The main surprises for me aren't so much the Legion doing well as much as it is New York and Riga doing very well and very terrible respectively. I've been saying for a couple of seasons now that NY is set up to become very scary very soon but I wasn't expecting it to be so soon. They are right up our asses in the standings and are looking VERY good this season. Riga, on the other hand, I think most people expected to continue to be good this season and maybe even 3-peat but so far that doesn't seem to be the case since they are currently sitting outside a playoff spot. Thats the major surprise for me, I was really expecting them to be a challenge this season.
As odd as it sounds, Cornerstone. Obviously he's been a great player his entire career and I never really expected him to be a shitty player. However I wasn't expecting near the kind of performance he's having; especially with so little help with Helsinki. I guess the lack of other great forwards on the team might be what's actually pumping his numbers up but I was really expecting his numbers to go down a bit this season with the depth of the team taking a hit. So far though he is surprising me to say the least. He's really putting forth insane numbers. I'm also really surprised by Boeser this season. I know he's been a bit hit or miss most seasons but he is really coming into his own this year which is great to see for us in Toronto.
Even though Cornerstone is surprising me a lot, he's not an MVP over DeGrath in my opinion. Not that he wouldn't be my second choice, he probably would be, but at the end of the day DeGrath is the reason New York is pushing for the Victory Cup; it's as simple as that. Cornerstone might be stealing a few games for his team but DeGrath is stealing most games for his team, simple as that. New York I don't believe has any scorers in the top 15 but they are only a few points back from first place. That comes down big time to their goalie so if I voted on it today, I would be voting DeGrath.