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?

Hartmann had an up-and-down rookie season. He put up 23 points skating on a line with Tony Pepperoni and Guy LeGrande and looked good in a physical role, but still had some major holes in his game. The first one was puck security - Hartmann had 41 giveaways, the 15th-most in the SHL, and only had 16 takeaways. The second is shooting percentage. Hartmann took 99 shots in the SHL in his rookie season and only scored five times for a 5.05% shooting percentage, and at one point had the lowest non-zero shooting percentage in the SHL. The playoffs were also a disappointment for Hartmann. Playing 19 games, he only scored twice on 51 shots for a 3.92% shooting percentage, one of which came in Game 7 of the semifinal loss to Hamilton, and had 19 giveaways, the fourth-most in the playoffs. Hartmann made some plays in the playoffs, but was largely invisible for most of it. Going into the offseason, he'll look to get stronger on the puck and improve at getting himself to the spots on the ice to take higher-quality shots.


3. Written, 2 TPE (100 words min.)

FHM's 12-team playoff bracket setup has received a fair bit of scrutiny. It re-seeds after the play-in round and for some reason puts the #1 seed and #2 seed on the same side of the bracket. I challenge you to come up with a different playoff format - can you come up with a format that's dumber/worse than this? be creative! Come up with the worst possible format for a 12-team playoff.

Time to ruin the SHL. Keeping with the same divisions, the top two teams from each division will get spots, and then the last two spots in each conference are determined by wildcard races across the entire league. From there, the divisions will be thrown out completely and the teams will be seeded 1-12. Now, for the matchups, the 5th, 6th, 11th and 12th seeds will all get byes. The 1 will play the 2 and the 3 will play the 4, and these high seeds will be on the same side of the bracket as the 5 and 6, with the winner of the 1-2 playing the 5 and the winner of the 3-4 playing the 6. Meanwhile, the 7 plays the 8 and the 9 plays the 10, and the winner of the 7-8 goes on to play the 11 and the winner of the 9-10 gets to play the 12 seed. This way, this guarantees a 9th-12th seed makes it into the final four every time while ensuring two of the top four teams in the league go home early every year. This format is sure to spice up the late season, and create chaos with teams willingly throwing games to try and get into the 9-12 spots.

5. Written, 2 TPE

Write an SHL themed Haiku Sonnet (see link below) which I just learned is a real thing. The format is: Haiku Haiku Haiku Haiku Couplet

The format is dumb
Conferences are not a thing
Let's do that hockey

Semifinal time
Three teams from the Great Lakes, why?
Blizzard stand alone

This is a blowout
Syndicate one game away
Oh wait never mind

Blizzard down by three
Overtime magic and hope
Two crossbars to lose


One rally complete, one not
Blizzard's comeback all for naught

6. Written, 2 TPE (100 words min.)

Which SHL or SMJHL team was the best team to not make the finals this season and why?

I'm sorry Chicago, but you've really made this too easy. The Syndicate are without a doubt the most talented team not to make the finals. A 37-win season for third in the league, a 40-goal scorer in Martijn Westbroek, and incredible depth with the Smeb brothers, Corey Kennedy, Lallo Selman and Nick Connolly. The defense is backed up by young studs Akira Ren and Disisde Dayudie, and the team was further bolstered with players like Gunnar Soderberg, Ryan Shepard, and Ryuuji Minamino. In net, Tibuk Soonika was excellent with a 2.03 GAA and .925 save percentage, and continued to be lights-out into the playoffs. Chicago was one game away from the finals and lost in the most agonizing fashion - a reverse sweep at the hands of the Buffalo Stampede, including back-to-back overtime losses in Games 6 and 7.

Task 10, 3 TPE:


Task 13 (1 TPE)

a. I think the better roster of skaters on paper is clearly the Hamilton Steelhawks. They've really shown throughout the season that they're a stacked team top to bottom. Aaron Wilson, Dick Clapper, Michael Scarn, and Theo Morgan are a lethal group of four 2000 TPE forwards. Their defense is anchored by a 1900 TPE player in Gabriel Johnson and players like Samuel Michaud, Ray Bork and Igor Volkov. Their only weakness is in net with A Jobin at a fairly low TPE level, but he doesn't see many shots so it's not a huge deal.

Task 16 (1 + correct answers): word is "brooms"

TPE: 14 + trivia/16