Strat Cup, Game 2

I made a couple of lineup adjustments prior to Game 2. For the Bulldogs, defenseman Fred Whitcroft was dropped down the depth chart due to his ugly -4 rating in Game 1, whereas slick-skating Harry Watson would be asked to pick up Whitcroft's minutes. On the other side, I swapped right wingers Frank Rankin and Dubbie Bowie so that Bowie could play alongside top-line center and captain Hobey Baker. Baker and Bowie are the Vics' best two defensive forwards, and also the best match-ups against the Dogs' high-scoring duo of Bruce Stuart and Gord Roberts.

Game 2 started off much like the first game, with Cyclone Taylor scoring to give the Vics an early edge. Rankin tallied on the power play midway through the first period, which ended with the Vics up 2-0. History repeated itself once again in the second, when the Bulldogs closed to 2-1 on a rebound shot by Tom Hooper. Despite this blemish, goaltender Bowse Hutton was unbelievable, making huge saves left and right to rob the hungry Bulldog shooters. Taylor then scored a power-play goal for his second of the game, and completed our young league's first-ever playoff hat trick a few moments later at even strength. Down by three heading into the third, the Dogs threw everything they had at Hutton, including chances on two power plays, but they couldn't get anything past him. At the final horn, it was another 4-1 win for the Vics and the distinction of winning the league's first championship. Although Taylor had 4 goals and 2 assists in the brief best-of-three series, I had to give the playoff MVP award to Hutton, who sported a 1.00 goals-against average and a stupefying .970 save percentage.

With Season 1 complete, I think I'll take a break from Strat-O-Matic for a while, but I'm already thinking about trades and free-agent signings in preparation for Season 2!

Strat Cup, Game 1

Game 1 of our best-of-three Strat Cup championship started off with the Bulldogs' George Richardson recording three shots on Bowse Hutton in the opening two minutes. Shortly thereafter, Cyclone Taylor scored the first goal in playoff history -- just as he had scored the first regular-season goal at the beginning of the season -- to give the Vics a 1-0 lead. Later in the first, Fred "Steamer" Maxwell found the puck on his stick and buried it past Riley Hern to make it 2-0. It was a great moment for Maxwell, who was snakebitten during the regular season and failed to score a goal despite numerous quality chances. Early in the second, the Bulldogs closed to within a goal when Bruce Stuart beat Hutton. The Vics then hunkered down amidst a flurry of Bulldog shots, with Oliver Seibert and Tom Hooper in particular giving Hutton tough tests. By the third period, both teams had come up empty on multiple power plays, and the game seemed like it would go right down to the wire until Hobey Baker scored to make it 3-1 in favor of the Vics. That goal was the backbreaker, and even the continued strong play of Bruce Stuart failed to get the Dogs any closer. Marty Walsh scored a garbage goal late in the third to make it 4-1, and the Vics walked away with a Game 1 win. Next up, they'll travel to the Dogs' home to try to secure the championship.

Regular Season Wrap-Up

The first season is in the books! Below is a table showing (from left to right) the team name, number of games played, wins, losses, ties, points (2 points for a win, 1 point for a tie), goals for, goals against, goal differential, goals for per game, goals against per game, power play goals, power play opportunities, power play percentage, power play goals against, times shorthanded, penalty killing percentage, and shorthanded goals scored. Whew! As you can see, the Vics dominated during the regular season, but the slate is wiped clean for the championship series!

And now for some of the basic player stats. Again, from left to right, we have the player name, team, position, games played, goals, assists, points (goals plus assists), plus/minus, and penalty minutes. The table below shows the top fifteen skating players, ranked by points. The scoring race came down to the final game, when Cyclone Taylor notched his eleventh goal of the season to pull ahead of Gord Roberts for the title.

Next up, Game 1 of the best-of-three Strat Cup series!

Ticket Punched

As noted in my last post, the Vics had locked up home-ice advantage a while back, leaving the remaining three teams to duke it out for the second spot in the championship series. Last night, the Bulldogs punched their ticket with a thrilling 4-3 win over the Thistles. The first two periods featured back-and-forth scoring, leaving us with a 2-2 deadlock going into the final frame. Then, Dogs center Bruce Stuart scored on a breakaway, and winger George Richardson tallied only seconds later on the very next shot. Both strikes were assisted by -- who else? -- the boy nobody wanted, Gord Roberts. The Dogs' 4-2 lead seemed impregnable until Alf Smith notched a goal with just a few minutes to spare, leading to a crazy, sloppy scramble to the buzzer. A couple of regular-season games remain, but we know what's happening in the playoffs: the Bulldogs will face the Victorias in the quest for the Strat Cup!

Streak Struck

I'm nearing the end of my first 12-game pre-NHL hockey season, and one of the most interesting questions was whether the Victorias would lose a game this year. They started the season on a 10-game unbeaten streak (8-0-2), and rolled into the Comets' stadium for their penultimate game of the regular season. With home-ice advantage in the championship series already secured, and spark plug Frank "Steamer" Maxwell out with an injury, the Vics laid an egg and fell 2-0 to the Comets. Percy LaSueur became the second goaltender this season to post a shutout (after the Vics' Hutton), stymieing the first-place team as he turned away all 32 shots he faced. Today's outcome also means that the Comets, Thistles, and Bulldogs are all still alive in the race for second place and a spot in the championship series against the Vics. The Bulldogs have the inside track, but it will certainly be an exciting few games to end the season!

