This Week in Hockay: August 2nd
The regular season ended on the 30th, and the week around it was not, in the main, about the hockay. It was about ownership.
A petition carried, and forty-eight parishes opened on the strength of it. A private fund disclosed that it had solved a question Le Council shelved years ago, built the machinery to act on it, and now takes ten percent of every resurfacing before anyone else sees it.
And on the Exchange, two citizens quietly bought majority control of eight clubs between them, to the share, and Le Council then convened a tribunal that lets whoever holds a club vote on which players it is allowed to keep. Le Council wishes to be clear that it did not sequence these two events. They simply happened in that order.
Somewhere underneath all of it, eight teams qualified for the postseason and a ninth missed by three goals.
Here is the week.
The Parishes Are Open
Le Council enacts petitions routinely, and wishes that on the record before anything else in this section. Le Council has enacted filings on the tracking of net worth, on the arena occurrences appearing in the H.O.R.N. game feed, and on the hours at which The Ice may be considered idle. The procedure is settled and unremarkable: the filing reaches threshold, Le Council reviews it for procedural grounds to decline, and Le Council writes enacted at the bottom of the page.
The procedure did not change this week. What came through it did. The same form that adjusted a leaderboard in June has this week constituted a religion across all forty-eight arenas, and Le Council reviewed it twice looking for grounds to decline, and found none on either pass.
The Founding of the Church of The Almighty Ice was submitted on the fourteenth of July by the citizen ManLee92 and carried twelve days later, at 02:42 UTC on the twenty-sixth, which is a time of night Le Council associates with neither deliberation nor restraint. The arithmetic has been queried and is worth setting down. Sixty-six Seals were required; sixty-six were affixed, and not sixty-seven. Ⱡ999,999 were required; Ⱡ1,000,000 were contributed, which is one Looney past the threshold and no more. Nineteen citizens carried it at one Seal apiece per day across twelve days, very nearly the maximum the mathematics permits. Le Council has reviewed the contribution log, has confirmed that no single citizen appears to have arranged the round number, and has recorded the confirmation in a tone it does not wish characterized.
Forty-eight parishes are therefore constituted, one to each arena. A parish is not a building; the building was already there. It is the arena of the club you support, inferred and never chosen—change your club and your parish changes with you, which Le Council does not recommend and will not be recording an opinion on. There is a parish at Die Goue Myn. There is a parish at The Sunken Hall, three thousand metres beneath the North Atlantic, now a consecrated address reachable only by a vessel a private fund owns and rates for the depth. Le Council raised this. Le Council was told the depth rating is current.
Attendance is a STAMP, presented once a day. It is the same STAMP l'Agence issues for the endorsement of petitions, and there is only one of it. A citizen who spends the day's Seal at the parish has not spent it on the roll of filings; a citizen who spends it on a filing has not been counted at the parish. Le Council has been asked whether this arrangement is deliberate, and has acknowledged the question.
The reliquary receives Ice Shavings, and receives them permanently. Offerings are given, not sold—no Looneys change hands, no entry is raised against any ledger of exchange, and nothing comes back. Consecration is final. The shavings do not go into a vault. They go into the parish, and the parish does not give things back.
Le Council notes one early result on the roll, without interpreting it. When the parishes were constituted, Le Council observed that the congregation at The Remote Range, McMurdo Station, would be small and that its attendance would be perfect. It presently leads the league in both attendance and relics, by a distance, from a station with a permanent population in the dozens. Le Council declines to say whether it finds this reassuring.
Read the full advisory → · Visit your parish →
Ten Times the Shavings
Two days later, Le Council explained where the shavings had been going, and the answer retired a summer of assumptions.
They were not melting. The Jambono has resurfaced between periods since the first horn ever sounded, and for the whole of that time the heaps at the boards went down to nothing before the teams came back, leaving ice that was clean, continuous, and slightly colder than the ice around it. Rink staff across the league described this to Le Council's assessors in nearly identical words, and the word most of them reached for was not melted. The word was returned.
