This was the best season of my career as my player set career highs in goals, assists and points. I didn't check my stats until the end of the season and I was quite surprised to find out that I led the league in points. I helped to run some tests in the middle of the season and I literally never got a test sim where I'd win the points title, usually it went to my teammate Dick Clapper or to someone else. So I'm not sure what happened there but I'm obviously pleased with it. I probably overperformed though, because a 12.15 sh% is way above my career average. I don't really care how I do next season as long as I get at least 50 points, anything else is a bonus. I would like my player to perform better in the playoffs though, as he's been a choker lately. I got 32 points in 26 playoff games in my first 3 seasons in the shl, but only 33 points in 47 games since then. Even the year we won I was below ppg, so i need to get better


I will try to predict the top 8 picks of the expansion draft

1. D - Cassius Darrow: 2k tpe defenseman who has GMing experience, he's highly likely to go 1st overall unless I missed someone
2. F - Bo Kane: young player just entering his prime, someone to build an expansion team around
3. G - Aleister Cain: probably has 8-10 seasons left depending on how he fights regression, the team that drafts him won't have to worry about goaltending for a while
4. F - (Clean) Andrei Kostitsyn: ok he probably won't be picked in the top 5 but an expansion team could use someone like Andrei in their LR
5. F - Boris Poroshenko: he's from my draft class and iirc he got off to a slow start but has been earning steadily ever since
6. D - Oliver Cleary: iirc he wanted to test FA, but if he commits to signing with an expansion team he'd be a great pick here
7. F - Kriss Darzins: Darzins is a great young player with a lot of talent
8. F - Piotr Czerkawski: he's in regression but still has a few good seasons left, he'd probably play in the top 6


As much as I'd like to say that Hamilton was the best team not to make the finals, I don't think that's true. We kind of struggled in the first half of the season and there was even a slight chance we'd miss the playoffs, that didn't happen, but we didn't play our best hockey in the playoffs anyway. To answer the question, I think it's Edmonton. They made some huge trades in the offseason, including the trade for Theo Morgan who is arguably a top 3 player in the league, Edmonton tied Buffalo with 80 points for presidents trophy and took the series to 7 games against NOLA, so they could've easily made the finals.


I think Canada and USA will be good as always, and I feel like that's especially the case in WJC because they get the most creates and their prospects haven't transferred or gone inactive yet. I expect team World to do well also, since they get players from all of the smaller nations, and sometimes their roster is even more stacked than Canada's or USA's. I think Canada will win but I also think there will be at least one upset, and a team outside of the 3 I mentioned will make it to the final. I think that's likely to happen because even though tpe is much more important in FHM than it was in STHS (the one time I was a WJC gm team Sweden went on an insane PDO streak despite having only 2-3 good players). But anyway, I feel like the difference between 200 tpe and 350-425 tpe in juniors is not as big as the difference between 2k and 1k tpe players in shl, so there should be at least one upset.


a. While it's fairly close, I have to say that Buffalo has the defensive advantage. They have higher average tpe and their defense includes multiple 1.8-2k tpe players like Selich, Darrow and Sccop, and their other defensemen are well above 1k tpe. They also allowed the fewest number of goals in the regular season, so they already proved to be a great defensive team.
b. This series started with 2 home wins for Buffalo and then NOLA came back with 2 home wins of their own, so so far the home ice advantage has proven to be true for each team. We will see if that continues to be the case moving forward, but I don't think home ice is that important.
c. I think it really depends on their tactics and player roles. If they decide to use a goon or an agitator, that would give them an advantage, as we've found out earlier. But I think it has more to do with those player roles specifically rather than the bravery/aggression/fighting attributes themselves, so I don't think this will have any impact.


Gabe