CowboyinAmerica

For the weeks of November 20 and November 27.

The Stats the Determined Seattle's Season The Seattle Bears finished the regular season with a record of 42-26-4 and 88 points, good for the sixth best record in the league by a solid 23 points over their next competitor. But it wasn’t enough. When the dust settled, the Bears were on the outside looking in on the playoffs, finishing fourth in North America behind Quebec City, Toronto and Calgary. Obviously, in a season where seemingly everyone in the conference was going for it all, somebody was going to be left in the dust. Still, this particular failure hurts. The Bears, after all, have a number of players entering their prime like Yu, Federov and Laflamme, and even a goalie in Mist4ke that is entering the latter part of his career. Coupled with the fact that Seattle doesn’t hold its own first round pick this year, missing the playoffs could be a staggering defeat for the franchise. Of course, the team will be back next season mostly in tact, and with Quebec expected to start rebuilding, they will be expected to make the playoffs. But what do they need to fix in order to get there? Here are a few stats that explain why the Seattle Bears couldn’t get it done this season. 1. It Starts Between the Pipes To any impartial observer, it’s clear that Seattle’s goaltending simply didn’t get it done this season. Mist4ke is one of the goalies with the highest TPE, which would make one think that he would at least finish in the middle of the pack in terms of final stats. But while young guns like Ike Arkander, Shawn Brodeur and Norris Stropko had middling seasons, Mist4ke finished with just a .912 save percentage – good for dead last among goalies that played at least 64 games for their teams. His 2.43 GAA was also in the bottom half of the league (sixth), while he recorded just four shutouts – one less than the computer goalie CGY G1. Seattle does have another goalie in the recently-signed Vernon von Axelberry, but there’s no evidence that he would have performed any better. In his eight games, von Axelberry finished with just a .918 save percentage, which would have finished seventh in the league. And for the most part, those games came against easier opponents, and there’s no telling how he would have performed against the best of the best. To me, this performance seems like a matter of bad luck as much as anything. There’s no reason that goalies with that much TPE should perform that badly, and sometimes it just happens. Take a look at what happened to Astrid Moon this season, with a former MVP finishing with a .916 save percentage. If I had to guess, the Bears will select one or the other to be the full-time goaltender next season – I would put money on von Axelberry given more recent activity and him being younger. And I would imagine that the Bears’ goalies would not perform any worse than they did down the stretch in particular. 2. Help from the Depth It’s clear that the acquisitions of Fook Yu and Peter Quill over the offseason helped the Bears immensely. Quill had a career year upon coming to Seattle, finishing with 41 goals (second on the team) and 79 points (tied for second on the team). Yu, meanwhile, understandably took a tiny step back from his Quebec City days, but 30 goals and 70 points is certainly nothing to laugh at. In total, the Bears finished with four players with at least 29 goals, when Gabriel McAllister (47 goals) and Mattias Forsberg (29 goals) are added to the mix. Outside of those four, though, it was expected that the Bears would at least have a little help. Aleksei Federov has a surprising amount of offensive power for a defenseman. Xavier Laflamme was supposed to be the left winger of the future when he was drafted back in S55. And players like Koprolov and Bourdon were at least supposed to contribute something. In total, though, not a single one of those players scored more goals than Laflamme’s 14, and outside of Federov’s total 79 points (with 66 assists), no other Bears player outside of the four goal scorers even reached 40 points. Many teams have been able to win with only a few top scorers before, but players like McAllister and Yu aren’t quite at the level yet where they can carry a team by themselves. With that in mind, Seattle absolutely needs more depth. Don’t be surprised if the money cleared up by moving a goalie off the roster is dedicated to another guy that can put the puck in the net. A player like Quebec’s Muller certainly has to be tantalizing. The question is, what does Seattle have left to trade? 3. Beating the Teams You Should Seattle actually did pretty solid against its North American competitors – they won five games against Quebec, four against Calgary, and three against Toronto. That should give them confidence moving forward that they can hang with the best, particularly in a playoff situation. Unfortunately for the Bears, though, you also have to play every other team in the league eight times. And that’s where they ran into some trouble this season. Four losses to the Americans. Two to the Express. One to the Legion. Couple that with seven losses to the Titans – a team that the Bears considered their equal to start the season – and there were simply too many losses outside of the teams they were competing with in order to keep pace. The Meute, Legion and Wranglers, meanwhile, beat the teams they were supposed to beat, and that kept them ahead. Again, this could very well be the luck of the draw, and the Bears could perform better against these teams next season. But it also reveals that the team’s coaches need to take these matchups more seriously. The Bears were left tinkering with the lineup a few too many games this season, and it led to some winnable losses that left them wanting in the end. By finding the preferred lineup earlier in the season, Seattle could hopefully avoid this sort of letdown against what are supposed to be easier teams.

Happy birthday!

Don't like that I'm not scoring much recently. Still love the win though.

Don't know how, but we seem to have Riga's number. Now just to get to the Finals first...

Looks kick ass, thanks!

I guess it's my fault for not checking, but any particular reason this opened in the middle of the week unlike the previous weekend schedule you had been using? I assumed I had a few more days since Week 4 wasn't tallied until Saturday.

Oh hell yeah! That was one we needed to steal.

Yeah, that's not good.

Yeesh. That's ugly.

No points, but I'll take the shutout!

I've got Prime and I've used the TV features... twice? Maybe? But the shipping discounts and the deals that Amazon gives Prime members is absolutely worth it to me - around this time last year ordered a treadmill where the shipping and free assembly paid for Prime itself. No idea how that varies between U.S. and Canada though.

One spectacular first name

3-2 Wranglers

298 Reign vs Bears 299 Legion vs Meute 300 Vikings vs Americans 301 Express vs Titans

Congrats on a great career! Glad you guys got the one, though I hope it's not extended to two...

Gimme that hat trick and a crucial North America win, thank you.

Oh baby, Mist4ke coming up huge!

Is there a way to get the HOFers that isn't counting individually? Because I was definitely too lazy to do that.

Hey, I'll take one point more in this N.A. battle

Close. Would love to pick up games like this.

Keeping up, good stuff

Weeeeee goals are fun

Nope just picked a random picture.

I had it 300 but wanted to make Seattle and Toronto equal and forgot to adjust