This Week in Hockay: May 31st
Week six. Thirty-two matchdays in the books, six remaining. The regular season is entering its final stretch, and Le Council has reviewed the standings in detail—in full, multiple times this week—and found the situation no less unsettled each time. Montréal have won three consecutive matchdays without once being favored. The Tokyo Titans shutout a 1.68 favorite 9-0 on Matchday 32. Anchorage have shutout back-to-back favored opponents and called it a week. Matchday 32 was the most chaotic single matchday of the season, documented, and placed in a separate file Le Council labeled with some reluctance. Two petitions before the A.P.S.P. have been enacted. The first citizen of Hockay to hold one million Looneys has been identified. And Le Council has an announcement about Matchday 38.
Here is what changed this week.
Montréal
The Montréal Maples have won three consecutive matchdays.
Le Council notes this at the top of this section, plainly, because plain is the only register in which the information fits. Three wins. Three matchdays on which O.D.D.S. assessed the situation and reached a conclusion that proved incorrect. On Matchday 30, at The Oldest Rink, Montréal shutout the McMurdo Monoliths—favored at 1.67—four goals to nothing. On Matchday 31, they went into The Rhythm Bureau, absorbed three fights and twelve penalties, and came out with a road win. On Matchday 32, they dismantled Perth four goals before the game was eight minutes old.
Three straight. Three wins as the underdog. Three separate evenings on which the odds said one thing and the Maples said another.
Le Council has no framework for this. Le Council has, however, opened a file.
The Rest of the Field
Montréal are not the only team doing something that warrants documentation.
Anchorage. The Watch Station is hosting something nobody expected and nobody has fully explained. The Auroras have won two consecutive matchdays—both as underdogs, both shutouts. On Matchday 31, they held a favored side scoreless. On Matchday 32, they shutout the Busan Blizzards at The Frozen Dock, 2-0. Two consecutive matchdays, two clean sheets, zero goals allowed against teams that were supposed to win. Le Council will note, without further comment, that this is the second week in a row it has had cause to mention the Anchorage Auroras in a section with this heading.
Tokyo. Matchday 32 at The Neon Crossing should be in the permanent record, so Le Council is placing it there: the Rimini Rinklers arrived as 1.68 road favorites and were shutout 9-0. Yuki Sato scored at 0:30. The game was over by 4:56. Nine goals, three periods, total command. Ji-hoon Baek with a hat trick. Whatever the Tokyo Titans are doing right now, they are doing it emphatically.
A broader note on Matchday 32: seven upsets. Two shutouts—one of them that Tokyo nine-nothing. Winnipeg scoring ten goals against Dakar. Le Council's statistics office processed the Matchday 32 results twice and found nothing wrong with the numbers. The numbers were simply the numbers.
The Standings
With thirty-two matchdays complete and six remaining, the standings are in a condition Le Council would describe, if pressed for language, as actively unresolved.
Le Council has reviewed which teams are in, which teams are out, and which teams occupy the territory in between where the situation changes depending on which of several plausible six-matchday sequences you believe is about to happen. The number of plausible sequences is not small. Le Council has reviewed them. Le Council is not comfortable.
What Le Council will say is this: six matchdays remain. The playoff picture is not decided. The bracket is not set. Teams that have not behaved like playoff teams all season have, in recent weeks, begun behaving like playoff teams. Le Council has noted this with interest and concern in approximately equal measure.
On the A.P.S.P.: Two Petitions Enacted
Le Council convened on the public roll this week. Two petitions had crossed their thresholds—the S.T.A.M.P.S. requirement and the Looneys requirement, in full and in time. Le Council reviewed both, deliberated, and enacted them.
Le Council thanks the filing citizens and the communities that pressed their seals in support. The A.P.S.P. is functioning as designed. Le Council notes, with something approaching satisfaction, that the mechanism works.
The enacted petitions are recorded on the public roll.
The First Millionaire
Le Council's ledger systems returned an alert this week that required, upon first review, a second review.
@i-am-tom has crossed one million Looneys.
Ⱡ1,000,000. A number that has not appeared in the personal balance of any citizen of Hockay until this week. Accumulated across the full span of Season One—bets placed, games followed, markets called correctly more often than Le Council would have predicted from the prior probability of any single citizen doing so.
Le Council does not issue formal recognitions for account balances. The ledger records what the ledger records. But Le Council notes that this is a first—the first in Season One, the first in the history of Hockay—and firsts are things that get written down.
The Looneys have no real-world value. Le Council is reminding everyone of this, as it does, and then declining to say anything further about the number. The number speaks for itself.
Congratulations, @i-am-tom. You have the floor. Le Council is watching from the seats.
Matchday 38: Triple Or Nothing
Le Council has reviewed the standings table one final time.
Le Council has observed that multiple teams are separated by a margin small enough that six matchdays of results—or fewer—can reshape the postseason entirely. Le Council has observed that the race into the playoffs is not settled and will not be settled quietly. And Le Council has reached the conclusion that the final regular season matchday should be treated accordingly.
Effective next Friday, Matchday 38 has been designated Triple Or Nothing.
The mechanics are as follows: every standings point earned on Matchday 38 counts triple. A win is worth six points. An overtime or shootout loss is worth three points. A regulation loss is worth nothing. The designation applies to all ten games simultaneously, without exception.
Le Council is aware that this changes the calculus for every team with standings implications on Matchday 38—which is, at current count, most of them. A team that might have settled for a well-managed overtime loss will no longer find that a comfortable option. A regulation loss and a regulation loss alone earns nothing. Le Council considers this the point. The final matchday of the regular season should feel like what it is: a decision being made, not a formality being completed.
The designation was authorized following Le Council's review of the current standings, its assessment of the remaining schedule, and—Le Council will acknowledge without elaborating further—a brief but pointed observation from The Almighty Ice that Le Council received earlier this week and from which it drew certain conclusions. Those conclusions led here.
Matchday 38 begins next Friday. All ten arenas are confirmed operational. The Jambono has been notified.
That is week six. Thirty-two matchdays behind us. Six ahead. The standings are close, the streaks are real, and Matchday 38 is Triple Or Nothing.
Stick around.