows how to skate. Then just check if some of his freidsn or former team mates are nearby to come and do a job. Whatever findable is doable. But the main thing they need is the ability to actually skate towards their own goal. The master plan is to just have enough big bodies that are able to cover the goal. Tom pedersen will do the face off and just give the rest enough time to cover the goal and the Tom Pedersen will work his ass off while all others cover the goal. Lashing out hits and perhaps some spearings and whatever just not enough to go to the penalty box. And then ride it out.

With the rest of his team sick, Jarrod Lakemore will turn his attention to the fans in order to help the team out of their predicament. It probably isn't the ideal choice, but Lakemore has spent years holding back when some of the fans and pundits criticize his team from their perch up in the stands and he often has to repress the desire to ask them just what they know about playing professional hockey. He doesn't expect to find any world beaters, but he'll take some karmic enjoyment out of watching some out of shape fans waddle their way around the rink and attempt to stickhandle between some cones. An hour isn't a lot of time to find the best available players but finding 15 or so reasonably competent skaters in the crowd of over 10,000 can't be too bad. Just enough former high school and college players are found to throw sweaters on and skate around pretending not to be pylons, and they will do their best with the emergency backup goalie to hold on to their lead. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is random guys off the street are simply no match for actual professionals and the lead evaporates rather quickly.

Graphic Option 1

Option 2: Obviously, it's going to be my own team.

The pieces have been in place for Seattle to bust out for a couple of seasons as, admittedly without doing the research, I would bet we're among if not the youngest rosters in the big leagues. There's certainly an argument that this shouldn't have been an unexpected rise - we were trending upwards between seasons anyway - but I certainly expected us to make another small and gradual improvement that we could keep making year on year, rather than the explosion that had us fighting among the top squads. What is particularly striking is that there truly isn't one obvious catalyst: four of the team's top five point-scorers remain the same, the defensive unit is mostly unchanged, the team has simply taken an extra year of experience and harnessed it.

I do think that an underrated part come in the coaching decisions: season 79 had our offensive talent congregated on the first line since we didn't quite have the depth to spread it out, while this year there is scoring up and down the lineup. Five players broke the point-per-game mark and our third line averaged around 0.7 points per game between them. I think we're at risk of stepping back and not being able to repeat the performance, but that's negative nancy talk and not for here.

Prompt 1

Oh geez the prospect of having to find an entire roster's worth of players on such short notice is quite daunting. I suppose that Pork Tenderloin would have to just do his best and turn to the staff to find who he could. Anyone on the team staff who has any history playing hockey gets the nod, then after that we would probably hold a short tryout of fans with hockey experience to hopefully get the rest of the roster filled out. For the love of god I hope that we can hold for the next 10 minutes. I think we would have to just play the best version of trap hockey that we could play and try to just scrape by without these guys skating circles around the entire team full of amateurs. It would be a tough task for these folks but I think that in the end we would be able to hold out and hold on to the lead.

Option 1

In the event of a betrayal at the hand of the local calzone population, it would become a similar situation to the "Allies for Bruma" quest in The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Willow would be calling local beer league team after beer league team asking for aid, scrounging up whatever support she can muster in exchange for a variety of favors and gifts, ranging from buying the team a 32 pack for their next post game locker room hangout to agreeing to play in their next beer league game. As is the nature with beer league players, there's a chance you've got a few guys who played in college or had try outs with smaller professional leagues so they'll at least be more skilled than the average joe that would likely be filling out the roster. I think with Willows leadership and her focus on proper positioning and smart chip and chase hockey, the team could hold onto the lead but it will be close.

PT pass

Written Option 2: Write an analysis about a team that has seen significant change to their performance from last season to this (for example Manhattan, Atlanta, Toronto or Los Angeles). What changed? Was it expected? How do these seasons compare to their performance even earlier? What do you expect from the next season for the team?

The team that honestly surprised me with how crappy they played in the regular season are the Toronto North Stars. I was heavily disappointed in them as I chose them to be the goalie in my fantasy team. Sure this team lacks depth, but they have some of the highest tpe earners in their 1st two lines. I honestly believed that alone will be sufficient to carry them in the regular season but boy was I seriously wrong. They finished 8th in their conference with the worst goal differential of -67. They had only 3 point per game players even though they had many high earning tpe players. It is as if their GM intentionally wanted to suck in the regular season to tank for draft picks or something. The reason why I am saying this is that they got an undeserved spot in the playoffs since everyone makes it but then are now in the conference finals. So someone need to please explain, how a team that did so poorly is doing so well all of a sudden. Definitely they tweaked their lines for the playoffs and started playing better or something. With their past performance, i expected them to finish top 5 in their conference. With the talent they currently possess, I expect next season to be much better.

please note this is just a banter