1) The most surprising part of the season for me has to be the downfall of the New Orleans Specters to the rock bottom of the league. I knew that New Orleans was trending down after losing some key talent, but didn’t expect them to far this far this quickly. Over the span of four seasons, they’ve gone from challenge cup champions in S54 to by far the worst team with 10 fewer wins than the San Francisco Pride. After that cup win, they’ve gone from 39 wins (50 GP), to 28 wins (50 GP), to 22 wins (66 GP), and bottoming out at 10 wins (66 GP) this most recent season. As a player on San Francisco, I thought that we could potentially give New Orleans a run for making the playoffs and not finishing in last place, but I definitely did not predict that they would’ve been as bad as they were in Season 58.

2) As undercover secret consultant, I’m choosing to take 6 skaters for the whole game over the immunity from the rules (with the clarification that they still have to abide by the too many men on the ice rule). Immunity from the rules sounds cool and I understand picking it, because the ability to just hang all over and do ridiculous otherwise cheating maneuvers is pretty valuable. I still think 6 skaters is going to be nearly impossible to score on because of how cluttered it will get in the zone and is a clear advantage. Without icing or offsides, the 5 man team can put someone to go fishing in the other team’s zone, but that leaves a 6 on 4 opportunity until they can get the puck and ice it. It’s either going to be a 6 on 4 or 6 on 5, and regardless of ridiculous penalties being taken you’ll still win 6 on 5.

3) When I think of a lock for a Hall of Famer, I’m immediately going to Tony Pepperoni. The guy has been an elite player in the league for a long time. He’s been very consistently great and done it both early and late in his career. In his career, he played 732 games and scored 312 goals with 432 assist for 744 points. Scoring over a point per game is impressive but doing it for over 700 games makes it even more impressive. Pepperoni has also won 2 challenge cups, an IIHF gold, and a number of personal awards. He was named an All Star 6 times over 14 seasons, with 3 times being a First Team All Star. He’s won the Sarmad Khan, the Ron Mexico, the Sergei Karpotsov, the Joe Mckeil twice, and received many more nominations. I think he is an easy lock for the Hall of Fame today and continuing his incredible scoring pace (he’s been over a point per game player since Season 53) for a few more seasons will further cement that.

4) I’m answering this from my perspective as a J GM instead of player. The Colorado Raptors won the first round of the playoffs before unfortunately matching up with the eventual cup winning Quebec City Citadelles. The Raps had a good season for the most part, just missing out on winning the division and earning a bye on the last day, but to answer the question – this season I am going to spend a lot more time on sim testing. I did a decent amount this past season but mostly relied on the work of my excellent co-GM. While he did a great job, I think that the more the work put in the better so I need to really step it up and put in more effort to find the best lines/roles/tactics combination that I can with the players I have. I think another thing I’ll be doing this season is be more aggressive in the trade market, because this is looking like Colorado’s window and I want to seize it.

5) I think the obvious answer for this has to be the Kelowna Knights in the SMJHL. The team broke the record for regular season success (in the 66 game season at least) with 53 wins, 10 losses, and 3 OTL, a dominant 0.826 winning percentage. The team nearly doubled their goals for vs. goals against, with 254 goals for and 134 goals against. The horrifically awful playoff format that someone should face a firing squad for at FHM is responsible for Kelowna having to take on QCC short of the finals round. If not for that, they absolutely would’ve been in the finals and would’ve deserved to be there.

16) +3 TPE