Quote:1. Written, 3 TPE (150 words min.)
Reflection on your season - how did your player fare on the ice this season? Did you meet or surpass your individual player goals or did you come up short? Whether you excelled or disappointed - what can you attribute that to? What will you try to do better next season?

I am generally happy with how my season went and maybe that is a problem. Maybe I am content too quickly and look at myself too much because I have a very good individual season both in the regular season and in the playoffs while my team fell short again and lost in the Conference Finals. I shouldn’t be happy with that and I shouldn’t be content as long as we don’t win. If you almost get swept in the Conference Finals and only start fighting back when already down 3-0 then it doesn’t matter if you led the team in scoring by a good margin and put up 60 points again, you still weren’t good enough. This especially goes for the playoffs where my own personal performance was so closely connected to the teams results as a whole. I did well in the first round and we moved on rather handily, only to completely suck in the first three games of the Conference Finals as my team lost all of them. I then turned it back up again for the latter half of the round but at that point it was already too late. If you wanna be the best and win titles then you can’t afford to take multiple games in a row off in the playoffs.

Quote:2. Written, 3 TPE (150 words min.)
Well, dang. Your team didn't make the finals this season - my condolences to you. Are you and your teammates planning on watching the finals even though you're not in it? If so, what are your watch parties like? If not, are you still following the finals or trying to ignore it completely? What are you and your teammates doing together (if anything) instead of following along? (if you're on Hamilton or New Orleans, or either of the 2 SMJHL teams that soon will be playing in the finals - congrats and sorry :p this one isn't for you!)

The Panthers aren’t having coordinated watch parties with the entire team but a few of us are coming together to watch these games as a group for sure. After all we are not just hockey players but also hockey fans first and foremost who love the sport, so the playoff finals of the best league in the world are a must-watch event for us. This year is kind of special though because for a lot of us it will be quite hard to decide who to root for. What brings us together is more so our antipathy towards one of the teams or even both of them in quite a few cases. A lot of us don’t like the Steelhawks for the obvious exploit-related reasons and NOLA has become a personal rival of many people in LA in recent years due to lots of matchups in the past few seasons and an especially contentious series last season. Last season we won but this season NOLA beat us on their road to the finals so now we all have to decide whether we want to be salty about that or root for them so that we can at least say that we lost to the Champions and took them to seven games?

Quote:8. Written (150 words min.) or Graphic, 3 TPE
With only one champion in the SHL and the SMJHL per season, that means the other 26 teams came up just a bit short (or a lot short). Team owners know that fans can get frustrated by shortcomings, so they're always trying to keep optimism high in the fan base. Written option: give an excerpt from an ousted team's owner's press conference at the end of the season focusing on the team's bright future or however they can keep fans' optimism high. Graphic option: the team has rented a billboard in town with an inspiring message to fans to keep optimism high; show the billboard (must include team logo and whatever the optimistic message is).

Dear Panthers Fans,

I wanted to write to you today to thank you for your continued and passionate support that you have shown towards our team this season. We are incredibly lucky to have such a dedicated and supportive fanbase and be assured that you don’t take you or your support for granted. Sadly we fell short this season and couldn’t give you the Challenge Cup that you so deserve and that you have waited for not just for seasons, but decades at this point. We know you expect more from us and so do we as well. Regular Season Conference Titles and Individual Awards mean nothing when you can’t go all the way when it matters the most, so we choose to go out of this season not looking at the positives, but being angry and demanding more from ourselves. We know you will do the same while still supporting us with the same unconditional passion that you have shown in the past and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.

Best regards and we’ll see you next season,

Niclas Wastlund

Quote:13. Written, up to 4 TPE Pick up to 4 Challenge Cup related topics to write about! Each topic is worth 1 TPE. Each answer must be 50+ words.
a. These are absolutely two of the best goaltenders in the league in Cain and Kryyst - which team has the advantage in net in this series?
b. There are two Johnsons in this series - Gabriel (HAM) and Darnell (NOLA). In fact, the two used to host the Johnson & Johnson Podcast together, but they're now on the ice as bitter rivals. Which team has the better Johnson?
c. The Specters won both regular season matchups, but Hamilton finished with better team stats overall. Do regular season head-to-heads provide an accurate forecast for a playoff series? (answer predictively if it hasn't happened yet; reactively if it has.)
d. If SDCore offered you an all-expenses paid week-long vacation to either New Orleans or Hamilton, which city would you choose to go to? (tough choice I know lol.) How would you spend your time there?

a. You’ve got two of the very best lining up against each other in these playoffs so this sure is a tough one. Normally I would be leaning towards Cain for his all-around consistency and because he is a bigger factor to NOLAs success since they don’t have quite the skater depth of HAM. But Kryyst has been so clutch in the postseason over the past few years that there is no way around him for this question.
b. Both teams have great Johnson but I’m gonna go with NOLA’s Johnson here, Darnell. Gabriel might have more training hours to his player, but Darnell brings so much more to the table due to his behind the scenes work. We gave him some shit last season due to the illegal lines issue, and deservedly so, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has done tremendous work in setting the team up for success. Also, Team Germany bias.
c. According to our series against the Specters, no. We beat them 4-2 in the regular season but then went down 0-3 right away in the playoffs, being outright dominated in some of the games. So I would say it hasn’t too much predictive value, mainly because the sample size is so small, but it is still a fun factor for media writers and line makers to work with.
d. I mean, New Orleans is the obvious answer here but sometimes you have to go for the obvious option. Not just sometimes in fact but very often because it is obvious for a reason, as in lot of cases “obvious” is just a code word for “objectively” better. Okay I’m going on a bit of a tangent here, sorry, but the truth is that I don’t know too much about either city. And while I would probably lean New Orleans, Hamilton still has some draws as well, mainly the fact that I have been to the US on vacation before but not to Canada, and the fact that it is not hot and humid as fuck… I think?

Quote:16. CW TRIVIA, 3 TPE max - 1 TPE for participation, 0.5 TPE for each correct answer. This is now completed through a Google form linked below. Make sure to spell your answers correctly or you will not get credit. Post your verification word in your CW post.

Verification: Mullet