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Nerio · 12-19-2018, 07:03 PM

First media post, be gentle Smile

Double Media Week, 807 words and lots of research/excel time, ready for grading

SMJHL S45 Prospect Showcase – Regular Season

Let’s take a look at how the teams trended across the regular season of the SMJHL S45 Prospect Showcase. We’ll be looking at how many wins away from a .500 record the teams are. Note that I didn’t normalize this with the extra point from OTLs in mind, and used the standard definition of .500 being that you’ve earned half your possible points.

Determined Five Conference

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The Determined Five were more like the Determined Four for the first half of the season, and finished with a strong Determined Three. The Outlaws were the first to fall, straying two games away from .500 around eight days in. This initial dip stuck with the Outlaws for the remainder of the season, never getting with two games of .500 again. While the Outlaws didn’t manage to recover fully from this, they did fare better than the Breakers when all was said and done. The Breakers stayed right under the .500 marker until about halfway through the season, where they ran into multiple 3+ game losing streaks with only being able to piece together back to back wins a couple times.

The Wranglers were also right below .500 around the halfway point, tied with The Breakers even, but they trended in the opposite direction. Fishing the season with three streaks of 7 wins, 5 losses, and 6 wins, they managed to finish 1st place in the conference, an absolute improbably result. They just beat out The Blazers in the final days of the regular season. The Blazers played very consistently in the beginning of the season, rarely losing two games in a row and putting together several short win streaks. An untimely and uncharacteristic three game losing streak at the end of the season allowed The Wranglers to catch up and surpass the Blazers.

The Majors never strayed more than two games from .500 throughout the season. On multiple occasions they looked like they may be able to get higher than two games above .500 only to fall back down with multi-game losing streaks. They managed to finish just barely above .500, good enough for 3rd place in their conference.

Overall the Determined Five conference finished with two clear front runners, The Wranglers and the Blazers. We’ll have to see if they maintain their play going into the playoffs.

Tenacious Five Conference

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Two conclusions can be made immediately upon looking at how teams in the Tenacious Five conference trended: no team was really that bad, and the Lions are absolutely fierce. The Mustangs were the only team in the conference to finish below .500, which can mostly be attributed to a six game losing streak that spanned over the halfway mark of the season. They managed to stabilize briefly, but ultimately continued a slightly downward trend towards the end of the season.

The Vipers had a fairly slow start, hovering around one game below .500 for the majority of the first half of the season. After the halfway point however, they managed a ten game streak with a 9-0-1 record. Finishing the season with a three game losing streak ended up hurting their chances to hold on to 3rd place, and they finished the season in 4th. The Bighorns had a similar run in their second half, essentially mirroring the Vipers’ streak in the second half of the season. They put together a three game winning streak in their final four, putting them tied in 2nd with The Stingrays, though officially 3rd due to tie breakers.
The Stingrays had quite the season for themselves. They had an eight and a six game winning streak, keeping them barely in reach for the top spot through the first half of the season. Chasing a Lion gets tiring though, and they finished the season 1-8-1 in their final 10 games, which was still good enough for 2nd place.

And finally, we have The Lions. The true apex predator of this prospect showcase. Within six days of the season, they began their hunt towards the top. They put together a six game, eleven game, three game, and four game winning streak compared to only losing back to back games twice. They finished the season an unprecedented 10 games above .500, outscored their opponents 191-133, and had a magical powerplay that finished just under 40%. An incredibly dominating performance has set them as the clear favorites, but time will tell if they can continue their winning ways into the playoffs.

The League

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I’ve also included a full picture of the league, where three groups emerged. The Lions were clearly in a league of their own. The Wranglers, Blazers, Stingrays, Bighorns, Vipers, and Majors all finished with respectable records, averaging about a game above .500. The Mustangs, Outlaws, and Breakers all came up short, finishing more than a game under .500.