Ladies and gentleman, it’s time for me to re-enter the media fray with yet another attempt at weekly media about the current SHL standings. I love writing these, and while I might not have the consistency, it’s also a very nice source of money for me to sit on, so hopefully, I will stick this through for more than 3 weeks :D

The season 75 preseason is over, the season is looming over our heads, so let’s peek into the current state of the teams and potentionally predict where they will end up in the regular season based on the somewhat limited data that we have available. I will try my best to account for potentional opponent quality and schedules, but to be perfectly honest, you might have ended preseason 2-5, you might not be as weak of an opponent as that should suggest. With that, let’s begin with:

Pacific Division

The preseason standings are clear – stand aside Edmonton, it’s the new kids on the block to rule the west! Except of course, Edmonton is still the highest TPE team in the league, and had a unreasonably rough preseason schedule (PHI 2x, WPG, HAM, TEX, BUF) with only a singular easy opponent in Montreal, so let’s not overreact here. Of course, San Francisco and Los Angeles are on their way to the top, and LAP actually boasts the 2nd best roster of the league, while SFP just had a major trade aquisition with an eye-watering price mark on it, so the fight for the top is going to be very, very fierce.

That sounds like great fun! Where are the other two teams to join? Well...Seattle is still rebuilding, and so is Calgary. Seattle currently sits as the 2nd worst roster in the league with Manhattan at 18th comfortably ahead by over 200 average TPE, and Calgary isn’t far ahead of the afformentioned Manhattan either. Seattle is on the downward spiral part of the rebuild, selling and retiring old and using draft capital for the new, while Calgary is more on the upswing with their new roster already growing and preparing to take onto the rest of the league. With how wildly stacked the top is, neither of these two teams are going to be a threat for a guaranteed spot out of the division to the playoffs, and for Seattle, this would be an active detriment to their plan, so Calgary is basically left to their own trying to battle out the wildcard spot, and then hope for a small miracle beating a top seeded team in the first round.

So, what’s the prediction then? Well, 4th belonging to Calgary and 5th to Seattle is relatively simple to expect. San Francisco had a fantastic playoff run, but their regular season performances left a bit to be desired, and with their TPE disadvantage it’s a most probably 3rd for them, and in the fight of the titans, the experience of the cup winning Edmonton should likely outperform the new and fresh faced LAP for 1st. So, in the end:
EDM
LAP
SFP
CGY
SEA

Central Division

Let’s close out the west by talking about the Central. Winnipeg stands on top of the preseason with a good record, if not a somewhat weaker goal differential, as their preseason schedule, similar to Edmonton, wasn’t exactly simple – their only loss somehow coming from their game against Seattle, the only “easy“ opponent. Texas still looks very threatning, and is likely going to be a tough opponent to face for the season to come (and like Winnipeg, also lost to Seattle), and with Chicago regressing down the rebuild path, it’s up to Minnesota and New Orleans to duke it out for the final guaranteed playoff spot. With Seattle and Chicago in the division, it’s likely that whoever loses here gets the wildcard spot and will make playoffs almost for sure, these spots however come with the small issue of having to play a division winner, and therefore, that 3rd is critical to make it past the 1st round. Of course, of course, “to be the best you need to beat the best“, but I think neither Minnesota nor NOLA are really in the position yet where they would consider themselves the best in the league.

With this division having only 1 clearly non-playoff team, the competition is likely to be a little tighter. Still, the top 2 in Texas and Winnipeg are likely a step ahead of NOLA and Minnesota, and that’s likely going to make that prediction very straightforward. Minnesota is in a better position than NOLA though, and therefore ahead of Chicago which is clearly rebuilding, and cashing in on some of their players big time, NOLA likely unfortunately stays just outside of the guaranteed spots and Minnesota clears them to join the somewhat more favourable 2-3 matchup. Who will they meet there though? Well, between Texas and Winnipeg, it’s very clear who the recent historical prediction would be. Winnipeg has been a complete machine, and has not looked back in quite a while now...except last season they did. Admittedly, Chicago is not in a position to really repeat the 2nd place from last season, but Texas absolutely is. And this fight is going to be extremely close. Texas boasts the 2nd best defense TPE wise, while Winnipeg has the best goalie tandem in the league (special shoutout to Minnesota for actually having the 3rd best tandem here, a lot of good goalies in the Central, especially as Texas is 4th aswell here). To figure out who to predict ahead, you are really going to have to split hairs here, so personally, I will go with what I would call recency bias if it was not for S74, so I guess it’s success bias, and I am going with Winnipeg ahead of Texas for that spot. With that, the predictions:
WPG
TEX
MIN
NOLA
CHI