The shavings are reabsorbed, at the boards, within roughly forty seconds, into the sheet that produced them. The marketplace has never been selling what The Jambono makes. It has only ever been selling the fraction a vendor could physically reach before the ice took the rest back—and on the subject of that vendor, Le Council wishes to correct an impression it may have left in June. Le Council did not appoint him. He was already there, at several arenas at once, working out of a cooler, and had been for longer than anyone at Le Council was comfortable establishing.
Graine Wetsky Funds has a Research & Development wing. Le Council did not know this either. That wing spent the summer on the narrow question and arrived at the conclusion Le Council's own Phenomenological Assessment Division had reached years earlier and shelved as unactionable. Its answer is a fitted trough running the length of the dasher boards, draining to a chilled reservoir beneath the benches. It is the Recovery Assembly in the filings and the skirt to the people who install it. It is not clever. It is merely fast. It arrives at the heap before the sheet does.
The Assembly went into all forty-eight buildings over six weeks, including the twenty-four that have not yet hosted a game. On its first night of operation the resurfacing was measured against every standard Le Council keeps and found unchanged in all of them. Le Council put the obvious question to The Jambono in writing, through the channels available for putting questions to The Jambono, which Le Council will not characterize here. The Jambono did not respond.
A period-end now yields between 250 and 700 kcups. Since June it has yielded between 25 and 70.
The terms, stated plainly because the record may as well be complete. Graine Wetsky Funds financed the Assembly, owns it, and maintains it, at no cost to Le Council, the clubs, or the buildings. In return the Funds draw ten percent of each period's recovery before the remainder is released to the marketplace. Nothing is purchased in that draw, so no purchase is recorded, so it will not appear in the public shavings ledger—fans reconciling their own accounts against that ledger should not expect to find it. Le Council notes that the Funds opened by proposing a considerably larger share, and that Le Council declined it twice.
Le Council also imposed a condition and considers it the more important half of the agreement. Beyond that ten percent, the Funds may not take anything further from the boards. Every additional kcup they want, they buy from a fan, at the standing premium, recalculated continuously, in the open, under their own name, where anyone may count it. A private fund has paid for infrastructure the league could not have afforded; the supply reaching fans is an order of magnitude larger than it was; and the one party with a demonstrated appetite for shavings has been placed in a position where satisfying it means paying you. Le Council is not often able to report all three in the same advisory.
The Almighty Ice has been informed that a portion of its resurfacings is now being intercepted before it can be recovered. It has not responded. Le Council notes, as it has before, that this is not unusual.
Le Council notes one further thing, without conclusion. There has always been a heap behind The Oldest Rink in Montréal, against the north wall where the building's shadow sits all day. It has survived every July on record, including the ones that took the river ice. It is gone this summer. Nobody hauled it away.
Read the full advisory → · Visit the marketplace →
The Room Owns the Room
The Exchange has stopped behaving like a market and started behaving like a weather event.
Le Council can report that a share of the Perth Pyres was quoted at Ⱡ272,914 earlier in the session and at Ⱡ142,036 later the same morning, against an analysts' fair value of Ⱡ137. Both figures are correct. Neither was correct for long. The Cuzco Crows trade around Ⱡ13,000 against a fair value of Ⱡ100, and the Phuket Parrots around Ⱡ2,800 against the same. None of those three clubs has played a game. None has a record, a result, or a single goal for or against. Le Council states the risk exactly as it did a week ago, when these books opened at eighty Looneys: these are teams priced on nothing but the fact that they exist.
What has changed is not the prices. It is who is holding the shares.
