2. I don’t think that better builds are going to fool raw TPE anyway. Hamilton/New England are probably going to stay at the top of East, with Calgary/Edmonton and LA being the top teams in the west, probably followed by exactly who followed them this season already – Buffalo, Manhattan for East, New Orleans and San Francisco for West. There is value in having a better mix of players to choose from and make lines with, but with how heavily the sim values correct strategies and makes the coach an important role within the team structures, I don’t think that a team like Chicago or Winnipeg will suddenly surge up and overtake any of these teams on sheer build base. If something like that happens, the praise will have to be put on to the shoulders of coaches/GMs that managed to improve their understanding of the sim and put together a better on ice performance from the ingredients they already had.

4. I think personally that we do have options to maybe spring up for something like the best agitator/goon award. It has a potential to reward those who don’t seek points or defensive stats, they just want to see the world burn and FHM allows these people to actually have their way at it with it actively helping their teams rather than actively hurting them like it did with Simon. Obviously, right from the get go I don’t think we would have a ton of contestants and a lot of the nominees would cover over with the Biscuit, but eventually I believe we could see a small but dedicated group of people profile out in the teams that want to see some blood on the ice and I think with how important but obviously how overlookable this role is, we could use a little bit of a spotlight for these people and give them a bit of love that completely missed for this role during the olden days.

5. With IIHF, the rule of TPE is probably going to be important again. Obviously, better coaches get better results, but I couldn’t imagine some of the most popular teams like USA or Canada struggle during the tournament even autolined compared to the smaller nations that will have to extract everything their rosters have and then some to have a shot at even the knockout bracket. Therefore, I think it’s between USA and Canada for the gold, and that’s very likely going to be the final if that’s possible. Below them, it might get a bit more interesting between some of the medium sized nations like Germany, Czechia and such, which could be more interesting, but I think strength of those rosters doesn’t have a ton do offer against the top 2, so they most likely end up fighting for bronze. Being part of Czechia, I am someone who tends to look pretty conservatively at potentional results, but a bronze I don’t think is completely out of the question and if we could get it, that would be a fantastic result as IIHF Czechia has not seen a ton of results in it’s history.

13. a) I think the easy choice is Pepperoni. Players close to 2k TPE are very rare, and because of the switch of the engines, now the TPE actually has a meaning and allows people to still make meaningful choices even in the absolute heights of earning, so having someone have all of that TPE should make them, at least individually, the strongest player.

b) So you have the question of speed versus physicality. I think if you put those two against each other it’s pretty easy to see that I would enjoy having the more physical team simply because speed is good to get places, but if you get outmuscled and pushed out of them, you will definitely struggle to put together a meaningful offensive play or a good defensive shift. I am a big fan of physical play myself, so obviously that’s a bit of a bias, but I favour Hamilton there.

c) Alright, let’s start from the back where the easy decision is to take Kryyst thanks to a massive TPE advantage, even if that doesn’t play a ton of role in FHM seemingly. For defense, I think I would choose Murphy and Scholz, going basically by TPE but I couldn’t pass on picking up Tig so there is also that advantage. Forward group is likely Pepperoni – Lagerfield – Tokolosh. Again, high TPE setup, but then again, TPE is meaning something and there are some good numbers of TPE all across this group of players.

d) I am a big fan of snow, actually. Makes it more fun to drive, I really like the look of a city covered in snow, I am a big fan of winter and cold aswell and obviously snow brings that with itself, I think snow has a lot more advantages than disadvantages (like having to deal with it trying to get places), so snow is good.

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