pride



c. Those numbers are easily enough to make Soderberg-Snooks the best defense in the playoffs this season. Playing at a point per game pace as a defense is already hard enough, but doing that while never giving the puck away at any point is incredibly impressive. No other defense on either team comes close to those metrics and it's clear that Soderberg-Snooks deserves all the recognition.

d. This is a nice case where I don't see either team having an easier route to the finals. Their journeys mirrored each other this season. The Pride had the slightly easier round 1 matchup with their opponent being 17th vs 14th. Then both teams had formidable round 2 opponents, facing the 3rd place Panthers and 5th place Forge, both going to 7 games. Then, Baltimore had the easier round 3 matchup with the 11th place opponent rather than 8th. It was all very balanced for both these teams.

f. Even though I have a huge soft spot for the Pride since my first player was drafted there and played half his career there, I initially predicted the Platoon to win and have to stick with that guess. If anything just because they were stronger in the regular season. I'll be incredibly happy for the Pride if they win though so I'm okay with either outcome.



I've never really been a fan of the divisional playoff format in any league. I can understand why a real league like the NHL might use it to save travel costs in the first round, but it comes at a great cost in terms of format enjoyability. Especially in the SHL where there's fewer teams per division but still has a 16 team playoff format, there's going to be a lot of repetitive matchups year to year. It causes there to be less meaningful playoff races during the regular season because the majority of spots are only being competed for against other teams in each division. The 2/3 matchups are especially prone to becoming stale and make for first round matchups that feel unfair. It's very easy for a 2/3 divisional matchup to consist of two top 8 teams in the league and for another matchup to consist of two bottom 8 teams. In some cases it feels like the first round is the one that matters most and the second round is more of a breather, which should never be the case. In a league with no real life travel considerations, the format should always allow for a greater variety of matchups rather than restricting them due to arbitrary divisions.