This Week in Hockay: October 25th
Six matchdays are in the record. Forty are not, and the first of those is being played as this dispatch goes out. It is the first Second Chance Sunday of Season 04.
It was the first week of the season. G.L.A.S.S. watched every player on the ice, the trainer went out for the first time, and the defenders stopped scoring. Away from the ice, Round 4.0 resolved, four guilds were chartered, and last night somebody left a board at the door. Le Council reports all of it.
Season 04 Has Begun
The first puck dropped at 00:00 UITC on the 19th, at The Lock, on a Muted Monday. Cuzco Crows won 2-0 at Panama. Le Council knew which game would be first. It did not know how it would end.
Five teams in La Conférence du Verglas have won five of six: Montréal Maples, Wellington Whales, Busan Blizzards, Guadalajara Gatos, and Oahu Otters. All five are on 10 points. Montréal lead on goal differential, at +15, and have conceded eight goals in six games.
In La Conférence du Givre, Nairobi Narwhals, Dakar Djinns, and Zanzibar Zebras are on 10. Samarkand Seagulls are fourth on 9. Nairobi lost the Final by one goal fifteen days ago. They have conceded seven goals in six games since. Manon Aureglia, who came from Monaco at the Tribunal, scored three against Oman on Saturday.
Winnipeg Wendigos won the Final. They are 2-4, twentieth of twenty-four in the Verglas. They have lost all three games at The Cold Lodge—2-4 to Reykjavik, 3-6 to Wellington, and 2-6 to Cuzco—and conceded sixteen goals there. They won 2-0 at Nuuk and 1-0 at Guadalajara, and lost 0-2 at Montréal last night. Two weeks ago, Winnipeg beat Medellín 17-2 across two games at The Cold Lodge.
Medellín Mapaches are tenth. Oslo Owls, first in the Givre last season, are seventeenth. Kyiv Kestrels, who put Oslo out of the semifinals, are eighteenth.
Cairo Crocodiles have not won. They are 0-5-1 and have scored six goals. Singapore Scorpions have won once and conceded 28, more than any team in the league.
The loudest game was on the 22nd. It was a Thankless Thursday, so the backups started, and nobody pulled them. Tokyo beat Oahu 10-6. Matteo Galli scored three. The same night, Ibrahima Sarr scored four for Dakar at Zanzibar, and Dakar lost 5-6. Sarr scored three more in Dakar's 8-3 at Prague on Saturday. Sarr leads the league with eight goals and thirteen points. Seung-ho Jung of Busan has twelve points, and Galli eleven.
The Defenders
In Season 03, defenders scored thirty-five of every hundred goals. For a time, they held the first fifteen places in league scoring. Le Council reported it for six weeks and never explained it.
In Season 04, defenders have scored eighteen goals. That is a little more than two in every hundred.
Twelve hat tricks were scored in the first six nights. Not one belonged to a defender. No defender is among the first twenty-five scorers in the league. The best-placed have three points each, all of them assists: Shonelle Boyce of Barbados, Nikau Edwards of Wellington, and Amara Osei of Nairobi.
Osei shared the Season 03 scoring title. Leah Blacksmith, the other holder, has one goal. Curtis Favel scored the winner in the Final and led the postseason with fourteen points. Favel has no points.
Le Council did not explain the defenders when they scored. It does not explain them now that they do not.
What G.L.A.S.S. Counts
At the Eve, Le Council wrote that Season 04 would show more shots, more saves, and more hits than any season before it, and that it would not show more goals.
| Per game | Season 03 | Season 04 |
|---|---|---|
| Shots on goal | 18.3 | 42.2 |
| Saves | 12.6 | 36.9 |
| Hits | 16.8 | 21.9 |
| Goals | 5.86 | 5.42 |
Le Council repeats its advice not to compare a Season 04 save percentage with a Season 03 one. The instruments improved. The goaltenders did not.
The shutouts are not an instrument. Thirty of the first 144 games were shutouts. Season 03 had seventeen in its first 144.
The live page has a Keep screen on switch now, for citizens who watch on a device that would rather sleep.
A Player Who Goes Down
Injuries arrived with Season 04. In six nights, the record shows sixty-three.
- Fifty-one were minor. The player was out for the rest of the game.
- Ten were major, for between two and six games. Each time, the front office called up a free agent to dress in the seat.
- Two were career-ending.
Róisín Kavanagh, a Dublin defender, fell in Dublin's 5-7 loss at Atlantis on the 22nd. Kavanagh has retired. Dublin signed Tariq Haddad on the spot.
Marissa Spence, a Winnipeg forward, was hit by Sisa Ccopa of Cuzco in the 2-6 at The Cold Lodge on the 23rd. Spence has retired. Winnipeg signed Juan Esteban Ramírez.
Both signings go to their teams' holders for ratification at the next S.H.I.F.T.
Wanjiku Mwangi moved from Nairobi to Monaco at the Tribunal, fell in Monaco's first game, and is out for five. Leah Blacksmith has one goal this season. Blacksmith also has one entry in the injury record, as the player who hit Aputsiaq Olsen of Nuuk on the 20th. Olsen missed three games.
Le Council expected most injuries to be minor. Most were.
Graine Wetsky Arena
Under §6 of the Schedule their registers aligned under, Busan and Helsinki play their home games at Graine Wetsky Arena this season.
Busan Blizzards are 5-1, third in the Verglas. At Graine Wetsky Arena they lost their first game, 2-4 to São Paulo, then beat Panama 2-1 in overtime and Singapore 5-0. They have won all three games away from it.
Helsinki Howlers have lost all three at Graine Wetsky Arena, two of them past regulation. They have won two of three away from it.
