For my second Deep Dive of the season I wanted to recap what contributed to the championship matchup we have between the Colorado Raptors and the Detroit Falcons. I'll take a look at both teams starting from the draft and their performances in both the regular season and the postseason. Before doing that though I'll quickly recap what expectations were around the league.

There was a clear favorite established early on in the season's start. The Quebec City Citadelles created a gap between themselves and the rest of the league and never let off the gas. The Citadelles ended the season with a 48 wins - 12 losses record and a league leading 102 points. The second place teams for comparison's sake had 41 wins - 17 losses and 90 points. Quebec City absolutely killed the regular season and the expectation was this momentum would carry them all the way to a trophy. Unfortunately for them though they came up one series too short for a Championship appearance which we'll look at in more detail when discussing one of our teams later. Behind QCC however was both the Colorado Raptors and the Detroit Falcons. No one is surprised with the appearance of either teams but more so the exclusion of Quebec. The overall thought was one of these two teams (Detroit and Colorado) would punch a ticket alongside Quebec City. But that's why we play the games.

With all this talk about Quebec City, lets take a closer look at the team that ending up getting the series win over them. The Detroit Falcons ended the season 3rd overall in points for the entire SMJHL. Conference-wise they were first in the Atlantic. Before breaking down the playoff series though lets go back to the draft. Detroit had the 5oa pick courtesy of a trade with QCC. TPE-wise this pick has been great as the user is still active and earning at a great rate. The class was loaded with Right Defense talent so while Kal was only the 7th highest TPE earner at the position, they were squarely in the top tier of earners. Their next pick wouldn't come until 35oa but was an absolute steal with Teemu Salami coming off the board. Teemu is the 5th highest earner in the class as of writing this. Luke Fromm was their next pick who is currently over 200 TPE and still active as well. While the Draft doesn't necessarily translate to immediate success due to the younger nature of the players, its clear the draft didn't hurt Detroit with the class of players they selected. As mentioned previously, Detroit had a great regular season and hopes were high they'd make it to the Championship series. Earning a first round bye, Detroit's first opponent was the Yukon Malamutes. Not much to dive into here as Detroit clearly took advantage of the rest and quickly dispatched the Malamutes with a clean sweep. Unfortunately for Detroit though, the standings meant they'd face the smoking hot Quebec City Citadelles. The previous Quebec City series went 5 games but was a similar one-sided affair. Fans of the league were excited for a potential Championship-tier series in the third round while fans of both teams weren't excited they drew such a high level of competition earlier than expected. Detroit would give off to a hot start taking 3 wins to start the series. No one expected this given the level of competition but Detroit and their fans were ecstatic. QCC would quickly rally though and win the next 2 starting to creep doubt into the city of Detroit if they would get that final win. Thankfully for Detroit, game six ended in a close game with Detroit scoring 3 goals to QCC's two goals. Their ticket was punched and fans were already writing off whoever would win between Colorado and Maine.

The Colorado Raptors would ultimately take the series over Maine but lets rewind one more time and check out how they get here as well. The Raptors started off with the 3oa pick in the draft selecting Pinli Switchbang. Switchbang is a center and was a great pick by the Raptor's staff. The player is 4th in overall TPE earned for this class. A year one provider no question. The Raptors continued the success with their second round pick in Andrade La Sombra at Left Wing. In fact, they did even better as Andrade is the second highest TPE earner in the class. With no pick in the third round, Supreme Dalek was selected in the fourth round at 45oa. Colorado was able to find a late pick that appears to be working out as they're still active and sitting around 250 earned TPE. Similar to the Falcons, the Raptors were able to find contributing players for the current year without taking a year off in the draft. I think this is something key teams need to do to stay competitive in the always changing roster situation in the minors. Colorado had a very similar regular season record with 90 points to Detroit's 88. While they did have 1 less win they were able to convert more overtime games into wins giving them the slight edge overall. Unfortunately since they share a division with QCC, the Raptors were not awarded a first round bye despite being the second best team in the league. They would end up facing the Kelowna Knights in the first round with sports bettors heavily favoring the Raptors. Kelowna would win 2 of the first 3 games before dropping the rest and falling to the Raptors 4-2. Round Two saw them facing off agains the Nevada Battleborn who were expected to be slightly more competitive compared to the Knights. Colorado would only drop one game in this series however and found themselves with a bit of downtime before the third series started. Maine was seeded against them and the community was split on who would take the series. Maine started off by taking two wins before Colorado found their groove and rattled off four straight wins and the series. And with that, the Championship series was decided.

When comparing these two teams and their journeys it was interesting to see how many similarities there were. Both did a great job with their draft and saw a similar level of regular season success. While Colorado had to play an extra series in the playoffs due to a stacked division, I think both teams are quite happy with their journey here. This is normally where you'd see a prediction but I honestly think its a coinflip. I fully expect to see the series go the full seven as we kick off game one tonight. Regardless though it should be a great one and hats off to both organizations for such a great season so far.


Note to Grader: Kinda got carried away typing, 1150 Words