New Owners
Le Council has begun conferring a distinction it drafted without expecting to issue: Majority Owner, held by any citizen whose stake in a club's fixed pool crosses half the total issued. The pool is one million shares per club—finite, unminted, contestable. It has now been crossed repeatedly, and by very few people.
| Club | Holder | Shares | Of pool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guadalajara Gatos | FatPenguin | 510,000 | 51.0% |
| Phuket Parrots | Tiinyhandz | 510,000 | 51.0% |
| Perth Pyres | Tiinyhandz | 500,001 | 50.0% |
| Nuuk Nanuqs | Tiinyhandz | 500,001 | 50.0% |
| Winnipeg Wendigos | FatPenguin | 500,001 | 50.0% |
| Cuzco Crows | FatPenguin | 500,001 | 50.0% |
| Singapore Scorpions | FatPenguin | 500,001 | 50.0% |
| Caracas Chameleons | FatPenguin | 500,001 | 50.0% |
Le Council directs attention to the final column, and then to the one beside it, and asks that both be read twice.
Five hundred thousand and one is one share past half. It is the precise figure at which control is conferred and not one share more, and it appears six times in the table above, arrived at independently by two citizens who have never been required to explain themselves. These are not accumulations. They are measurements.
Le Council directs attention to the two exceptions with equal seriousness. FatPenguin holds 510,000 of the Guadalajara Gatos, and Tiinyhandz holds 510,000 of the Phuket Parrots. In each case the club in question is the one the citizen has declared as their favorite. Le Council will state the finding plainly, as it is the only genuinely human thing in this section: both of them bought the minimum in every club they wanted to control, and ten thousand shares more in the one they actually support. Le Council has no procedure for this and does not intend to write one.
Behind them, Burr holds 300,000 of the Montréal Maples and 300,000 of the Cuzco Crows, JIMOTHY 250,000 of the Maples, and doppog 161,111 of the same—a blocking position in a club that is now 84.0% fan-held.
Le Council records one further fact and draws no line to it, having no instrument that would justify one. Graine Wetsky Funds' institutional position in the Cuzco Crows stands at 0.0%. In the Phuket Parrots, 0.0%. In the Perth Pyres, 0.0%, in a book that is 98.2% fan-held. The room holds the room, in a growing number of buildings, and the Funds are not in those buildings. Le Council has been asked whether these observations are related and has forwarded the question.
Le Council declines to publish the Net Worth roll to the Looney this week. Five citizens are past a hundred billion; the figures moved by tens of billions between two readings taken an hour apart, because they are marked against the market described at the top of this section. The daily reward remains one hundred.
And some of it is simply being given away. The Roll of Donations is open: any citizen may transfer Looneys or shares to any other, permanently recorded, against a modest tribute. A donation is a gift and not a sale, and nothing may be asked in return. The roll's early entries suggest the citizenry has understood the assignment—Ⱡ100,000 from Tiinyhandz to BakedBeans; 123 Tokyo Titans shares from doppog to i-am-tom; Ⱡ101 from CptnScienceMan to ManLee92, annotated "For The Sirens"; and Ⱡ60,000 from Tiinyhandz to FlowSnake, annotated "Get as many hammers shares as you can."
Trade the books → · View the Roll of Donations →
The Tribunal Will Now Convene
Le Council has established what those shareholdings are actually for.
The S.H.I.F.T.—the Seasonal Hearing on Interclub Formations and Transfers—is convened by T.R.A.D.E., the Tribunal for the Registration and Adjudication of Displaced Employees. Le Council wishes the following understood before the first filing lands: T.R.A.D.E. registers movement between clubs. It does not authorize it. The distinction has been raised with T.R.A.D.E., which agrees.
Each club's front office files its proposed movements. The club's shareholders then vote them up or down. A shareholder who does not vote is recorded as having approved, on the Tribunal's stated principle that an absence of objection is an objection that was not made.
Le Council invites citizens to hold that rule alongside the table printed further up this page, and to do the arithmetic Le Council has already done. A citizen holding half of a club plus one share does not merely own a position in it. That citizen carries the vote outright. Every other shareholder in the building may object, in unison, and be recorded as having lost.
Three of the eight clubs in this postseason—Guadalajara, Winnipeg, and Perth—are majority-held by two people. One of them owns the club that finished first. When the Tribunal opens, those two citizens will decide, between them and alone, which players three of the league's best eight sides are permitted to keep.
