1. sheep


Obviously Seattle had their hands full from the get go.  The plan was had to be to limit shots and for the most part the Seattle defense was able to do this.  The problem is that Atlanta was also able to limit Seattle’s chances  especially in games five and six.  Atlanta was able to ensure victory by capitalizing on their limited chances as Willie Miller’s luck finally ran out.


I think the S58 Maine Timber would have decimated the S54 Tampa Bay Barracuda easily.  That team was loaded with future stars like Rikard Bjerg, Walton Stromberg, Alexander Oscarsson, Adrik Baranov, and Nathan Thomas all at their peak.  But, not to mention Calvin Hobbes, Jonny Tsunami, Puddles O’Duck, Dogwood Maple, and Ville Kurri all played on this team as well, all of which are having long SHL careers.  This team was the epitome of stacked and I didn’t even realize how much talent they had at the time as I was focused on the SHL by this point in my own career.  On the flip side, Tampa Bay had only 6 players above 500 TPE and even worse, many skaters who seemed as if they were just there to puck watch, which is obviously why they failed to win a single game that season.  However, I think Maine would have a difficult time with any other team in SHL history.  Even this past season’s Edmonton team would probably smoke them.

7. Milestones +3 TPE


I’m writing this late, but it felt obvious to me that last season was a fluke from the beginning.  I did think that Switzerland might be able to make the medal round and make some noise despite their lack of TPE, but I had no expectations for Ireland this season so I guessed this correctly.  I absolutely nailed my prediction that Japan would miss for the first time in many seasons despite having the second highest TPE in the tournament, however I was shocked to see Latvia as the beneficiary of this.  The team with the least TPE in the tournament actually made the medal round.  Of course, the reward was a first round date with Sweden and that ended poorly for them.  Of the remaining matchups, I expect Sweden to prevail over Canada in a very tight matchup and Finland to beat Norway handily and then defeat Sweden in the gold medal game.  I think in the future that Sweden and Finland will be battling for quite some time.  Japan’s glory days are likely over.


I really didn’t feel that the way things went in these playoffs were too surprising.  I think most of the league, including myself, had the Atlanta Inferno as the favorites from the beginning of the season.  However, I did not expect this season to be the one where the Seattle Argonauts broke through and seeing them go right through the Panthers and then coming back and beating Chicago after going down 2-0 was a bit unexpected.  Seeing that both teams had high quality defenses, I wonder if that will have an effect on the league where defense is seen once again is a premium instead of something nice to have.

+16 TPE