I have three surprises I want to talk about, two of which are related.

1. S53: the wolfpack was doing great in the first season of FHM ever in the league. We topped the charts, were favorites going into the playoffs, and I had the honor of being able to share in the scoring glory. Once the playoffs started, we got past the first round but got stomped in the second. It was a surprising disappointment to have all of our great moments during the season instead of spreading them out into the playoffs as well.

2. S54: the wolfpack did pretty decently, but due to the competitive conference (the top 3 overall teams were in our conference) we just barely didn't make the cut to the playoffs. This caused a cascade of trade requests in our core player group which gave us a ton of high picks to rebuild but also left the few remaining core members a bit isolated on a team of younglings.

3. Slap McShotty's S57 IIHF run: I joined team Switzerland without high expectations to help some friends, but during this one season Slap was on fire. He came second overall in points and helped SWI make the medal rounds that season, which was a somewhat rare occurrence during those times.