1. CW Trivia. Verification word: tangerine

(3 TPE)



10. But I Thought You Were Tanking

I think it's great that there was a decent amount of parity in S79.  It really doesn't look good on the league when some teams can't even manage to win 5 or 6 games in a season. I suspect poorly-performing SHL teams are never really tanking (in the sense that they're trying to get high draft picks), but more that they prioritize a plan where their draft picks all age together in the same "golden generation". (Though I do think that EDM was very lucky to reach 17 wins.)

(89 words, 1 TPE)



13. Five Nation Tournament

I don't think we need yet another international tournament; the SHL sometimes tries to do too many different things instead of focusing on some core strengths.  The IIHF tournament is good, but I would change a few things if I could.

There seems to be too much focus on including as many players as possible in the IIHF tourney, but I think this is a mistake. The IIHF tourney should be exclusive, in the same way that the best international hockey tournaments in real life (WC and Olympics) are exclusive.

So my first step as King of IIHF would be to reduce the number of skaters on each roster back to 15 (i.e., nine forwards), matching the SHL. It's very strange that forwards have a better chance of being on an IIHF roster than defenders or goalies.

My second step would be to reduce the number of nations in the IIHF tournament from fourteen to twelve.  (As part of this I would reverse the ridiculous decision to split Canada into two separate countries.) If feasible, I would institute a relegation system whereby the last-place team in each tournament would be dropped from the next tournament, with that team's place being taken by the largest country not currently participating in the tournament. This would ensure some variety in participating nations, but also increase the overall quality of the tournament.

(228 words, 4 TPE)