Let’s not drag this out.

For this week’s double-elimination spectacular, the two Hot Takes with the lowest scores were eliminated.

One take featured heavily in our voter’s bottom half of the rankings, with 16 votes spread across the 3rd-place and vote-out ranks, making for a clear-cut, no doubt about it, 5th-place Hot Take elimination. Then, the fun began when a tie occurred during the second round of eliminations.

Hours of desperate (and embarrassing) immunity pleadings, plus a comprehensive analysis of each take’s prior voting history, helped determine our 6th elimination, leaving us with two Hot Take Survivor contestants for our grand finale.

Let’s get into the chaos!

In almost an inverse of the last two episode’s votes, Mike Liu’s Hot Take that Nils Höglander would become a 25-goal scorer did not benefit from a training camp spent on a line with Elias Pettersson and Andrei Kuzmenko, nor from playing two preseason games as a top-six forward.

Höglander was one of the bright spots in the club’s embarrassing 10-0 defeat to the Calgary Flames. Though the Bockträsk native held his own against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers, his single hit, two shots on goal, and 17:34 minute of ice time were not enough to sway the voting public.

Throughout Hot Take Survivor, Liu’s take peaked with a 3rd-place rank in our second vote and had featured in the bottom of the bracket two votes in a row.

Too bad, as this was acting show-host (me) Jeff Probst’s favourite Hot Take of the bunch: simple, a good probability of occurring, hot, without being too hot, cold without being just a boring prediction. Considering this take dropped before any indication that Höglander would skate on the first line alongside Pettersson and Kuzmenko, it was bold!

Alas, Mike Liu was our fifth contributor eliminated from the competition.

Two takes tied with a whopping score of 2 apiece for the second round of eliminations.

and

Naturally, we dove into each Hot Take’s historical placement numbers.

Throughout this storied program, ‘Quinn Hughes scoring 20 goals’ had been a bottom-feeder. It wasn’t until Hughes was named captain and a certain Toronto-based analytics model cast doubt on Hughes’ potential as a legit game-breaking defenceman that the take finished with a 1st-place ranking. ‘Akito Hrisose playing his way into the top four and becoming Filip Hronek’s partner for years to come,’ however, started at the bottom and rose to the top off a quietly impressive performance at Penticton Young Stars before slowly falling by the wayside.

Our first contestant acknowledged the Quinn Captaincy wave they were riding in their immunity pleadings. Standing before the jury (me), our contestant said, “I just want to start by saying: top four in the inaugural survivor rankings? Not too shabby! I’m probably getting saved every week by riding the Quinn Hughes captaincy wave, which I’m cool with! I think it’s time we cut ties with the Pettersson Art Ross Trophy take, though. If it weren’t for Conor McDavid’s existence, this would be a fairly reasonable take. But, I think with the Canucks’ luck, it’s not going to be Petey that takes the honour away from McDavid. If I have to go, let me do so after the Petey take.” It was an immunity pleading that was music to the ears of frequent CanucksArmy commenter (and the reason this series is still alive) RDster.

Our other contestant on the chopping block kicked up their feet and was pretty indifferent to the danger they were in. Putting down their jar of mustard that they bought at the auction, our contestant turned to the jury (me) and said, “Akito Hirose looked fine at the Young Stars tournament, and he should have looked great. That’s why this take is even spicier.” When asked to elaborate, they returned to their jar and muttered, “I don’t need immunity this week. I’m safe.”

It was a bold play.

Much to RDster’s chagrin, we couldn’t alter the voting public’s votes to eliminate ‘Pettersson>McDavid for Art Ross’ and thus had to analyze the two contestants actually in danger.

Diving into the voting splits to determine which take was more “Final Two” worthy proved unhelpful. Through the previous four votes, we needed to axe out the mushy-middle and figure out who collected more votes in the top two (good!) and who collected more votes in the bottom two (bad!). Unfortunately, both Hot Takes split the vote quite evenly.

Both takes were polarizing, with ‘Top Four Hirose’ having a better ratio of top two votes to bottom two.

Alas, the vote came down to me, Jeff Probst (Cody Severtson).

After careful deliberation, I decided that our sixth elimination from the competition is…

*drumroll*

Isabella Urbani and her take that Quinn Hughes would score 20 goals.

This is Hot Take Survivor, and after seeing Hughes’ performance against the Edmonton Oilers in preseason, 20 goals doesn’t even seem like a hot take anymore. He looks like a man possessed! Because this is a competition to determine the wildest unlikely, but rad if it happened, take. We had to settle with two of the more absurd takes of the season. Especially with Elias Pettersson matching McDavid in preseason points on Wednesday night and Akito Hirose featuring on-ice for just a single goal against in the team’s blowout loss to Calgary.

Both hot! Both possible! Both are wild if they happen!

That’s Hot Take Survivor, baby!