Atlantic Division

Ah yes, my home division. The relentless thunderdome of fighting for the playoffs, this season is shaping up to have yet another fight to the death for the privilege of stomping a poor wildcard team into the ground in the 1st round. Philadelphia has been fighting for this spot with pretty much everyone in this division at some point, and a new-ish foe rises from their rebuild into the full light to attempt to represent the Atlantic, and hopefully the East, in the Cup Finals. Baltimore has somewhat quietly risen through the ranks only to have a breakout season last time around, and challenged for the top. They were unsuccessful, but they will get plenty of chances now that they are fully geared and ready to go.

Atlanta is now really running low on TPE, but still keeps proving that it is more competetive than the TPE might suggest. The real fight according to the numbers and sheets will happen between Baltimore and Philly, but Atlanta might still surprise and push and shove their way into the top 2 again. Tampa Bay, on the other hand, is still sort of waiting for their first hurrah, coming off of the rebuild floor into a fully stacked division, and therefore finding very little success for now. With the older rosters likely falling through soon though, Tampa needs to wait it’s time and grow into the proper spot to compete, and if Atlanta at their shape can and will fight with Baltimore and Philly, so might Tampa. It would certainly massively help to beat at least Atlanta for the 2-3 matchup, and that should at this point be Tampa’s goal, as looking behind them, there is Manhattan. After slowly finding success with callups hitting their roster spots, Manhattan’s progress slowed down last season after they repeated their exact same score line, and with even more rookies on their way, it seems that this might not be a super successful season either. Manhattan isn’t looking for the right now, honestly, but they provide a very comfortable cushion for Atlanta and Tampa to basically guarantee at least a wildcard spot for themselves.

So as for the prediction, Manhattan takes the 5th spot here, that’s without the doubt. I think we are again looking at a fight for 1st between 2 teams, and a fight for the last guaranteed playoff spot with 2 teams, and again, recency bias might be superior here. Philly is still a tiny bit better off than Baltimore TPE wise, and they haven’t looked very shaky lately. It’s hard to make much off the preseason as the comparative strenghts of Philly’s and Baltimore’s schedule is so different that the only real fall back we’ve got is the recent history, and therefore we would crown Philly the champions of Atlantic once again, with Baltimore likely 2nd. Here, the chance Atlanta skips to 2nd is honestly not low, and with a hillariously strong preseason, Atlanta still showed some bite to their bark, so I wouldn’t exactly count them out, but the TPE gap is getting pretty wide, and Baltimore should be able to capitalize. Tampa then still likely stays just outside of the top 3, struggling with inexperience against older, more fleshed out rosters. Atlanta is trying to revitalize their core more on the go, attempting to not go into full explosion rebuild like Manhattan, so having a full idea of how their TPE is going to behave is somewhat hard, but I expect they will handle themselves just fine and hold down the ticket to a randezvous with Baltimore. With that:
PHI
BAP
ATL
TBB
MAN

