Hi all! The LEMOnade stand is up and running again after a few busy weeks of harvest and brew. Let’s see how things have gone in the SMJHL in the mean time...

The Anchorage Armada did a little bit better in the second half of the regular season and went 15-7-3 in the second half after amassing 14-10-1 in the first half, for a total of 62 points. While not the most significant of improvements (and certainly nowhere near the 73 that the Armada punched in last season), this one extra W along with those three OTL loser-points ended up being exactly what finally got them above both Nevada and Anaheim for second in their conference and in fact also third league-wide, behind only the excellent league-leading Vancouver Whalers in the west and the Carolina Kraken in the east, just two points ahead of the Armada. Those two points ahead of Anchorage though were double the differences that came behind them, as they ended up edging out the Newfoundland Berserkers by a single point and then another point up on NBB and Anaheim. 

Despite the goaltending and scoring woes in a lot of their games where they had clearly been the dominant side everywhere apart from the scoreline, the Armada made enough amends in other games that they finished the season 2nd best in the league in both goals scored and goals allowed. While the goals scored race was won by Anaheim in the end by just 6 goals (the former half of their dynamic scoring duo of James Boxman ll and ‘Long’ John Donair suddenly deciding to call it a career and abruptly retire only a few games before the end of the regular season already probably had something to do with their slower second half too), the Vancouver team left no doubt as to which team boasted the best defense and goaltending this season, finishing the regular season with just 101, a whopping 35 less goals allowed than the next placed Anchorage.

Despite what numbers Vancouver was able to display, the league in general this season was very much more even and unpredictable compared to last season. Last season’s feared and revered Newfoundland and Anchorage came back down to earth, while the Kelowna Knights decided to hit the ground even harder. Carolina took the top seed in the east, but with less points than they had last season when they ended up second (just one point behind NL) and went on to win the Four-Star Cup. Maine Timber showed promise of contending for the easter conference crown mid-season, but dropped the ball somewhat in the latter half. 

The two expansion teams, still only finding their footing last season and as a result taking heavy losses nearly game-in game-out, they were this time around much more actively involved, with Nevada even leading the league at one point in the season. Both Nevada and Quebec City Citadelles finished the season with a positive goal differential, with Nevada even scoring their division win to earn them a bye in the first round if the playoffs. 

All teams making the playoffs in any case, the teams at the bottom of the standings could still not be counted out completely either, as all of them could still pose a threat on any given night, evidenced well for instance by Detroit’s five-game winning streak about a week before the end of the regular season, during which they bagged a couple of big wins against Newfoundland, Nevada and Anaheim. 

That streak did not go unnoticed by the Armada either when preparing to meet those same Falcons in their first round series. The Boat Gang went at the Falcons from every which angle they could, peppering Thor Odinson with three times the amount of shots that they were allowing at the other end of the ice. But the result was again looking to be quite a textbook Anchorage result for this season, as despite dominating the ice, the Armada failed to dominate the scoreboard, the game tied at three going into the final ten minutes of the game.  But just as everybody and their mother were already bracing themselves for overtime, finally it was TURG TURG deflecting a Lemo Pihl shot past Odinson for the game winner on the very final second of regulation! While certainly a devastating last-second failure for Detroit, this gave Anchorage at least some sense that perhaps their luck was finally starting to turn for the better...

The next game the following evening quickly evaporated that sense, with the Falcons already taking the lead with just over a minute into the game, scoring on their very first shot. All eyes were again on Scoochie Stratton - was this another one of his down games in the offing, or would he be able to shake this one off and keep the Armada afloat? Luckily he would go on to do so, not allowing another puck past him in this game. But that only accounted for keeping the Armada afloat for now - they still needed to get their own pucks past Thor Odinson and into the opposing net. They would manage to do just enough of that as well though, and to claim a 2-0 lead in the series on second period goals first by Pojo Biscuit to tie the game and then again by TURG TURG, assisted by Lemo Pihl once more. Although both teams would go on to double their shots on goal during the second half of the game (ending 19-46 in Anchorage’s favor), neither goalie would allow themselves be bested again.

Although the Armada had managed to grab and extend their lead in the series, the superb play of Odinson was worryingly reminiscent of Leo Bloomfield’s heroics against Anchorage in last season’s playoffs. The Armada realized that if Odinson can keep this level of performance up, then they would need their own goalies to follow suit or they would still be in trouble, no matter how much they outshoot Detroit. Luckily game 2 had shown some promise of that as well.

Game 3 also showed such promise, as Scoochie allowed just one goal on 19 Detroit shots. But it was still one too many, as Odinson put in another stellar performance and stopped all 36 shots on goal by the Armada and cut Anchorage’s series lead in half. Despite the loss though, Scoochie showed good poise again and seemed to have regained his composure as Anchorage’s designated starter for these playoffs.

Game 4 was another nail-bitingly close goalie affair. Even the shot totals were close for most of the first two periods, although that had changed by the time regulation ended and the shots were suddenly showing as 30-15 for Anchorage. But what still wasn’t showing was any goals scored! Both goalies had already played a perfect game and now it was just going to go on until one of them sadly failed their bid for a shutout. It didn’t take too long then though, as it was again Pojo Biscuit, again off a Lemo Pihl pass that finally ended the game with another win for Anchorage. Odinson had basically played a second consecutive shutout game, but was not going to get the W for it this time. It seems highly unlikely that anyone would have predicted this series to be such a tight and low-scoring affair, but four games in and here we were four one-goal games, two of them literally with just one goal scored.

