Prompt 3:
This is a bit of a nuanced issue, but I think both points are true. Los Angeles has certainly had the harder road to the cup, having to beat the #2 and #3 regular season teams in the SHL to get here. Our defensemen were under more pressure, and just looking at stats is going to be misleading for that reason reason. However, if you look at the teams' playoff stats, they leverage their defensemen very differently on the attack. Many of Tampa Bay's goals come from their defensemen, and not just one or two of them, but their whole top four is in the top eight of playoff defensemen goals. Meanwhile, LA has three defensemen in the top six and four in the top nine for assists. This suggests that Tampa Bay's defensemen are more active and more likely to pinch on the attack, while Los Angeles' defensemen spend more time with the puck on their sticks. LA's defense must thus spend more time on defense than Tampa Bay's, while the latter share more of the defensive load with their forwards. This isn't so much a question of better or worse as it is a clash of two different defensive philosophies, both manned by the best in the business.

Quote:210 words - 4 TPE

Prompt 4:
Goalies are voodoo, and the playoffs are a whole different season. At the start of the playoffs anyone might have called this a close race with a slight advantage to the more seasoned Grzegorz, but once the bright lights turned on, one of these goalies pulled away. Including game one of the finals, played as of today, Grzegorz Brzeczyszczykiewicz has no fewer than four shutouts in this single postseason. Soonika is tied for second with one. Soonika's save percentage is also respectable at 0.908, but Grzegorz's has been an almost unbelievable 0.929 across twenty games played. To further the discrepancy, Tibuk's Goals Saved Above Average is a solid 2.18. Grzegorz's 16.99 leads all postseason goalies by a country mile. Tubuk Soonika deserves all the credit in the world for winning the Eastern Conference and playing a winning playoff game, but Gzegorz is a puck-stopper at the peak of his powers and is here to put on a show.

Quote:157 words - 3 TPE

Prompt 6:
The season before this one was a serious disappointment for Grzegorz. That season and this season represent his peak TPE; after this offseason things go slowly downhill. Los Angeles needed Grzegorz to put up a season for the ages, and with two wins between them and the cup, he seems to have delivered. This season, Grzegorz was one of the best goalies in the league, holding his place in the dense pack at the very top, and then when the postseason came he turned white hot at the perfect time. Two wins to go. If this season ends in a cup win, this will be exactly the season Grzegorz and the Panthers needed it to be.

Quote:116 words - 2 TPE

Max earnable TPE exceeded by one. Leaving these marked as-is in case my word counter fell short on one of the prompts. Claiming 8 TPE total.