Here we go again, the league has gone a few sims forward and now we officially stepped into the second half with all the teams past their 26th game. Therefore its time for me to check onto the state of the SMJHL season 50 again and see how we stand.

First of, let’s check back onto my predictions I had last article, and compare them to the actual standings of the SMJHL as of right now.

1. Kelowna Knights
2. Colorado Raptors
3. Lethbridge Lions
4. Anchorage Armada
5. Vancouver Whalers
6. Halifax Raiders
7. Carolina Kraken
8. Anaheim Outlaws
9. St. Louis Scarecrows
10. Detroit Falcons

If you need a quick refresher on the actual standings just like I do, let me give you that too

1. Colorado Raptors
2. Anchorage Armada
3. Lethbridge Lions
4. Kelowna Knights
5. St. Louis Scarecrows
6. Anaheim Outlaws
7. Carolina Kraken
8. Detroit Falcons
9. Vancouver Whalers
10. Halifax Raiders

I said this wasn’t a good idea, yet I intend to repeat it after this article is done aswell. But, to dissect this a little, my original prediction of Lethbridge and Anchorage moving up worked out, I just didn’t anticipate Kelowna dropping below them instead of rising up, nor that Vancouver would keep up their poor play and drop all the way to 9th. Expected regression to the Halifax Raiders hit harder than I would have liked, and they appear in 10th, not too far from the rest, but still an unpleasant development for them. As for St. Louis, definitely a pleasant surprise for them, while Carolina stayed roughly where I expected them and Anaheim didn’t hold up as well as I thinked they would. All in all, some good calls, but also some complete whiffs on how the teams will do. Let’s see then, how do these teams stack up and are these standings finally representative of the strenght of the teams?

So, first let’s again do our tiers. Considering how stupidly close the points are, there is only really a reason to do two – the top 2 and everyone else, even if Whalers and Raiders are a tiny bit further away from the rest and might be arguably a bit lower than the rest of the league. In short though:
S tier – Colorado, Anchorage
A tier – Lethbridge, Kelowna, St. Louis, Anaheim, Carolina, Detroit, Vancouver, Halifax

Very simple, isn’t it? What it shows is the typical thing for SMJHL for the last two seasons – how awfully close things are. After all, 3rd Lethbridge and 10th Halifax are separated by 4 points, and 3rd to 8th is only 2! points alltogether. One bad sim and your team rockets down, one good one and you fly up again. A scary though, and very unsimilar to the SHL where the top and bottom teams even now are separated by 20-ish points easily, even though SHL has already played 30 games.
This state is somewhat surprising to me considering the fairly big change coming to this season with the new 425 TPE cap that benefits teams with players that are with them longer and are still active, but seems like there are few and far between the league right now and they are not having the expected impact anyway. Alas, let’s start reading into the teams, shall we?

1. Colorado Raptors
Position at the last controlled point – 1st
Colorado did not dissapoint. Holding onto their 1st, even if not slightly endangered by the onslaught of Anchorage, we won’t know how this fight will go until we see it actually happen in later sims, Colorado proved to actually be the team to beat for the whole half of the season. Pretty impressive for a league this close, right? Compared to my last description of jack-of-all-trades however, Colorado brought some numbers up and now is both top 3 in goals for and goals against, has similar stats in shots for and against suggesting these aren’t just lucky stats for them, and even though their special teams are only middling, there is little concern for them right now as they seem to be in a good shape and ready to take a good run into the playoffs this season.

2. Anchorage Armada
Position at the last controlled point – 4th
Anchorage saw a fairly minor improvement in their standings, but surely a much nicer improvement in their record and their points – they are now equal to Colorado at 34 points, just having their 9 game winning streak ended by Carolina in the last sim. Anchorage clearly improved, and my last description of them as a fairly quiet team with little shots is still somewhat true even now, albeit they do have quite a nice shot totals. Compared to Colorado though, their special teams are doing better, most of their stats are fairly similar, and these two so far seem to be set for a big series down the line in the playoffs. Is there a team that can battle past them or are these two teams truly better than the rest?

3. Lethbridge Lions
Position at the last controlled point – 3rd
Lethbridge seems to just have sat on 3rd the entire time between these two articles, but further cannot be from right. This spot for the longest time belonged to Halifax, however few bad games spiraled them down to the bottom of the league and now Lethbridge tries to put themselves as the “best of the rest“. Their recipe for success didn’t really change though – it’s their impeccable defense that makes them win games, while the offense struggles even with decent shot totals to produce goals. This is reflected in their special teams aswell which thanks to a weak PP% seem to struggle a little bit. Lethbridge is in a decent shape now – but with so many very aggresive teams in the league, how long can they keep turtling away their games?

4. Kelowna Knights
Position at the last controlled point – 2nd
Kelowna had a little bit of a fall from the grace. The S tier team of the first article now finds itself in the tier A, and even then behind another team. What happened to Kelowna? It’s very likely their defense – after overachieving a little earlier in the season, it regressed back a bit and it hurt Kelowna in the standings. Their struggling special teams are not helping either, and even though Kelowna doesn’t seem like they will fall much further, now they are in the mix with the rest. Can they survive and thrive or will they stagnate?

