1. Verification word: Ham

7: I got San Fransisco winning it all in this finals. A dynasty team that has repeatedly been one of the best teams around for a while now. Ramen is also part of the team so I have to cheer for them under penalty of spending additional time in the shower. Over the regular season, both teams had similar goals let in but the distinct advantage in scoring abilities for the Pride should be what gets the over the hump here for another cup.

11: It’s an inevitability with fixed seeding for playoffs that sometimes it is actually preferable to finish with a lower seed than higher. I have run into these issues while playing competitively in other games (Slapshot: Rebound). I was the GM and when I took a look at the likely brackets, it did happen that we went into games, not intending to lose but playing a roster with our prospects to get them game time and we’d probably would lose, and I’d be fine with that. The goal is to win the cup not win regular season games, that’s true here as much as it was true for SlapShot: Rebound. It was because of this that a new seeding system was introduced. The top seed gets to pick from the four bottom-seeded teams who to play. Then 2nd seed gets to pick from the remaining, then 3rd, and then 4th gets who’s left. This system made it so there is never a reason to lose, there is never a reason to try and snipe a lower seed. While this does make it harder for lower seeds at times cause now they will run into harder teams, that is the intended point of seeding so it was something that the league was fine with. In the case of this season, I do think Philly benefited from being a lower seed, and to the detriment of Buffalo. I don’t think it mattered for New Orleans, but objectively Texas did get the easier matchup to start the playoffs.

7 = 83 words, 11 = 254 words.