North East Division

The only division with a 3 word name, the North East is the home of the most recent champions, the New England Wolfpack. Their regular season wasn’t particularly amazing, just good, but them and SFP have proven that good coaching can do quite a bit to lift up a team, and of course, sometimes it’s just about having a little bit more luck than the others. Or your goalie getting hot, but that’s pretty much luck because goalies are random and they have always been complete voodoo. Anyway, besides New England, Buffalo has still shown that they can have a lot of success even with a not so impressive roster, and they were the number 1 seed out of North East last season, but haven’t had the success in playoff their regular season suggested they could have. Hamilton has put together a decently competetive roster, but struggle to fully punch through New England and Buffalo, and are still somewhat slow in gaining major results, but are causing troubles in playoffs already, and every new TPE moves them a little bit closer to finally making their way deeper into the playoffs. The major improvement last season was shown by Toronto, that fully turned their gears from the rebuild they have been in into a proper, full competition mode, and have tickled Hamilton’s position in 3rd all season long, to what must have been a refreshing season for the long playoff starved Toronto, although their trip into the playoffs was short and very unhappy. And finally, the 2nd newest rebuild of the SHL, Montreal has still a long way to go to come back to their form of years recent, and alongside Manhattan offer the lovely playoff cushion at the bottom of the East.

Predicting standings here is a little tricky. New England should be first, Hamilton should be second, Buffalo should be third, right? But, what truly can Buffalo squeeze out of their roster and it’s limited TPE? Can Hamilton fully unlock the TPE they have at their arsenal? Is New England going to fire back at full power, or will they struggle in the regular season again? Can Toronto play their cards right and maybe squeeze right past someone into the regular playoff spot? The expected order and the order the division is in after the next 66 games are two very different things, but I will personally lean harder on TPE here than I would with other divisions. Reason? At some point, Buffalo has to regress, right? Hamilton should figure out their issues, but again, we are in the “what ifs“, ones that don’t seem to quite exist for other divisions as they don’t seem to have a team like Buffalo consistently upsetting the expectations. With that in mind though, my personal prediction goes like this:
NEW
HAM
BUF
TOR
MTL

With that out of the way, I hope to see how terribly wrong have I been after the first week of the season, and I want to thank you for your attention, see you in hopefully not full 7 days.

Manhattan Rage | General Manager

thanks Sulovilen for the sig!
D | Great Falls Grizzlies | Player Page | Update Page


S46 | Andrej Doskocil | Old-school defenseman | Peak 1579 TPE | Retired
Drafted 32nd overall to the Halifax Raiders in S45 SMJHL Draft
S45|50 GP 1G/10A/11P 92 hits 48 SBs
S46|50 GP 2G/24A/26P 115 hits 57 SBs
S47|42 GP 6G/12A/18P 76 hits 48 SBs
Traded to Detroit Falcons
S47|8 GP 0G/2A/2P 15 hits 7 SBs
Drafted 8th overall to the Manhattan Rage in S46 SHL Draft
S48|50 GP 2G/7A/9P 93 hits 42 SBs
S49|50 GP 3G/12A/15P 97 hits 66 SBs
S50|50 GP 3G/10A/13P 110 hits 70 SBs
S51|50 GP 1G/17A/18P 146 hits 48 SBs
S52|50 GP 2G/20A/22P 118 hits 56 SBs
Won Challenge Cup with Manhattan Rage
S53|50 GP 3G/15A/18P 286 hits 110 SBs
S54|50 GP 3G/12A/15P 303 hits 103 SBs
S55|50 GP 6G/21A/27P 86 hits 117 SBs
S56|50 GP 7G/24A/31P 88 hits 115 SBs
S57|66 GP 8G/23A/31P 110 hits 140 SBs
S58|66 GP 5G/11A/16P 111 hits 204 SBs
S59|66 GP 6G/13A/19P 99 hits 307 SBs
Total SMJHL RS - 150 GP 9G/46A/55P 298 hits 160 SBs
Total SHL RS - 648 GP 49G/185A/234P 1647 hits 1378 SBs
Total SHL playoffs - 68 GP 5G/25A/30P 147 hits 118 SBs



S61 | Archangelo Scaradog Jr. | Defenseman | 1240 TPE

Drafted 17th overall to the Newfoundland Berserkers in S60 SMJHL Draft
Traded to Maine Timber
Drafted 30th overall to the Manhattan Rage


S72 | Arnošt Hlemýžď | Defenseman | 155 TPE

I believe in BAP

I also believe in BAP!

And believe that Citizen of Adraa is right about HAM>NEW

---
Ekaterina Valieva - Baltimore Platoon


Thanks @Lazyeye for the sig!