5. St. Louis Scarecrows
Position at the last controlled point – 7th
A small improvement for St. Louis, that find themselves in the top 6 and fighting with the rest of the pack for those sweet sweet first round byes. St. Louis I originally described as lackluster offensively with a good, but not fantastic defense that seemed not enough to cover for their offense in the ways some other teams do so. Now, the entire setting reversed a bit, with an average offense dragging up a fairly uninspiring defense, St. Louis is switching identities mid season which is interesting to see. It seems to be working better this way than the other way around, even though you could argue they just might have raised up based on the movement of others, not their own qualities. Time will tell.

6. Anaheim Outlaws
Position at the last controlled point – 9th
Anaheim found a nice few positions on the back of the movement of the rest of the league just like St. Louis did. Why do I say so? Well their stats seem to be exactly as the last description had them – rather weak offense and only really middling defense seem to somehow propell this team to 6th? It’s a stat line I wonder how long survives and Anaheim, albeit might be improving, still seems stat wise as a team that might not deserve a spot in top 6. But then again St. Louis might not either, so this might be a case of other teams struggling way more than expected.

7. Carolina Kraken
Position at the last controlled point – 6th
Carolina dropped a tiny bit, and it’s interesting to see how they chose to play their game so far this season. Our defending champion seems to struggle defensively, but are a mighty offensive team that can score at will and tries to use this to cover up their defensive struggles. It’s a recipe that works for some teams higher up, but Carolina would still need a touch or two to help them at the blue line to probably have a better chance at moving up, considering that’s a much bigger weakness for them than for the aforementioned teams, even if Carolina’s offense is just better.

8. Detroit Falcons
Position at the last controlled point – 10th
Detroit moved up a bit on the back of struggling Canadian teams, and still seems to play a very weird brand of hockey. Hyper aggresive, very score-y, but also very prone to getting scored on, Detroit’s goals for and against are all over the damn place and it’s a team that can easily upset a top 2 team if their defense or goalie have a good game, but can also fall to the weakest of teams if their defense can cover up the sheer offensive tornado of this roster. It’s kinda hard to predict where they end up playing like this though, because it’s a playstyle that might be very volatile in some settings, but also can be very good in another ones. This might be a dark horse in playoffs if your team doesn’t like a team with such a potent offense and cannot punish them back, but then again the defense is a black hole at best.

9. Vancouver Whalers
Position at the last controlled point – 8th
Well, my original prediction to move up some spots in Vancouver turned out to struggle even harder and fallen backwards, being saved from last by a Halifax team that hit a bad spot of the season. Vancouver’s somewhat average stats have plummeted in the offensive zone and goals became even more scarce for them as they originally were, even if their special teams seem to be doing pretty well. Defense is looking just ok, but with the anemic offense, you would need a whole new caliber of defensive talent to really look far up, however it doesn’t seem fit for Vancouver to sit so far down with a roster that seems only somewhat troubled at best. I will keep trusting Vancouver to find their way up, but after all, they dissapointed me once already, and god knows what SimonT think to himself.

10. Halifax Raiders
Position at the last controlled point – 3rd
Well. There was an expectation that their fairly fragile stats would put them lower in the standings, but a fall back to reality this quick was surprising. Halifax held onto a 3rd spot for quite a while actually, but pretty much 4 sims ago they ran into a rougher patch and just spiralled down to the bottom of the league. Reason? Their defense cracking under the pressure of holding on and scoring for the team, their PP being a bit more quiet than original, and otherwise extremely unimpressive shots for and against make Halifax seem a bit too low maybe, but seemingly undeserving of a much higher placement. If they want to return back higher up, they need to find a way to either revitalize their overworked defensemen, or help their offense actually be an offense to begin with.

So the quick look is done, now what do we see? One thing to me is clear – besides maybe top 4, rest of the teams are starting to show bigger cracks that might slowly but surely put distance between them and the top 4 of the league right now. Obviously, everything is subject to change but in my opinion, you are better betting on Colorado than betting that Detroit wins anything this season. Next though, let’s see what I think the standings should look like at the 3/4 mark (and yes I will get one article out then and at the end of the season too), so let’s just jump into it.

1. Anchorage Armada
2. Colorado Raptors
3. Lethbridge Lions
4. Kelowna Knights
5. Carolina Kraken
6. Vancouver Whalers
7. St. Louis Scarecrows
8. Anaheim Outlaws
9. Halifax Raiders
10. Detroit Falcons

This is more bold than I think the last one was, so I am expecting to be more wrong too. However I can’t see St. Louis and Anaheim defend their spots against somewhat better Carolina and Vancouver. Time will tell if my trust in them is going to prove correct or not.
With this though, I conclude this article. Thanks for reading and shall you be blessed by SimonT.