In my alternate reality the same teams make the challenge cup finals, the blizzard and the steelhawks, but instead of the hamilton steelhawks winning the challenge cup the edmonton blizzard sweep the steelhawks 4 - 0 with all of the games going to overtime. I really really wanted this challenge cup for a few reasons. 1.) this is Tommy Tuck's final season and he's been one of my best friends on SHL for a while now 2.) Brady needs something to really put a cap on his career and I think another challenge cup could do that 3.) it would have been amazing to put the steelhawks in their place after having them force us to switch sim engines. Despite it being for the better it had to be rushed. Anyway in this universe brady scores the game winning goal and the edmonton blizzard have an insane party all across canada. And he gets the girl in the end like all movie heroes do except it's irl.

Well the homer pick would obviously be me choosing the edmonton blizzard. We still have a ton of great players on defense with new stars rising like Karlstrasse Scholz and Finn-Rhys but we're also seeing the departure of Tommy Tuck and the regression of some players like McIntyre, Rockefeller, Tor Tuck, etc. so I think it would make sense to choose another team like the manhattan rage. The rage have an exceptional lineup of stars like Alex Winters, Luke Thomason, Jax Aitakallo or however you spell it and then a star of defense in Barrett McCarthy. They're really looking like a total dynamo our there. The only thing they need to figure out is tactics but the same could be said for every other team out there. Even with Thomason regressing he's one of the top players in the entire league so I think he could easily be the top 1C out there this coming season and lead the rage to another challenge cup.

If I had to choose one player to win an individual award from the two finals teams in the future it would easily be Karlstrasse Scholz in my opinion. He's not even near his peak yet and he was playing on the 2nd pair this season but he was able to score 41 points! I think a lot of your offense as a defenseman is dependent on the forwards you have but if he has the right goal scorers in front of him Scholz will be far and away the favorite during his prime to win the Stevens award for the best defenseman in the league. He's just looking way too good to not be the favorite in the future.

I think that there are some awards that really get lost when it comes to the SHL's awards. Adding a defensive defenseman award was a huge step in the right direction considering how differently certain defensemen can play the game from each other and how points usually get more recognition than defensive play, but in my opinion there really needs to be an award for the player that has the highest giveaway to takeaway ratio. I know it's not really any award you can vote on, rather something that statistics definitively decide, but this would be a great award. Call it the Sneakiest Boi award and give it out to show that there's one player each season who stands above all others as the one who was able to pick everyone's pocket without losing the puck nearly as often as everyone else. It would really showcase a player who is great at both ends of the ice in my opinion. If we have to name it after someone then call it the FormX award considering he has an unbanned multi in the SHL right now.

This season I think the IIHF is going to be an easy gold medal for the Czech Republic. We've been waiting a long time for us to finally be able to move on from Simon T and now here we are! Czechia has by far the best roster in the entire IIHF in my opinion. We have top earners like Luke Thomason, Brady McIntyre, Barret McCarthy, Charlie Schieck, Michael Scarn, and a lot of other great players. Our top end talent is seriously ridiculous and I genuinely think that Czechia has like an 80% chance to take home the gold this season. There are no other powerhouses out there right now that can take it from us. Ireland is long dead, Canada and USA are in shambles, Britain, Germany and Austria are rebuilding. This is our chance. We can finally get it done! It's been a long time coming too, in my time since S38 we've only won one medal, a bronze a few seasons ago. Gold is so close I can taste it!

cw woohoo