1. It was a great season for Mat Smith. Even though there was definitely some down parts of it, I'm happy with the stats I finished with and the way I played. I spent the majority of the season in the SMJHL with the Quebec City Citadelles. There I had 14 wins in 37 games, which could have been better, a .911 save percentage, a 2.90 goals against average, and icing on the cake of five shutouts, when I didn't have any in my rookie season. I also got called up to Chicago for a few games, which was totally unexpected for me, and when I heard that I'd be playing in the SHL I thought I'd do terribly. To my surprise though I blew my own expectations out of the water with a 2-0-1 record which included two shutouts (surprisingly one of them was a shootout loss), a .951 save percentage, and a 0.65 goals against average.
157 words - 3 TPE

3. I've given this a lot of thought, and I think that you can't have the perfect postseason without first perfecting the regular season. Going from 50 games to 66 is a good step, but why stop there? I say go big, as big as the MLB, and make 162 game seasons. Think of all the backup games! Now with the regular season being perfect we can move on to the playoffs. Going into the playoffs we set the bar pretty high going as big as the MLB, but what's even bigger than the MLB? Why that's right little Timothy, the NFL is. So we go single-elimination games happening once a week. I heard from someone somewhere I think that the SHL always bases its playoff format on an actual league's playoff format, so this aligns with that rule while making each game count a lot more. I think this is a great system that compromises everyone's ideas, since instead of some people being very happy and some being upset, in this way nobody's happy since everybody gets screwed over! I guess we have to find a way to screw over the playoff champion, so to do that let's say that they automatically miss the playoffs the next season "to promote parity."
211 words - 2 TPE

4. If the SHL were to set up a bubble for the playoffs, it would have to be somewhere that the players would have no chance of catching Covid and spreading it. After much research, I have found that the perfect location for this would be Bodie, California. Bodie is a town that's packed with history, as it used to be an old mining town during the California gold rush years. It was your stereotypical Wild West town, complete with saloons that are still standing to this day. I mentioned earlier that there would be no chance of players catching Covid in Bodie, and if you were wondering why it's because the population is 0. Bodie is a ghost town, abandoned after the mine closed in 1942 in favour of the World War II war efforts. The mine never reopened, and so the town became a California state historic park. I'm sure conservationists would have no problem if the SHL built a couple hockey arenas in a state park in the middle of the desert and mountains too.
177 words - 3 TPE

6. In my very biased opinion, the Chicago Syndicate was the best team not to make the finals. They were eliminated in the semi finals in a reverse sweep by Buffalo, which was clearly a fluke and the series should be resimmed. In all seriousness, Chicago just has so much talent, including two players in the 2000 TPE club in Corey Kennedy and Lallo Selman, the league's 2nd highest point getter and goal scorer in Martijn Westbroek, and an elite goalie in Tibuk Soonika. Even though the Syndicate didn't make the finals this season though, they'll should still be good enough to make a push next season with many of their players hitting their peaks which should offset those getting hit by regression.
122 words - 2 TPE

8. The Steelhawks are going full savage mode these finals, as they decided to stock all of their arena's restaurants with buffalo meat. From everything to a buffalo steak to a buffaburger, if you're looking to try some American bison then Hamilton is the place to be. This sparked protests in Hamilton, however, as the buffalo is considered to be a "near threatened" species, not endangered but not exactly thriving either. They are doing better than a few years ago when they were endangered, however protesters argue that if we normalize the consumption of buffalo meat then the population could take another nosedive. There has been no comment from either the Steelhawks or Stampede organization, however rumours say that the Buffalo Stampede was planning on creating a similar promotion with certain species of hawks, but decided against it after they saw the public backlash that Hamilton has gotten. Instead of this, the Stampede has decided to go for a much simpler route, with player bobbleheads given to all attendees of home games.
171 words - 3 TPE

13c. There is an obvious answer here, that Lake Superior is obviously the greatest lake since it's literally Superior to all the others. I'm gonna ignore that one though because that's a copout. I'm gonna do this by process of elimination now. Lake Erie is out because of its name, I'm not gonna go swim in that lake, it's too Erie. Lake Ontario is out because it's tiny, which makes it hardly great, and also half of it isn't even in Ontario, it's in New York. Lake Michigan is also out for similar reasons, where's Wisconsin, Illinois, or even Indiana in that name? That leaves Lake Huron as the greatest lake, and it makes sense because Huron sounds like Heron and those are pretty cool birds.
125 words - 1 TPE

13d. There seems to be a lot of cool people in both Buffalo and Hamilton, I can't choose just one. I haven't had the chance to interact too much with anybody on the Steelhawks, but both my GMs from the Quebec City Citadelles, Evok and Faelax, play there. Those are two really awesome people and I'm so happy to have gotten to know them over the last couple seasons. I also haven't talked to Kalakar too much but he seems to have really good taste in music based on the streams so I'd hang out with him too.
97 words - 1 TPE

16. Hockey
1 word - 3 TPE (hopefully)

3+2+3+2+3+1+1+3=18 TPE (maximum 16)