Trivia: hi

2a. EDMs ability to move from being utter garbage to a competitive roster is very interesting. They build a good roster and made moves where needed, some questionable, but they did work out for them in the end. This is more impressive than luke lucking his way to another final at the expense of many better teams.

2b. the east was and will be more difficult of a total path to the title than the west. There are not many good teams out there so it really is just surviving until you face EDM or WPG. In the east there are several good teams all of who could challenge for a title making the whole road much harder over there with two difficult matchups almost guaranteed.

3. The reason these teams are continuously in the finals of the league is they do not ride the highs and lows of trying to load up around a single draft class, rather they do whatever they can to spread out the roster to make cap management easier and to help facilitate the team to be continuously competitive in terms of total TPE. With the leage the weay it is now, teams do not have to be top two in total tpe to win a title like was the case in previous eras of the SHL, rather there are 5-8 teams in a season who you can realistically say have a shot at the title. The west is a bit less of this since it has been EDM and WPG for the last forever since there are many disfunctional teams over there, but in the east, continuously competitive but not spiking in TPE has proven to be best.