7. Winner Winner Chicken
I am unapologetically confident in the Yukon Malamutes to win the Four Star Cup this season. The Yukon Malamutes have caught fire at the perfect time to go on a run - finishing the regular season 8-2. The Malamutes have continued such dominance into the playoffs, taking an early 2-0 series lead to the Anchorage Armada, securing a strong goal differential of 17-4, and seeing great contributions across the board. While the Malamutes have struggled against the highest seeded teams this season, many of those games came early in the season when the team was struggling to string wins together, and haven't happened since the sim learned to put some respect on the Malamutes' name. As for a couple of player specific game-changers:

1) Theodore Svatos: with Svatos having broken the franchise goals record this season, it's only reasonable to expect he is thirsty for the next achievement under his belt - and that achievement, at this point in the season, has to be the Four Star Cup. Svatos has played strong in the first two games, tallying 3 goals and 2 assists, with a 93 offensive game rating.

2) Jim Wen: Wen finished the regular season 8th in wins, 9th in GAA (5th amongst goalies who played 33 or more games/half the season), 9th in SV% (4th amongst goalies who played 33 or more games/half the season), and tied for 2nd in shutouts. Certainly expected to regress to the mean at some point this post-season, Wen has started his first 2 games exceptionally well - nevertheless, even a slight step up will put him in the top 3-5 player territory.

3) Jordan Tanner: I mentioned this pre-season predictions - in order for the Malamutes to succeed, Jordan Tanner needs to succeed. Well, Tanner finished 41st in the regular season for goals, and 19th for points. Although I anticipated Tanner to be the scorer over Svatos, Tanner's success has been instrumental to the team getting this far, and his success will be instrumental to the team continuing onwards. 

4) Kristian Seppanen: Obviously, the homer pick. But c'mon, Seppanen had a solid season, but needs to step up and have a good to great post-season if the team wants to win. Running 6 excellent defencemen out is a surefire way to ensure championship success. Seppanen already took a step forward in the first two games. Seppanen's game rating and overall stats are improvements over his regular season statistics - but most importantly, Seppanen went from being the only player in the league to play the full season and not score a goal to scoring the game winning goal to win Game 1 of the playoffs! With the dread of his lack of scoring lifted off of his shoulders, the sky Four Star Cup is the limit goal for Seppanen. 

5) Sydney Shaw: One of the team's best defencemen. Interestingly, Shaw hasn't had the strongest first two games, despite the team's overall success and despite her advanced stats showing great promise. This is a good sign, however - as if one of the team's strongest assets had "weak" performances despite the team's success, the team clearly still has a lot of potential and hasn't shown everything it is capable of yet. The team still has a lot to show, and a lot to prove to the league.

Another piece that I believe drives the Malamutes forward is the desire for success under the new logo for this season. What better way to show commitment to the cause than to go out and fight hard every night to ensure there's another night the logo can be shown and its meaning can be elaborated upon? What better way to ensure that people are reminded of this legacy than to have the logo hanging in the rafters for people to think about, learn about and reflect upon? 

Another piece that drives the Malamutes team forward is to rally our support behind those impacted by the wildfires in Yukon that have been raging on during this season. Each game, the Malamutes organization donates a percentage of the ticket sales to support those impacted by the wildfires, and the team feels great pride in this activity - and the team wants to continue pushing, raising awareness, and offering support for this initiative and ensuring those impacted are able to retain some "normalcy" after all of this. 

Lastly, and although all teams have players aging out of the SMJHL, I think another motivating factor for the team to succeed this season in particular is that the team has several core pieces aging out this season. Former team Captain, Sydney Shaw, and current team captain, Alvin Wong, are both aging out in addition to several other key pieces such as Sven Patterson - and what better way to honour them than to win them a Four Star Cup as well?

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