Verification word: Burp!



A. It is indeed great to see the two expansion teams from the same year make the finals together. And while Atlanta making it this far this season was admittedly no surprise, Seattle had looked like their best few seasons with their existing core were already a few behind them… but lo and behold - here they are! As much as I’d like to root for the perceived underdog Seattle though, I have had a liking for the Inferno ever since they joined the league way back when and I’d love to see them make good on their potential and being the Challenge Cup to Atlanta for the first time in their franchise history! (113 words)

B. The answers to this one are simple from both ends - ‘shots, shots and more shots on net’ and ‘blocks, blocks and more blocks to help lighten the workload at least somewhat’. Not at all surprisingly, that’s exactly what both these teams have been banking on, respectfully.  In addition to those, both teams also play a pretty physical style of play, but Atlanta seems to show better discipline and ability to hurt the other team without getting sent to the sin bin. This should come in handy for them in this series as well. (94 words)

C. This ties in well with the previous paragraph, as again it could be Atlanta’s ability to stay out of the box while still playing hard-nosed hockey that helps them keep up the pressure and roll all three lines over the boards one after another. Seattle will have to goad them into taking more bad penalties if they want to be able to apply their own greatest asset which we will discuss in the next paragraph. (75 words)

D. I think Atlanta will have the upper hand here, since they have the better discipline to keep themselves out of the box and in turn keep the fearsome Seattle powerplay unit on the bench or at least playing against even strength. And as much as an anemic powerplay might be a detriment to a lot of teams, when your even strength play is on such an infernal level as Atlanta’s, they have little need to toe the line too much in trying to provoke penalties from the opposition and ending up getting called for something themselves. (96 words)




+2 TPE - Lemo Pihl S66 milestones



Although I am not in fact finnish, but estonian by birth and comes from the Estonian capitol of Tallinn, I will still tell you about a finnish city that I consider my hockey hometown. That city is Rauma. Rauma became my hockey home town about ten years ago when I was playing an online hockey manager game called WebSim Hockey and I happened upon an invite to fill in a manager vacancy in what was thus far the only finnish speaking league in the game, Liiga. So I ended up taking the helm of the virtual representation of the storied Rauma Lukko somewhat by chance. But as real franchise names were not obligatory in the league and I had no real feelings for the Lukko (basically Lock in english, probably inspired by the local shipwrights and metalworking industry) brand, I thought of a brand that sounded far more fierce and competitive to me and for which I also happened to find what I thought was a perfect logo from the depths of the internet. The team became the Rauma Raju! Which, admittedly, the Storm in english is also a pretty widely used name, but I really liked the sound of it in finnish. That very first season as the Raju we literally took the league by storm and went from missing the playoffs the previous season as Lukko to winning their first league championship right off the bat, instantly cementing their place in league history! I became so enamored of the brand that once a retro league was started up by a lot of the core group of managers from the original Liiga, Rauma Raju began to write itself an illustrious history before the fact as well, winning the first SM-Liiga championship and then again every other season over the first seven seasons of the league. With such history already behind the brand, it also became my team name in the now defunct Hockey Dynasty manager game and perhaps will make their return once more in some future form. (339 words)



I didn’t really expect the Argonauts to make it this far, but Atlanta was obviously one of the prime contenders again and personally I am very glad that they pulled it off and finally realized their immense potential. With the prospective salary cap changes promising to reshape the landscape somewhat as well, it would have been sad to see them miss out on their chances like for instance the erstwhile juggernaut Baltimore Platoon team. Where it comes to the new sim engine, I think the visual presentation is hot garbage at best and OOTP should be ashamed to publish that kind of 2D engine in the 2020’s. It looks worse now than for instance Eastside Hockey Manager did in the ‘00s, not to mention the plethora of nonsensical visual and other bugs. I may sound like a Luddite, but if there’s a chance of using the new sim engine with the old FHM6 style presentation, then by god, let’s use it! (161 words)


Let’s start with SHL things and move outward from here: I hope I can help bring my new team the Philadelphia Forge to the next level in the time I will be with them; I hope the live sim presentation gets sorted out for next season; I hope the league as a whole will also find its way through this somewhat of a crisis period of late and will continue to thrive; I hipe for the best for everyone here and their loved ones; I hope that Putin’s senseless war on Ukraine is put a definitive end to sooner rather than later; I also hope we’re all still alive to see it; I hope we somehow pull ourselves and our societies together and at least try to salvage whatever sustainability this lonely planet of ours still has left so that our children and their children will still have an Earth to live on… (153 words)