In this other dimension, the playoffs are held as double elimination.  For the sake of simplicity, the match ups that only happened in the shadow realm also line up with the regular season series between the teams.  Additionally, the bottom two wild cards enter into the losers' bracket instead of playing into the winners' bracket.

First, we introduce an extra two wild card teams to start in the West and East thunderdome at single elimination.  With no bias from the author, Winnipeg now makes it in and so does New England.  Calgary and Toronto are now also facing single elimination against the first round of fallen winners.

San Francisco now plays Los Angeles in the first round, but San Francisco moves on anyway.  NOLA still beats Edmonton, and from there the Western winners' bracket plays out as we saw it here.  The Eastern winner's bracket also plays out exactly as we saw it.

In the losers' bracket, Winnipeg draws the higher seeded Edmonton and Winnipeg gets thoroughly decimated.  Calgary draws Los Angeles and wins in 7 just like we saw it in the real wild card round.  New England draws Hamilton and just barely loses out.  Toronto draws Chicago but just barely loses like New England did.

The four losers need to narrow down to two for the next round, so they duke it out.  Calgary beats Edmonton; Hamilton beats Chicago.  NOLA and Buffalo fall but only Buffalo can survive.  That leaves Calgary and Buffalo for the losers' semi final. 

Losers' semi is almost a dead tie.  In triple overtime, Buffalo edges out Calgary for a chance at making a run.  San Francisco loses against Manhattan as we saw, but now San Francisco has a chance to come back.  San Francisco crushes Buffalo and now we get the shadow matchup of San Francisco vs Manhattan.  Another almost dead tie, but San Francisco wins in double overtime for the shadow realm Challenge Cup.


I am giving the Winnipeg Jets the worst odds, just absolutely abysmal.  However, that is only because I'm trying to make bank.  I can put some guilt free money down on myself and if we pull through, I will never have to write media again.  In reality, I think we could really make a run and it's anyone's game.  There are plenty of IIHF federation heads on our squad, so with enough brain storming, we could pull something together.

On the flip side, I am giving Hamilton the best odds.  If there is any team that can crack the new system on the inaugural season, I would pick them.  While we might be brain storming, I expect they are experimenting to find the best approach.  I notice that they don't have completed builds on the tracker, so maybe they are coordinating this effort internally and keeping it private.  All of this is total speculation that can really fill the word count.


I feel that I'm now able to actually focus on defensive stats, instead of just maxing out everything to be all around good.  For one specific stat, I will strive for Defensive Read, although I am spreading my stats out to all my defensive skills.  I feel like this is what I wanted Defense to be in Simon T, except that Defense was very important for everyone not just my shut down defender.  Slip McScruff is going to be the biggest party pooper around and I love it.

While they won't be my highest stats, I'm personally very excited to invest in Bravery and Aggression as well.  I wish that we could put points into Leadership because I would definitely boost that, but I'm glad that I have control to make Slip stupidly brave.


As usual, Slip McScruff is looking forward to IIHF.  He is coming off back to back Gold medals and is looking to repeat his Four Star Threepeat in the IIHF.  This time around, he is joined by Michael Fox who has been involved with the team for a long time but is now finally able to take to the ice.

Special to this offseason, he is stretching his legs to train in new ways.  Specifically, he is taking to the batting cages and staring down the machine to work on his bravery because he is now allowed to be braver than everyone else on the ice.

However, with all that going on, he will be quarantining between events to avoid the Bud Light Virus.  That basically means making tons of kraft mac n cheese, drinking gallons of beer, and playing animal crossing.  He tells me that the animal crossing is to train in aggression, but I'm not sure I believe him.


I am FOR this idea mostly, but with some minor tweak.  I agree that we should stop traveling back and forth between each game and killing the planet.  However, I don't think the location should rotate.  I think we should play it different and keep all of the playoff games in one specific facility.

There is something to be said about all the fans traveling to the one location every year, but we can prevent that too.  There should be large local events in each of the home cities to show the games and no one should be allowed to travel to the playoff arena.

The playoff arena will have no seating because it will be played up on the side of a mountain.  There will be a specific sheet of ice for each series, and teams will work their way up the mountain.  Meeting at the top for the finals.  This saves additional emissions because all teams arrive at the start of playoffs and don't leave until they are eliminated.


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