The First 15 Games Are Always Weird.

[Renomitsu 934]

Whenever we start a new season, I feel like each team has some prescribed end-result they're almost bound to. Unless there's a great exodus of players (sorry Davos) or several huge retirements without replacements, you can expect a team to fall in a certain range in the standings. Everyone has to play their backup goalies at some point, so none of the first several or last several games are typically consistent or meaningful. You get weird stuff like Prague in 3rd place through eight games, or Malmo sitting pretty at 1st/2nd for the first dozen games of their inaugural season.

 

Most of this is just observational, and hopefully can serve as a grounding point for some newer members who are surprised by the first several games' results. No, Seattle didn't get worse in the offseason to the point of being 8th or 9th in the league unless Bana did something really weird in the last couple of days or is sabotaging his lines intentionally. They're better than that.

 

Could D.C. be a mid-table team? I mean, maybe, but they'd have to get quite a few positive rolls of the dice out of star Mikko Aaltonen and Piotr Jerwa for that to happen, I'd think. It's a small sample size, and while Prague is beating up solid teams like Riga early in the season, what I'd be more interested in is where they sit in another 20-30 games. I do think Vancouver and Moscow could sit at the top of the standings at the end of the season, but also concede that the top 4 spots or so are a pretty big crapshoot provided the number of FA signings and trades that happened this off-season.

[zepheter 586]

Yeah this makes me think my 21 points in 8 games as a defenseman to start the VHLM season is just a fluke.