For: By S49 the Chicago Syndicate will climb past New Orleans as the better expansion franchise.


Looking only at roster strength I think this is an easy call to make. The Syndicate have had two excellent drafts filling up their system with some of the best young players in the SHL like Martijn Westbroek, Corey Kennedy, Daniel Smeb, Parker Smeb, Kit Smeb, etc. The Syndicate are going to be an extremely dangerous teams with all those players hitting their peaks at the same time and all of them showing that they're willing to make sacrifices to stay together. The Specters meanwhile will have their work cut out for them, after looking to go the win now route, they'll soon have a very big part of their core in regression and will need to freshen their team up soon.

Against: The Best juniors player in the world... Espen Knutsen Jr. of Detroit.

Knutsen Jr may have 2 points over the player with the next most points but that's nothing out of this world like the Chiefs first liners of S46. It's only his first season at the top of the scoring charts and I'd much rather go with players like Borromini Cannellini, Olivier Cloutier and Xena who were all top 10 players last year and are once again top 10 players or better this year. If the juniors functioned properly, Knutsen likely wouldn't even be a top 10 player......which brings me to my next argument.

Against: The SMJHL has it right with the 350 TPE cap.

The SMJHL is living in the stone age with this cap and the fact that it's still where it is is ridiculous. Sorry, but it had to be said. A 25 TPE increase since its introduction about 30 seasons ago while overall TPE has increased at a much higher rate and there are many more send downs still in the league. It's ridiculous and there's no realism whatsoever to it. Cannellini is coming off an absolutely dominant S46 and has been overtaken by a younger player. So much fluctuation between players' performances every season because there's a completely non existent skill gap after your rookie season and everything is based on randomness. It's quite telling that a big chunk of the "BuT iT's A jUnIoR lEaGuE" brigade haven't been involved in the league for a while because the juniors don't benefit from the current system either with maybe a handful of them getting more than 10-15 points if they're given good linemates. A small, seasonly incremental cap increase is needed. Something like allowing the 40 capped TPE that a player can gain every season to be applied to their capped SMJHL build wouldn't create a situation where 600+ TPE players are walking all over the league but would create a bit of a skill gap to at least add a different dimension to the league than "Oh I hope SimonT likes my player this season".