Le Council did not design the Exchange with the Tribunal in mind, nor the Tribunal with the Exchange in mind. Le Council has reviewed the interaction and reports that the interaction is working.
The Tribunal is not presently in session. It convenes once a season, in the gap between the Rest Day and the first matchday of the next—which is to say, within the fortnight.
Eight Teams, and the One That Missed by Three Goals
The regular season closed on the 30th. Guadalajara finished clear on 68 points, ahead of Medellín on 65, Tokyo and Winnipeg tied on 64, Perth on 63, Johannesburg on 62, and São Paulo on 58.
The eighth berth did not resolve on points at all. Ushuaia and Helsinki both finished on 57, and the standings are broken first on goal differential. Ushuaia are 103-95, a differential of +8. Helsinki are 129-124, a differential of +5. Three goals, accumulated across forty-six matchdays, decided which of them plays in August.
Helsinki held that eighth berth as recently as a week ago, when this dispatch last counted the table. On the final night they hosted Gander, who arrived fifteenth, out of contention, and with nothing whatever on the table, and who won 2-1 in Helsinki. A win would have put the Howlers on 59 and into seventh, ahead of São Paulo. They took the one-goal loss instead, and it cost them the differential as well as the points. Ushuaia, playing the same night, beat Mumbai 4-3 and closed the season 4-1.
There is a certain justice in the shape of it. The South Passage carries Drag, which suppresses scoring and manufactures overtime, and Ushuaia have spent the whole season being exactly the team that arena implies: 103 goals for, the fewest of any side in the bracket by twenty-one, and 95 against, the fewest of any side in the bracket full stop. They did not outscore their way in. They out-defended their way in, on a margin of three goals, in a building designed to keep the number down.
Elsewhere on the closing night, McMurdo took third-placed Tokyo to overtime and won it 3-2, and Rimini beat Havana 4-3 in a shootout.
Eight qualify. The bracket is drawn at random, with no seeding:
- Winnipeg Wendigos vs. Medellín Mapaches
- Johannesburg Jaguars vs. São Paulo Serpents
- Perth Pyres vs. Guadalajara Gatos
- Tokyo Titans vs. Ushuaia Undertow
Quarterfinals and Semifinals are best-of-three. The Quarterfinals run from the 31st through the 2nd, the Semifinals open on the 3rd, and the Final—one match, not a series—is the 6th. Le Council notes, without drawing a conclusion from it, that the draw has put the league's two majority owners directly across from one another: Perth, held past half by Tiinyhandz, against Guadalajara, held past half by FatPenguin. One of the two will be out of the postseason by the 2nd.
After the Final, Two Nights That Do Not Count
A community petition for an exhibition also reached threshold, which leaves Le Council without procedural grounds to decline. The two sides were drawn from the regular season and the regular season alone: every club that iced a player is represented, and no club sends more than three. Fifteen a side—three forward lines, two defensive pairs, two goaltenders.
- Game One, the 8th—All-Stars Verglas host, on the clear ice of The Watch Station, Anchorage.
- Game Two, the 9th—All-Stars Givre host, beneath The Stone Opera, Prague.
Nothing that happens in either game touches the standings, the bracket, or any club's record. The table will not so much as notice. The books, Le Council notes, still take your Looneys, because an exhibition still resolves to a score and a score still settles a wager.
That is the week. A petition carried on the ordinary form and forty-eight parishes opened beneath it. A fund found out where the shavings go, built the machinery to get there first, and takes ten percent off the top—and the heap behind The Oldest Rink is gone this summer. Two citizens now hold eight clubs outright, at five hundred thousand and one shares apiece and ten thousand more in the one they love, and the Tribunal that convenes this fortnight will take their votes and no one else's. Eight teams remain, two of them owned by those same two citizens and drawn against each other. Helsinki are not among the eight by three goals. And two nights that settle nothing are on the calendar for the weekend after the Final.
Stick around.