Quote:Written Option 1: Despite high speeds, countless hits and blocked shots somehow no SHL player has missed a game to injury in who knows how long. How does the league do it? Are players pumped up with so many drugs and steroids that nothing can hurt them? Better doctors than money can buy to operate anyone during intermission? Clones? Is it all just a simulation?

The SHL accomplishes this through a three-pronged system that aims to curtail the biggest weaknesses of the human body and condition.

1) Copious amounts of drugs. Each SHL athlete is given an assortment of vaccines to start the season, ranging from protection against viruses like ebola and covid, to over sweating and stimulation. Every SHL player is constantly on death’s door, healthy enough to play hockey but so biologically zooted up to their eyeballs that a strong gust of wind could annihilate their immune system.

2) Spiritual introspection and acuity. All SHL athletes must undergo a rigorous regimen of eastern meditation and mind-awakening, overseen by a crack team of Buddhist monks, the kind that were banished from their original monasteries for being too hardcore.

3) The occult. The founder of the SHL, John Q. SHL, originally prayed to Satan to grant his athletes the physical fitness to withstand any injury or malady. Satan granted John this wish, on the condition that the SHL must always have an outlet of evil on its forums, namely the thunderdome. It has long been said that closing the thunderdome would anger Satan and cause him to renege on this deal, though nothing has happened so far.