1. My last season in the SMJHL was a bit of a bittersweet one, as I was traded to a different J team and knew I would need to be pulled up to the SHL or released by my team (the Stampede). It turned out largely the way I wanted it to – with a handful of points but an overall positive impact on the ice (+9 over the course of the season). My shooting percentage was pretty awful and I scored more goals than I would have liked to – as I would strongly prefer 0 goals and 20 assists to 5 goals and 8 assists – but I felt I had a significant impact on the ice by blocking over 100 shots and forcing 30 takeaways. 110 hits help too, especially at the cost of just 20 penalty minutes. I would have liked for us to perform a bit better regardless, as we were 23-23-4 as a team and definitely didn’t have the seeding we wanted going into the playoffs.

2. For me, there’s no doubt: the BUF over NOLA championship victory in Season 55 definitely means the most, even though I was still on my junior league team at the time. There was a lot of anxiety and frustration with the sim going into the series, and Buffalo had to plan extremely carefully in order to just get to the finals – especially with Hamilton and Chicago in our division! But it paid off in what I consider the best way in Season 55. Our locker room was suddenly going crazy after each game, and it was awesome to see the work that our players had put in over a dozen or more seasons paying off in something tangible. We’ve been competitive at the highest level since I was drafted, and it was awesome to see the team go from “almost there” to “holy crap we did the thing!” I hope that I can earn cups as an actual member of the team now that I’m being called up!

3. Okay, okay – hear me out here. We’re going to make the worst 12-team playoff a reverse gauntlet (otherwise recognized as a ladder bracket). There are a few leagues that do this, albeit more logically, around the world; one such league is South Korea’s KBO (professional baseball): normally, the top seed is rewarded for their valiant regular season effort by getting an automatic bye to the Finals. The rest of the teams have to “climb the ladder” up past the rest of the teams, one grueling series at a time – so in the SHL’s case, that would normally mean Seed 12 would need to face Seed 11, then the winner of that would need to face Seed 10, then the winner of that… you get my point, right? Well, we’d do that in complete reverse: the first seed starts at the bottom and needs to face the second seed in the first round, then the winner of that needs to face the third seed, and so on and so forth. That way, the top two seeds are each most likely to be eliminated in the first round and have a minimal chance of winning. Not only that, but how about we flip the series on its head by making the LOWER seed the one with home ice advantage throughout the series!? That’ll teach you to win regular season games, you jerks.

4. That’s tough to say. It’s unfortunate, but the need for a playoff bubble would probably lead me to offer up a city that doesn’t have a ton of people (in order to limit risk) and is temperate enough to house teams that are used to the brutal Canadian cold and the warmer temperatures in the southern United States. As a result, a compromise including a city in the northern or upper Midwest of the States would probably be a good compromise. The Minnesota Monarchs are a relatively newer team who could be invigorated by hosting an SHL final, so for me, a city like Rochester or Duluth (basically any non-Minneapolis-St. Paul city) would be a pretty ideal location. I don’t think it’s necessary to head to an extremely small city/medium-sized town (e.g. St. Michael, Ham Lake, or even Minnetonka), as you need to ensure that the city has enough resources to accommodate several dozen players’ worth of playoff teams without having a city so dense as to likely spread COVID.

6. Well, I’m obviously a bit biased, but I think the best SMJHL team to not make the finals this season was Quebec City! We had a host of 425 cap players that I found genuinely impressive – though nowadays it feels like there’s a bit of an arms race in the SMJHL even with expansion – and we had a couple of multi-sport athletes like Yuuto Kira Cloudera Jr. who are well-respected in other sim leagues. I think our team was overshadowed a little by the likes of Vancouver – who did have a genuinely excellent team all the way around – and Newfoundland, who like other teams rode on the back of older players like Tinke Jutila (don’t get me wrong, I’m equally guilty here!). I’d also like to point out that the playoff standings on the index are very confusing, as it makes it look like the Berserkers beat the Timber in the second round by a series lead of 8-1 (and 7-1 for the Kraken vs. Raptors).

16. TRIVIA – my verification word is “vagabond”