TPE please

[Da_Berr 219]

Uh oh, it's now almost past midnight in my timezone, so I got to pump out one of these media spots real quick. I want my contract money and to not be labelled as a bust. Maybe that meme I made before the draft about me going inactive was true... Only that it'd take 3 or so months before I disappear off the face of the earth. But don't worry, I'm here to stay with my below-average writing skills and posts on the forums that'll make you cry if you see them. Now with all of that filler out of the way, (woo 100 words down) I'm going to start talking about league stuff.

Despite the EU seemingly being the better division this year, it might not be completely true. In past seasons we have seen a huge disparity between the divisions, with NA reigning on top for a few seasons. This season it seems more reasonable between the two. Obviously, we have the monstrous Moscow Menace, with 49 wins and 99 points so far. They are by far the best team this season and favourites to win the cup. But after that, most of the other teams are neck and neck when comparing the two divisions. With 86 points, Malmo is second overall in the league, 83 points, Vancouver is close behind and the first NA team here, 82 points with Riga, and finally 81 points for Seattle. The top teams this season are all very close in points, and even the mid-ranking teams are all around the same. 6 teams, 3 from NA, 3 from EU are all within 3 points of one another in the mid-tier. So why have the league balanced out?

During the expansion draft two seasons ago, we saw a lot of players leave their respective teams, and the majority of them were picked from NA teams. There was always the underlying thought of how it would weaken teams but not to a great extent. The reasoning behind this thought was that the number of protection slots was enough for most teams to protect their key players and prospects. Along with that, not many players were actually taken over the juicy choice of extra draft picks. Overall many wrote off the expansion draft as having little impact on existing teams. But despite that, there were a few gems that were stolen over the draft. In this case, I'm not going to talk about the high TPE, almost going to retire players being picked, but rather some nice prospects that have shown up this season. The biggest names that I can remember is Squirrly Dan, James Rose, and Arthur Dayne. All of which are having great seasons right now.

Another reason could be that every team has the expansion teams and New York to beat up on. In both divisions, even middle-tier teams have some freebies (or equivalent to). In the past, they had to fight tooth and nail to get their points, but now they can easily get a decent amount of points by beating up the low tier of teams.