A Double Take on the Triple Crown

The Highlanders had an unspectacular night on Tuesday (a little less than 5pts), but it was enough to gain a bit of ground in the Predator Cup race, take a fractional point lead in the Challenge Cup final and ease the Highlanders into first place in the Omnivore standings. Trends which, if they hold out for the next two and a half weeks, would give the Highlanders their first victory of any award in the "Modern Era", a trio of Predator Cups (a feat previously only acheived by the Great Whites) and their first ever "Triple Crown" of Predator Cup, Challenge Cup and Omnivore Award (an accomplishment unique the Severed Heads up to now).

There are two obstacles to the plan, the first being last season's Predator Cup and Challenge Cup champs, the Bladerunners, continue to stick around. They remain less than 14pts behind the Highlanders in the Predator Cup race - really only one good evening given the talent these teams boast. The Challenge Cup final is even closer than that - a minor penalty separates them in the first game of their best of three. Finally, the Bladerunners are a mere 6pts back in the Omnivore standings - an amount that could change in one game, let alone a whole evening of play. The Bladerunners fell short of the triple-crowm last season with the Dogs taking the Omnivore, but it is certianly reasonable to view the Bladerunners as just as capable of winning winning it all and in the process earing their own trio of Predator Cups and becoming the first team to win three Omnivore Awards.

The fly in the ointment, so to speak, is the Scourge. Up until last night, they were the Omnivore leaders and remain a mere 3pts out. So far the week hasn't gone so well for the Scoure, the Edge (with a league-leading 13pt week so far) have started to eat into the lead the Scourge have over them in the race to avoid the Herbivore (which is still about 20pts) but there is nothing to suggest that the rookie GM and his newly minted team couldn't pull of an impressive repeat of their own - remember that it was the defending Omnivore Award Winners, the Dogs, who became the Scourge on the eve of the current season. Most Improved Team, two years in a row and under two different managements - nice trick... if you can pull it off :-)

Congratulations to the Great Whites on reaching the 900pt mark. Here are the unofficial stats as of Tuesday night's action: