This Week in Hockay: August 30th
Five things are worth this dispatch's length this week, and Le Council reports them in the order they landed, which is not the same as the order they will matter.
Here is the week.
Forty-Eight Teams Start Keeping Score
Le Council enacted a petition six days ago and built rivalries the only way the arithmetic allowed: no vote, no winner, an accumulation instead. A citizen may name up to three teams they want their own to beat. The postseason counts on its own, untied to any fan. A rivalry runs one way and need not be returned.
It opened at fourteen entries, every one of them inherited from two seasons of playoff record and none of them yet touched by a citizen's own hand. It now stands at seventy-nine, the difference filed one naming at a time over six days. Tokyo Titans was already the league's most disliked team on the morning rivalries opened, held against by five teams on playoff record alone. It is now held against by eleven, still the most of anyone, with Medellín Mapaches and Rimini Rinklers next at six apiece. Le Council does not ask why. Le Council has never had a column for it.
Two Citizens May Now Deal Directly
Le Marché Gelé opened on the 27th, on a petition that raised over a billion Looneys behind it—the largest sum ever placed behind a filing, more than ten times what was asked. O.F.F.R.E., the Office for the Fair Facilitation of Reciprocal Endowment, now holds both halves of any deal two citizens strike, in a room it calls la Glacière. It does not set prices. It records what was agreed and what the gap between the two halves was.
Le Council can report the room's first three days rather than its opening terms, which are already on the record. Seven offers have been filed. Five sit open. Two have been taken. The first settled at 12:47 UTC on the opening afternoon, a gap of Ⱡ1,514. The second, less than two hours later, moved for a gap of Ⱡ100,000. Against a billion-Looney petition and a marketplace built to move controlling stakes, the room's first trades were modest ones. Le Council notes this without drawing a conclusion from it.
A Fourth Name, A Fifth Building
Le Council's last report on this subject closed the ledger at twelve entries, four parishes, and three names—Curtis Favel and Saga Ekström graded Enveloped, Lars Henriksen graded Wrapped. Le Council said then it could not explain any of it. That remains true. What has changed is the count.
Leilani Kealoha, center, Oahu Otters, was marked at The Remote Range on the 28th—the same building that opened this whole account, on an Oahu team that was only ever visiting. Six point eight seconds, the same order of duration as the three before her. The Church recorded her differently than it recorded them: not Enveloped, not Wrapped, but Touched—a grading Le Council had not seen used until this week, and the mildest reading the scale has produced so far, by the Church's own ordering.
Two days later, on the 30th, the phenomenon reached ground it had not stood on before. The Golden Arch, Kyiv, recorded The Ice Vibrated at 89 hertz—the highest frequency logged anywhere this season, past both of McMurdo's own readings. In the same round of games, Phuket Podcasters' building recorded The Blue Glaze, at 1.8 hertz—a fifth parish added to a list that has not repeated a building's first visit since Amsterdam's. The ledger runs to sixteen entries now, across five parishes, naming four players. Le Council is not aware of a pattern and is not withholding one.
The Streak That Wasn't, Nearly Twice
Le Council flagged Nairobi Narwhals last week as unbeaten in regulation through nine matchdays. That ended on the 25th, on the road, shut out 3-0 at Chengdu—a plain regulation loss, the first of Nairobi's season, on a night the Cranes never let them see the front of the net. Nairobi lost again four days later, in overtime to Cyprus on the 29th, in a game that needed a fifth period to settle. The two results together have not cost Nairobi first place in La Conférence du Givre—10-1-4, 24 points, still tops—but Oslo Owls have closed to within one, at 11-3-1 and climbing, and the gap that looked comfortable a week ago no longer is.
Winnipeg Wendigos came closer to a matching moment than their record shows. The league's best team lost in regulation for the first time all season on the 27th, 3-4 at home to Tahiti Tsunami, and shrugged it off within days—14-2-0, 28 points, a plus-29 goal differential that leads every team in either conference by a wide margin. Behind them, Medellín Mapaches have quietly become the second-best record in the league, 12-1-3, a single point behind Winnipeg at the top of La Conférence du Verglas.
Elsewhere, Montréal Maples kept building the case Le Council opened three weeks ago, when a 1-4 home loss on opening night became a running thread. Marc-Antoine Dufresne scored a hat trick in a 10-4 rout of Wellington on the 28th and another in a 5-0 shutout of Havana on the 30th—two hat tricks in three matchdays from the same player, on a team now 9-7 and climbing out of the conference's bottom third, a single point behind the wildcard line and closing. The week's loudest single scoreline belonged to Prague, who outlasted Stockholm 10-7—seventeen goals in one building, the highest total of the week by three.
See the full table → · Browse every result →
One Petition Through, Four Behind It
A neutral site for the Final, filed by Assassin66 on the 6th of August, passed at 02:00 UTC on the 29th—both thresholds cleared, 81 of 81 Seals affixed and just over its Ⱡ50,000,000 floor. It has not yet been enacted. Le Council will report the ruling when there is one to report and declines to forecast it before then.
Four more filings opened or grew this week. The Institution of Collectable Cards, filed by jpvalery on the 25th, has already cleared its Looney floor twice over—Ⱡ2,057,800,000 against a Ⱡ1,000,000,000 threshold—and stands at 23 of 100 Seals. On the Matter of Idols, filed by Ilias on the 23rd, carries a similar imbalance—over a billion raised against the same floor, but only 6 of 250 Seals affixed. The Julius Caesar Petition, filed by Gommetrik on the 20th, trails on both counts, 7 of 200 Seals and Ⱡ305,542,343 of a billion asked. Limiting Absentee and Zombie Encumbrance, filed by Ragnaroknrol on the 25th, cleared its far smaller floor almost by accident—Ⱡ1,000,008 against Ⱡ999,999 required—and sits at 10 of 66 Seals.
Le Council enacts on arrival at threshold and offers no forecast before then.
That is the week. Rivalries opened at fourteen and grew to seventy-nine by citizens' own hands, with Tokyo the team the league likes least by a growing margin. Le Marché Gelé opened its room and saw two modest deals in its first three days, with five more still on the table. A fourth name and a fifth building joined a ledger Le Council still cannot explain. Nairobi's perfect run ended at Chengdu and nearly ended again at Cyprus; Winnipeg lost its first game in regulation and barely noticed. And a petition to move the Final off both finalists' own ice cleared every number Le Council set for it, and now waits on Le Council alone.
Stick around.