Game 5 was no easier for the Armada to go into, despite the 3-1 series lead. The magnificent performances of Odinson, coupled with the up-and-down form that the Anchorage goaltending had shown all regular season, not to mention the ghosts of playoffs past - namely that Maine series a year ago, where the Armada blew a similar 3-1 lead to a superhot goaltender despite dominating the ice in almost every other aspect in most of the games... there was no taking lightly in the Armada locker room before this game. 

The first period was again all Anchorage almost everywhere except the scoreboard. The Falcons were again quite lucky to have come out of it tied at 1 despite getting outshot 18-4. And it didn’t stop there... Four minutes and another two shots into the second period, the Falcons took the lead! On the very next shot some two minutes later, they doubled their lead! It was another damn Anchorage Special PDO nightmare in the making! It took another ten minutes and ten shots for the Armada to cut the deficit back down to one. Detroit failed to muster up even a single shot during that time. And before they could even get that one, the Armada had in fact already manager to score the game tying marker as well, just a few minutes later. After seeming other-worldly for so long during the past few games, Odinson was finally looking human again too. It was a welcome sight for the Armada and gave them hope that unless they let up and allow another whopping five shots on their own net in the final period, they might even have a chance to score a few more and survive this if they keep up the pace of 34 shots to 8 in the first 40 minutes through the final period as well! Well they went on to allow even a whopping 10 shots in the final period, but miraculously enough, Scoochie managed to snatch them all, while another 21 Armada shots yielded two more goals to put Anchorage over the top and win them the series! 

Anchorage had finally won a playoff series! It was undoubtedly a huge monkey off everyone’s back, but it also left everyone hungry for more, just as it should be. Lemo could be proud, as he had managed to turn his rather slow second half of the regular season into game-winning assists in all three of the one-goal Anchorage wins in the series and added his first SMJHL playoff goal in game 5 as well. He will certainly be looking to add to that now in the coming series against the Nevada Battleborn.

Meanwhile in the other first round series, all three of the other higher seeds suddenly found themselves struggling. 

While the Colorado Raptors vs Quebec City Citadelles could have been predicted a close series, both teams finishing the regular season tied at 50 points, it was Colorado who punched their second round ticket next after Anchorage, closing out the Citadelles in six games. The Raptors will now play the Carolina Kraken in round two.

Anaheim had enjoyed an incredibly high PDO for most of the season and it was not too surprising to see them cool down somewhat down the stretch. Things were probably also not helped along by the abrupt retirement of the other half of their league-leading scoring tandem, taking out from their equation the proverbial Kurri to their Gretzky. Their series against the Kelowna Knights team 21 point inferior to them in the regular season thus became a tighter affair than it should have otherwise been and in the end the Outlaws succumbed to the Knights in game 7. Kelowna will advance to play the regular season winning Vancouver Whalers in round 2.

Going just 10-13-2 in the second half, the Maine Timber had failed to meet pundits’ expectations of giving Carolina and Newfoundland a run for their money in the race for top seed in the east. But the 39 point St. Louis Scarecrows should still have been an easy enough hurdle for them to clear... Not as easy as all that though. The Timber did manage to collect themselves after falling behind 3-1 in the series and in the end pulled off three consecutive wins for the ticket to the second round, but it was really tio close for comfort for Bloomfield and the boys in front of him. They’ll need to be even better now, as they meet again their finals foe from last season, the defending champs Newfoundland Berserkers.

Looking a little bit at personal stats for the first round, it bears to mention that Thor Odinson sported unequivocally the highest save percentage (94.3, next highest 91.7) of everyone despite losing four of the five games that he played. An awesome performance!

Despite losing his running mate James Boxman ll, “Long” John Donair of Anaheim still again led the points scoring race with the rest of his teammates filling the departed’s shoes perhaps even better than might have been expected. They also boasted the top 4 in plus-minus, including the only four players to be +6 or over. Somehow it still wasn’t enough to overcome Kelowna though...

Anchorage had a fairly low-scoring series despite having three players in the top ten of shots on goal (TURG TURG, Igor Victory and Vladmir Petrov with 65 shots combined for 4 goals and 2 assists) and their top scorer is actually none of those three, but defenseman Pojo Biscuit with his 3 goals and 2 assists on 12 shots, their only scorer in the top 25 right now. Of course they did play less games of all the teams in the first round as well.

So that’s the juice for this time. As a parting shot, here’s a small prediction for the coming round:

Vancouver over Kelowna in 5.
Carolina over Colorado in 5.
Newfoundland over Maine in 6.
Anchorage over Nevada in 7 (here’s hoping, anyway )

I won’t even pretend to understand how that playoff seeding thing works in FHM, so I won’t go beyond this in my prediction, apart from likely not spoiling anything by saying that it would probably take some mean sim unluck for Vancouver to fumble the championship this season

LEMOnade - Keep it cool!