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*NorwegianDemon* · 12-19-2017, 06:36 PM

For now, the Prince George Firebirds are performing quite well, and are in second place with 35 points in 27 games. Most of our team offense comes from the first line where we have the first two leaders in points in the league. Our offense is our main strength. We lead the league with 92 goals for. We are also one of the best teams defensively tied for the second best defense in the league with 74 goals against. Special teams are also one of our biggest strength, because we are first in both PP% and PK% with 22.92% on the powerplay and 84.55% on the penalty kill.

There are still a few things that need to be improved if we want to have a long run in the playoffs. First, we need to diversify where our scoring come from, because 43% of our scoring comes from our first line. Some improvements have been observed since our second line had started putting goals on the board more frequently, but in todayâ€™s game, secondary is a must if you want to be a contender and there is still a lot of room for improvements for the Firebirds. A second thing that we need to work on is the number of penalty minutes we take every game. Right now, we are sixth in the league with 9 minutes of penalty per game and even if our penalty killing unit has performed well, being one man down always decrease the scoring chances you get and increase the number of scoring chances for the other team.

ntuttle · 12-19-2017, 10:38 PM

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JayP812 · 12-20-2017, 01:02 AM

The Halifax Raiders' season record is now 4-18-5, with 13 points on the season so far, putting us in eighth place. This is obviously not the greatest start in franchise history, or up there among them. An explanation for the apparent stagnation is of course, the experience makeup of the team. The Raiders are the youngest team in the SMJHL, icing more rookies in the lineup than any other of the seven teams. Fresh out of school players need time to adjust to the new league and the style of play in it, leading to mistakes that often lead to losses, but more importantly, lead to learning. Both our goals for and goals against our last in the league, pointing to much room for improvement for our players to learn strategies on both sides of the puck. One interesting stat is that the Raiders are 0-10-3 on the road, with all four of our wins coming at home. Although the Raider Nation going crazy at Scotiabank Centre is one of the greatest ways to get fired up during a game, we must be able to get comfortable outside of our home arena to win all of the possible points available. Overall, while this year's team has gone through a painful stretch of losing, the teams of the SMJHL better watch out for the potential superstars it has shaped.

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BadgerBros · 12-20-2017, 03:15 AM

The Detroit Falcons are off to a great start in their run to defend the title this season. Just over the halfway mark of the season, the Falcons are boasting a 18-5-4 record. They got off to a hot 5-0 start and continued to win 9 of their first 11 games of the season. Detroit is in good shape to continue on their quest for back to back Four Star Cups.
We excel in quite a few areas. Or top 2 areas are our defense and goaltending. As of 27 games into the season, we are currently only allowing a league best 2.63 goals against. With 4 rookie defenseman guarding the blue line, we can also boast a league best of only 21.67 shots per game. It is safe to say that the future on the blue line for Detroit is looking pretty grand.
On the opposite side of the puck, our offense is also leading the league with 26.70 shots a game, just barely ahead of rival Montreal, which has 26.67. The offense is also averaging 3.19 goals per game which lands them at third in the SMJHL. Another area that has shown excellence is in the dot. The Falcons are 2nd in the league with a faceoff percentage of 51.96%. This is being lead by Connor Blackwell and the rookie Grayson St. Raegan, both of whom are ranked in the top 10 for faceoff percentage.
Overall, this team is making strides towards back to back cups, which is exactly what management is expecting of us this season. If we continue to play well together and stay on this path, we will have no problems making it back to the finals. I have full faith in this group of guys and in management.

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treant · 12-20-2017, 08:29 AM

The Montreal Militia had something of a nightmare start to the season as they really struggled to find their feet early on, the team was a long way outside of the playoffs and people began to worry slightly about whether they could get back on track and even make it into the postseason. The team is playing well in all areas, defending well enough to only let 74 goals past them in 27 games, the second best in the league, as well as scoring 85 goals with a young forward group, the fourth best in the league, and with 16 wins, the third best in the league, the team is definitely moving forward with the intention of being competitive. Despite the improvement of their game, the Militia still sit in the middle of the pack with 33 points. The only statistic that really matters when all is said and done, the Militia will need to engage and carry on their recent form, as shown in their ten game win streak, to reach their goal of a playoff bye. The Militia's new crop of rookies has blended well and found their feet as a group, it is now up to them to continue to improve and work their way to Four Star Cup success!

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tweedlebrumm · 12-20-2017, 12:17 PM

Team Chemistry plays a big factor in several things on and off the ice. Team Chemistry can hold a locker room together during a tough stretch of the season. This season the Montreal Militia experienced this stretch over the first game of the season, one season removed from a 4 star cup. The team relied on the veteran leadership for the Tannerâ€™s, Inari Twain, and upstart rookies like Fredrich Koenig, Jim Elliot, and Cedric Moreau. Itâ€™s no doubt the Montrealâ€™s stellar leadership when into the draft looking to bolster their locker room, and add key players that would help them win 4 more games season and bringing the Four Star Cup back to Montreal.