Deadline Deal

My first pre-NHL hockey season is two-thirds complete, so this seems as good a time as any to impose a transaction deadline. After this point, the teams will not be able to make any personnel changes (unless a player is injured) until the league has crowned its first champion.

The Vics and Bulldogs appear to be in good shape, so I focused instead on the Comets and Thistles. They had the option to cut players and sign free agents (after creating four full teams, I had a few players left over who can fill in as needed) and/or make trades. As it turned out, no free agents could provide any sort of meaningful upgrade, so instead I thought about trade opportunities to address the needs of both teams. The Comets, despite having solid offensive talent, have struggled mightily on the power play; through eight games, they're sitting dead last at 9.52% (the Vics are tops at an astounding 33.33% success rate with the man advantage). The Thistles, meanwhile, have an atrocious penalty kill -- at 59.09%, they're more than 20 percentage points lower than the next-lowest team (the Bulldogs at 80%). For both teams, their critical flaw may be bad luck that would resolve itself through simple regression to the mean, but...why not a trade to shake things up?!

Our deadline deal here in Season 1 involved the Thistles sending talented but underperforming winger Billy Gilmour to the Comets in exchange for defensive forward Harry Westwick. I had reservations about the fairness of the trade -- Westwick has way better numbers than Gilmour so far this season -- but the underlying game stats suggest that Gilmour has a lot of untapped potential. He didn't have a good niche in the Thistles' lineup, but on the Comets he'll slot in nicely on the wing alongside offensive stud Frank McGee and two-way winger Blair Russell, and his solid shooting percentages will make him a huge asset on the power play. The Thistles, in turn, are getting one of the league's top defensive forwards -- a guy who can provide an immediate impact on the penalty kill. Westwick is also a puck-possession demon who can jump-start the team's moribund second line.

Who wins this trade? Only time will tell!

The Race Is On!

My hockey league is shaping up to have quite the scoring race. Through eight games, Cyclone Taylor of the Vics has 8 goals and 11 assists, for 19 points. Gord Roberts was a distant second with 13 points. Roberts, however, just had a league-record five-point game (1 G, 4 A) and now sits just a single point back from Taylor after an equal number of games played. With four games to go, this race is going down to the wire!

Unstable Unicorns

I've been looking for a couple of light, fun games to bring into the office and play with my (decidedly non-gamer) coworkers over lunchtime -- stuff like Exploding Kittens and Bears vs. Babies. The boys and I tried out Unstable Unicorns today and it was pretty enjoyable. Check it out of you enjoy the aforementioned card games.

Hats Fly Again

Right on the heels of Cyclone Taylor's hat trick, Harry Trihey posted a hat trick of his own today in a 4-4 tie between his Comets and Taylor's Vics. Ironically, Trihey (the Comets' captain) had only one goal on the season until today's scoring explosion.

Hat Trick

In Friday night's game between the Comets and the Thistles, Comets star Frank McGee scored twice in the first period, and I thought we might get our first-ever hat trick. The hockey gods were against him, however, as he missed the entire third period with an injury.

In the very next game, Cyclone Taylor of the Vics scored twice in the first against the Bulldogs, so there was another great chance for a hat trick. By the late second period, the Vics were cruising at 4-0, until the Dogs' George Richardson buried a goal at the buzzer to make it 4-1. The third period featured an insane barrage against Vics' goaltender Bowse Hutton. Taylor netted his third goal of the game -- making history with the league's first hat trick -- and that tally stood up as the game-winner in a wild 5-4 finish.

Taylor is now tied with McGee and the Bulldogs' Gord Roberts for the league lead with 6 goals, and he leads all skaters in points with 16. Remarkably, he has yet to take even a single minor penalty! 

Midseason Report

We've reached the season's halfway point with my little four-team pre-NHL hockey league. The Victorias are the class of the league at 5-0-1 and a +8 goal differential. The Bulldogs and Comets have identical 2-3-1 records and goal differentials of -1 and -2, respectively. The Thistles are last at 1-4-1 and a -5 differential, but are 1-0-1 since the big Alf Smith trade changed the entire dynamic of the team.

Among individual performers, the Vics' Bowse Hutton has paced all goaltenders with a 1.50 goals against average and an otherworldly .951 save percentage. His teammate Cyclone Taylor is tops in the league in points (3 G, 9 A), with the Bulldogs' Gord Roberts leading in goals (6) and sitting second in points (11). You know what? I should just show the damn spreadsheet!

Above we have the top 15 skating players, sorted in order of total points. The chart indicates their name (with "(C)" after the name indicating a team captain), team name, position, games played, goals, assists, points, plus/minus, and penalty minutes. I'm also tracking power play goals, shorthanded goals, and a bunch of other stuff, but these are the "classic" hockey stats that most people are familiar with.

The Wedding Episode

In today's Shattered Realm adventure, Matthew's rogue Sisen married his longtime love, Dara, with Nathaniel's druid Vabaran performing the ceremony in the chapel of Marcher Keep. The wedding was attended by the lord of Marcher Keep and his court, along with some of Sisen's closest NPC friends.

Eagle-eyed Druid Cycle players might spot the white-haired knight Sir John Mandeville in the back row. He certainly gets around!