Fall 2023: Clutch Pucks Finished 4–3 tied for 4th place.

Then They Won the Title.

The first complete season in the surviving River City archive wastes very little time establishing a useful rule: do not confuse the standings with the ending.

Fall 2023 produced three teams at 5–2. Eskimo Bros, Maniax and Flamingos each finished with 15 points. Immediately behind them came another three teams at 4–3: Clutch Pucks, Fright Night and Dirty Puckin’ Dangles.

Six of the league’s eight teams, in other words, finished within one win of each other.

Then Clutch Pucks won the championship.

Their regular season had provided no obvious reason to expect inevitability. They lost to Fright Night, Flamingos and Eskimo Bros. The Eskimo loss was 5–3, one of the few surviving facts from that meeting; the record does not preserve who scored, how the game turned, or whether anybody learned anything useful from it.

It does preserve what happened later.

Clutch Pucks reached the final. Eskimo Bros reached it too. This time, Clutch Pucks won.

That championship was already their third documented title in the surviving record, following Summer 2022 and Spring 2023. Fall 2023 therefore did not introduce Clutch Pucks as a contender. It gave the archive its first detailed look at a team whose championship habit had already begun.

It also introduced an argument that would not disappear quietly.

Eskimo Bros and Clutch Pucks would meet again in the next championship. They would continue meeting after that. The larger history can wait for its proper pages, but the first complete season leaves the initial evidence sitting plainly enough: River City’s regular season could identify the strongest teams without necessarily identifying the champion.

Clutch Pucks went 4–3.

The trophy remained unmoved by the objection.

Next: 2024, when the argument stopped being a one-season accident.