norway



Manhattan got there because their best players step up massively. Lev Lebedev has been producing at a way higher level than he did during the regular season. But mainly, it’s because of their goalkeeping has been nothing sort of extraordinary. Name Redacted will probably end the playoffs with a higher goals saved above average than the regular season leader.

59 words


I think it could clearly affect them. Being fresh and having rest days is something that can be critical during the regular season and even more during the playoffs. It also gives you time to heal small injuries and you also get free time that you can use to prepare for your next opponent when you win a round earlier.

60 words


Since I’ve now got a coupe of seasons in the SHL with the Inferno, I got offered the possibility to have my own room and I gladly took it, which means I don’t have a roommate, which is great got I really like to have some private alone and quiet time before I got to sleep. Usually, when we got back to the hotel after the room, I will go out to share a small meal with some of my teammates either at the hotel restaurant or at a restaurant that is a small walk from the hotel. Then, I will go to my room and read a book for half an hour to an hour before closing the light and going to sleep. On the days we spent in a hotel where we don’t have a game, I usually carry a laptop around on which I either play games or watch movies and TV shows. Sometimes, I will have teammates bringing their own computer and with play games together sitting right next to each other.

176 words


I’ve seen plenty of players use superstition to keep his streak alive during my career. Most of the time, it’s a small thing they did differently during their pregame routine that they wouldn’t even think about it again if it wasn’t from the fact that they had a good game and they wanted to go back in time to figure what they did differently. The first one was a player who had to put a Band-Aid on one of his fingers, because of a small cut cause by paper. He went on to score two goals in his first game with the Band-Aid and decide to put a new one on before every game even if the cut had healed. It didn’t really work since he didn’t get any points in the five following games. Another one, back in my junior days, is when a player decided that he needed to take his shower with his helmet on during the playoffs, because it would give us luck. We did end up winning the first round, but unfortunately, we got eliminated during the second round and he didn’t try it again during the playoffs the next year.

196 words


S67 Milestones +3 TPE


The playoffs were both surprising and not surprising at the same time. We knew before that Seattle had a good team, so seeing them winning the title is really not surprising after being a finalist last year. But we did see some big surprises in the Eastern Conference. Seeing both Manhattan and Montreal reaching the Conference final by beating Atlanta and Toronto was something not expected, especially after the regular season that the top two regular-season teams in the Eastern Conference had. What happened in the East during the playoffs seem like a sign of good things to come with FHM8, since it seems like everything is a bit less predictable, without being too unpredictable, although the sample is still too small to come to a proper conclusion.

128 words