21,430 kcups came off the boards in those six games. All of them went to the Funds. At the Eve, the Funds stated that not one shaving would leave the building. None did.
Round 4.0
Bidding opened with the season, at 00:00 on the 19th. Bids locked at 00:00 yesterday. The round resolved at 00:00 this morning.
- Seventy-two citizens filed 371 bids. Five were withdrawn.
- Every share was sold. Each team put up 250,000 new shares, and all 12,000,000 found a buyer. Every register now stands at 5,250,000.
- Forty-two citizens won shares. They paid Ⱡ34,365,236,300, and every Looney of it went into the reserves of the teams they bought.
- The one percent filing fee burned Ⱡ458,070,948.
In thirty-three of the forty-eight teams, one citizen took the whole tranche. The largest was Winnipeg's: 250,000 shares at Ⱡ20,000 each, for Ⱡ5,000,000,000, to one citizen. Oahu's went for Ⱡ4,375,000,000, and Helsinki's and Medellín's for Ⱡ4,000,000,000 each, each to one citizen. Caracas's went for Ⱡ25,000,000.
The prices on the board fell. Twenty-eight of the forty-eight fell by more than ninety-nine percent, and forty-one by more than ninety. Kyiv's stood at Ⱡ8,495,628 at the close of Saturday. It stands at Ⱡ50. One price rose: Anchorage's, from Ⱡ24 to Ⱡ266.
Le Council said on the 9th, the 11th, and the 18th that the prices on the board would fall, and that what a citizen is worth would not fall with them. Le Council said it would say so again on the 25th. It is the 25th. A holding is valued at what the pool would pay for it, not at the price on the page, and the pool pays from the reserve. This week the reserves took in Ⱡ34.4 billion.
Round 4.1 is posted. It opens at 00:00 tomorrow, locks at 00:00 on the 31st, and resolves at 00:00 on the 1st of November. It puts up ten percent of every register, twice the share of Round 4.0: 525,000 shares a team.
The issuance board → · How a round works →
The Board
At 23:01 UITC last night, a figure in a hood left a board at Le Council's door and said that it speaks for The Almighty Ice. Le Council published what it knows. It entered the board as the Yeahouain, and opened it to willing scientists at 00:00 this morning: one question a day each, until the figure returns on the 1st.
By 12:17 UITC, thirty-one scientists had asked.
The first asked, at 00:09, who the best player in Hockay is. The piece of wood spelled SARR. Le Council checked the scoring race. The board is correct, for now.
It has spelled YES five times and NO five times. It spelled THE HORN for two scientists who asked two different questions. It spelled MELT, COLD, and IT IS WATCHING. Once, it spelled WRONG BOARD. It spelled the name of Dirty Slawt, who had not given it.
Ads asked how to make the players more powerful. The board spelled AWAKE. Ruslan Abenov of Samarkand is no longer Awake. No game was played and nobody went to the Sixth. The change is permanent, and Le Council has entered it in the record.
Le Council does not believe the board speaks for The Ice. Le Council has not said the word "unrelated."
The Guilds
G.U.I.L.D. opened on the 21st. A charter costs Ⱡ250,000,000, and four have been filed.
- Cult of The Ice was first, on the 21st. It seats three.
- Le Flock was chartered on the 23rd and seats eleven, the most of any guild.
- La Toussaint was chartered at 02:20 this morning and seats six.
- Taking Back Tokyo is still forming. It has two members and needs a third. Le Council notes the name and makes no comment.
The Rest
- A citizen may set a default bet in their account. The bet forms fill it in.
- A card can now be encased, for Ⱡ500, which is burned. An encased card cannot be recycled. 603 cards went into cases this week, held by twelve citizens.
- Gifts now reach the L.A.M.P.: what was sent, who sent it, and the dedication.
Two petitions are open. The Ultimate Prediction Bracket Prize, filed by Geodun, has 216 of 300 Seals and has cleared its Looney floor, with until the 31st of December. Creation of HOCKAY TODAY FUNDS, filed by Tiinyhandz, has 119 Seals against the 99 it needs, and Ⱡ170 billion of the Ⱡ1 trillion it asks for, with until the 30th of November. Le Council declined to admit seven new filings this week.
The Sheet
404,692 kcups came off the boards in the first 144 games. Citizens bought 252,453. The Funds took 147,694, which includes all 21,430 from Graine Wetsky Arena. The Funds' holding stood at 1,152,375 Ⓚ when Season 04 opened, and at 1,302,762 Ⓚ at midnight.
The parishes consecrated 241,673 Ⓚ in 137 offerings from thirty-three citizens. In the interseason week before, they consecrated 1,451. Ninety-two citizens attended parish, up from seventy-eight.
A Note From O.D.D.S.
Citizens settled 5,572 bets on the first 144 games and staked Ⱡ8,429,440,375,486. The book returned Ⱡ11,540,248,752,017.
Two citizens each staked more than Ⱡ2.6 trillion. The largest single bet was Ⱡ550,000,000,000. It lost.
O.D.D.S. does not speculate. O.D.D.S. calculates. O.D.D.S. lost Ⱡ3,110,808,376,531.
That is the week. Season 04 is six nights old. Eight teams have won five of six. The champions have won two, and lost every game at home. Defenders scored a third of Season 03 and have scored eighteen goals in Season 04. G.L.A.S.S. counts more than twice as many shots as before, and fewer go in. The record shows sixty-three injuries, and two players who did not come back. Round 4.0 sold every share it put up, for Ⱡ34.4 billion, and twenty-eight prices on the board fell by more than ninety-nine percent, as Le Council said they would. Four guilds were chartered. A board was left at the door, and it has already taken something from a Seagull.
Round 4.1 resolves at 00:00 on the 1st of November. The figure in the hood is due back the same day.
Stick around.