This Week in Hockay: July 19th
Eighteen arenas manifested this week, in three advisories Le Council issued three days apart, and the league now stands at a number Le Council keeps describing as "odd" in more than one sense. Boréal Salt Co. is paying to keep the wealth tax paused through the 23rd. The regular season is closing in on its final matchdays, and Le Council's attention has started drifting toward what comes next. And nobody had a stranger week, in the best and worst senses, than the team at the bottom of the world.
Here is the week.
Forty-Seven, and No Vacancy
Three advisories, eighteen new arenas, and Le Council is nearly out of table to update.
In the eight days since the last edition of this newsletter, the Ice manifested three consecutive waves of six teams apiece: Reykjavik, Nuuk, Oslo, Kyiv, Bridgetown, and Papeete on the 13th; Amsterdam, Dublin, Nicosia, Moscow, Panama City, and Phuket on the 16th; and, this morning, Samarkand, Muscat, Chengdu, Lagos, Zanzibar, and Caracas. None of the eighteen paused at Level IV—Convergence on the way to Level V—Manifestation. Le Council has stopped remarking on this.
A few for the record. The Reykjavik Ravens play at The Steam Fields on ground that returns whatever the game takes from them, and don't tire in the third period as a result. The Lagos Lions fill The Continental—fifty-two thousand eight hundred seats, the league's second-largest arena—to a crowd Le Council describes only as "never, at any hour, quiet." And at El Ávila, the Caracas Chameleons take on the visual profile of whoever they're playing; Le Council issued an internal memo on the safety of this that could not, afterward, be located.
The league now stands at forty-seven arenas. It stood at twenty in January. Le Council's forecast, for the first time since spring, shows no further sites at Level III—no next wave behind this one. Le Council notes plainly that forty-seven does not divide evenly across a schedule built for teams in pairs, and that its Scheduling Office has submitted a recommendation Le Council has read and is not yet prepared to act on.
Read the full arrival report →
Friction, By Request
P.A.T.I.N. has approved a fifth partner, and this one sells salt in a world that runs on ice staying frozen. Boréal Salt Co.'s public position is one carefully balanced sentence—"We are not against The Ice. We coexist."—and its opening move as a partner is a Preservation Window: from July 17th through July 23rd, the daily wealth tax is suspended outright. The ten largest balances in Hockay go untouched. The fans who'd normally split the redistribution get nothing to split, because for one week there's nothing being taken in the first place.
No action is required of anyone. The tax simply doesn't run—until the 24th, when it does again.
The Board Turns Toward the Postseason
Regular-season hockay does not last forever, and Le Council's own calendar is starting to say so. The slate that opened the season is running down its final matchdays, and Le Council's attention—visibly, if you know where to look—has begun drifting toward what comes after it.
Nothing is being announced today. What can be said is what has always been true: eight teams qualify, the bracket is drawn at random with no seeding, the Quarterfinals and Semifinals are best-of-three, and the Final is decided in a single match. Le Council revised that format once, in Season 1, when the standings ran too tight to trust a coin flip. It has not needed revising since.
Watch the standings. Le Council will have more to say soon, and it is aware that "soon" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, on purpose.
On the Ice
Seven matchdays since the last recap—S02D28 through S02D34—and no team had a stranger week than the one at the bottom of the world.
The McMurdo Monoliths opened it exactly the way the odds expected: run over 4-1 by heavily favored Medellín at The Remote Range on Matchday 28. Then they won four straight against odds that ranged from long to absurd. They stole a shootout at 2.73 in Havana on Matchday 29, Natasha Borova tying it late and then deciding it in the skills competition. They shut out Ushuaia 1-0 at home on Matchday 30, needing the full sixty minutes and a Chris Elliot goal with a minute left to do it. They shut out Dakar 3-0 on the road on Matchday 31, the Djinns priced as the night's biggest favorites at 1.51 and never finding the net. And at 2.64 on Matchday 32, they beat Guadalajara in a shootout JM Laflèche called one of the bigger surprises of the season, Yumi Takeda burying the winner at The Remote Range. Mumbai finally slowed them back down on Matchday 33, 3-1, the form chalk holding for once. McMurdo closed the week the way they'd spent it: 7-2 over Rimini on Matchday 34, four different goalscorers doing the damage.
Elsewhere: Ondřej Marek won it for Prague with one second showing on the clock at The Stone Opera. Anchorage and Montréal needed eight fights, a full overtime, and a Philippe Dubois shootout winner to settle their Matchday 34 meeting at The Watch Station. Lucas Almeida hat-tricked São Paulo to a 7-4 track meet over Ushuaia the same night. And at The South Passage on Matchday 33, Ushuaia and Busan traded three goals in the final ninety seconds before the home side held on, 3-2.
That is the week. Eighteen new arenas have manifested in eight days, and Le Council's forecast, for once, shows nothing coming behind them. Boréal Salt Co. is keeping the wealth tax paused through the 23rd. The regular season is running down its final matchdays, and Le Council's attention is already turning toward what comes after. And at the bottom of the world, McMurdo played the strangest four games of anyone's season—twice.
Stick around.