The highlight of the season thus far has been the play of rookie goaltender Cedric Moreau, which he has gave credit to his defense for his great numbers thus far through the season. Itâ€™s hard to not take that with a grain of salt looking at Moreauâ€™s .900 sv percentage and GAA heâ€™s in the top 3 of the league in both. While Moreau obviously didnâ€™t do this all on his own he has played great, but the team chemistry has the whole team playing at a higher level, and hungry to bring home a championship.

Mikel110 · 12-20-2017, 12:53 PM

Anyone can see that it has not been a great start to the campaign for the Halifax Raiders. Last in scoring at 2.22 (repeating of course) goals per game, worst defensive record at 3.740 (once again, repeating) goals against per game. Both of which naturally means that 66.6% (you know the drill by now) of games have ended in defeat. At least the home fans have seen some success but on the road, the Raiders are winless in 13 attempts (a win rate of 0%, which I hope youâ€™d guessed).

Despite this, the locker room spirit is good. The more experienced players are guiding the vast number of rookies and easing their concerns. They know that this is all part of the process and that the future will be bright. The fact that two of the Raider rookies are top 3 in rookie scoring tells the story (plus a certain dashing German also on roster). On paper, this season looks like a disaster and on the ice it is not much better but the green shoots of recover are showing. I would wager that at the end of the season, all the figures above will have shown a marked improvement.

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FlappyGiraffe · 12-20-2017, 05:53 PM

austin6 · 12-20-2017, 05:59 PM

The Colorado Mammoths have had a very bumpy season up to now. So far they have struggled to string some wins together, never getting more than a win streak of two. A lot of work will need to be done in order to separate themselves from the other bottom teams to hold on to their playoff spot. To start, one thing that really stands out to me is that we are absolutely getting smashed on our own power play. Second worst in the league in fact, at 15.60%. The fourth line also needs to step it up. Every forward on the fourth line sits at a -10 or worse. Along with the defensive struggles they also struggle to score, with 4 goals and 8 points total between all of them, three of the goals being from a single player on the line. On the bright side, the fourth line will only improve as the season goes on, with every player on it being rookies. It has not been all bad for the rest of the team however. They have done a great job defensively. The team has only allowed 83 goals so far which is good for 4th best in the league and 240 blocked shots, good for 2nd best. The Mammoths have done a decent job avoiding significant penalty minutes despite leading the league in hits.

JT3 · 12-20-2017, 10:07 PM

Coming into the season most raiders players knew that it could be a tough year, as the Raiders lost an absolute ton of players to the SHL over the offseason. We knew it would be a rebuilding year but if we followed the process and put in the work we would see improvements as the year went on. Pretty much all areas of our game still need work. We are allowing a lot more shots than we are taking, with an average of 27 shots against and only 20 shots for per game. This is a huge gap, and makes it extremely hard to win games. Although we sit in 6th for powerplay percentage, you could still consider it bad as the powerplay is only functioning at 16%, which is about a whole 5% behind 5th. Our PK is even worse than our powerplay too, at a 75% kill rate. Finally, our faceoff percentage is only 47.17%, which really hurts our possession numbers and is an overall negative for just about every other aspect of the game. We should see this go up in the future though as part of the reason for it being low is the fact we’re running with two rookie centers in our top 6. The Raiders are finally starting to see the improvements we’ve been waiting for since the start of the season, winning 2 games in a row for the first time this season. Hopefully it will only be up from here.

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Sopath · 12-21-2017, 12:51 AM

Well The Vancouver Whalers are not doing well, in fact we are struggling horribly and it is difficult to know quite how to stop losing. Weâ€™ve been at the bottom of the playoff picture since the season began and this past week we fell out for the first time. Thatâ€™s not to say we arenâ€™t doing anything well, through 14 games this season we have a goal differential of +5. Itâ€™s nice to say we have turned up and performed at home but that doesnâ€™t take away from all the negative things. This season we have only scored 76 goals. That ranks 2nd worst in the entire SMJHL. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to throw up, there is NO excuse to fail this badly and yet we have. We just need to work harder. If we want to really make an impact and make the playoffs we need to get better in overtime. In overtime we are 1-4. There is no excuse for this and if we want to be better we need to be more clutch. The SMJHL is a tough league and if you want to make it you need to fight with everything you have. One aspect of our game that I believe we will cut down on as the season goes down is the shots we allow. This season weâ€™ve allowed 753 shots against. That is the 3rd worst total in the league and with how young our team is we expect this number to start to disappear as the season comes to a close. Weâ€™re better than that and with Karno on the back end we believe we will be a dominant team in that regard sooner than later.

