Ivy

e. It would be an interesting battle, but I actually think I will go with the eagle in this one. On paper, the lion is the obvious choice but I would imagine that the eagles agility and ability to be airborne would help tremendously. The way I see it, the eagle would pull some big time dive bomb moves on the lion and that would act as the WWE style finisher to give the eagle the win.

f. I am going to go with the Baltimore Platoon to win the cup. They have been the favorites all year long and I will keep that going in this prediction. San Francisco might have the offensive advantage, but I will say that in this matchup the defense and goaltending wins out and with Baltimore leading the SHL in goals against this season, I will give them the slight advantage.

In the SHL, I do not believe there is any type of advantage, whether positive or negative, to being the best team in the SHL regular season and then trying to win the cup. Every team has to go through a gauntlet to get to this point, and I do not think the regular season's best feels any more fatigue just because they won more games. I do however believe in home ice advantage in the SHL, which makes being the best team all that much more important to ensure you play on your own ice majority of the games. I believe that we have seen over the past several seasons in the SHL that the home teams do have a slight advantage, so for Baltimore to be in the final with that advantage is massive when you are talking about the two best teams matching up against each other. I do not believe in curses, and I believe Baltimore finds a way to get it done in this series.