jdinino · 12-21-2017, 06:04 AM

Any Colorado Mammoth fan will be disappointed in the performance the team has played this far into the season. Though their goal differential is only at a -3, 29 games into the season the Mammoth sit with the 2nd least amount of wins at 7, only more than the Halifax Raidersâ€™ 5, and also are tied with the 2nd most amount of regulation loses with 12. Mammoth fans were expecting more out of this season with the draft that they had. One major point of emphasis for the Mammoth must be their special teams. Usually teams look for at least 100% when you add both their penalty kill and power play, the Mammoth only sit at 95.60% which is 3rd worst in the league. Both their shots for and shots against are below the league average of 25.06% at 24.45% and 25.52% respectively. The only stat where the Mammoth are in the top 3 of the league is in hits where they average 18.14 compared to the league average of 16.31. A line shuffling might be on the horizon for the Mammoth and a lot of extra practice before the playoffs start. Faceoffs are to be heavily considered as something to work on as they have 3rd worst overall faceoff percentage at 48.72%, 3rd worst defensive and offensive zone faceoff percentage at 49.37 and 47.87% respectively, and a neutral zone faceoff percentage at 49.03% which is good enough for 4th worst. Not only are the Mammoth not the best in any of the stats listed, they are consistently is the bottom half of the league. With a large number of rookies on this team, 9, it could just be considered growing pains that the team has to go through in order to set-up a winning team in the future.

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Leoben · 12-21-2017, 12:37 PM

After an abysmal start we finally started clicking after some adjustments to the lines. We were not clicking at all and could barely get anything going. Then, almost overnight, everything just clicked and we were off to the races. It took a while to get that chemistry going but once we had it, it never went away. We have a good group of dedicated veterans in the locker room and some young rookies who are getting better every day. That chemistry has translated to some pretty decent achievements.

Special teams have been a pretty big deal for us this year. We are currently second on the power play at 23.08 %, and second on penalty kill at 83.52 %. Obviously it can always be better but that is efficient based on the rest of the league.

Another thing to note is that we donâ€™t fold. We donâ€™t get tired. Our conditioning is on point right now and very few teams have had success against us in overtime. Shootouts are a crap shoot, everyone knows that. We have never lost in overtime and only lost one shootout. When other teamsâ€™ strides are getting longer and they are sucking wind, we are still fresh.

Another big key to our success has been rookie goaltender CÃ©dric Moreau. He currently has a .895 save percentage which is nothing to scoff at.

As long as our rookies continue to improve we should be in good shape for the playoffs. Our offense should also find a new gear soon which will boost our scoring from the middle of the pack. We are currently 4th with 92 goals for.

duskyquack · 12-21-2017, 02:21 PM

Heres the New kid on the block, I just signed my first contract with the Knights of the SMJHL about an hour ago, but i feel like ive been with the team for years, Such a tight knit group around here that theres no way we can fail! There was no feeling out process with these guys, it was straight to having fun and being part of the team and i cant wait to get started.

This team already has 2 goalies, but i know they're struggling to find consistency in the net and im here to compete and provide that for them.
Their starting goalie currently only posts a 14-10-5 record with a .878 save percentage, thats simply not good enough to win gamed day in and day out. However he has put up 2 shutouts this season and that puts him in the race for the SMJHL shutout lead, unfortunately hes not working to improve, and those types of games are a rare feat for this young goalie.
As a team we have an incredible offence, everyone on the line is chipping into the scoring, to make them 2nd in the league for goals per game.

That's where I come in, im going to compete to lock up a starting role with this team and i hope they can find confidence in me to give them a chance every night to take 2 points. they've been on a slide lately, but we hope to turn that around.

galatix · 12-21-2017, 03:38 PM

The Kelwona Knights are currently the number two team, according to the win-loss record, in the SMJHL and it seems to be a surprise to the statisticians. While the win record has them at number two at this point in the season, the Knights are in the middle of the pack when it comes to everything else.

The Knights have 22.48% in Power Play success, ranking them fifth in the league. While the Montreal Militia are at the top, the difference in the two are 1.22% which in this game it's significant enough to demand a change in the structure of the PP. This relates back to the PK as well. The Knights are fourth in the league at 80% exactly. While above the league average of 79%, there is always room for improvement for the Knights.

Perhaps the secret is in the percentages of shots for/shots against? It seems to have some truth to it as the Knights are third in the league for shots for with a 26.03 value. At the same turn, the shots against the Knights are second in the league with at 24.16 value. Coming in to the playoffs, the Knights need to hope that their goalies won't drop their hot streaks. By all means, how can a team succeed with their top points earner is a defenseman in a second pairing but it goes to show that sometimes, having intangible team chemistry and hockey smarts can help a team achieve greatness.

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