Spartan

F - Nico Pearce D - Chicken Wing for DQ team We're all done!

Gritty was the last picks there, was trying to give him until the end of the day to pick since I figured he was at school. Guess he's disqualified. I'll make the picks first thing in the morning, half asleep right now. Thanks for keeping an eye out.

LOLOLOLOLOL

Ain't no way. Institute performance evals or something, firing people just for longevity makes no sense. We're not overflowing with qualified candidates like the league was before the E.

Tough chats as I'd expect, thanks to @Rayzor_7 for dealing with me. Looking forward to playing in Helsinki with some great folks! Welcome home to Moscow @UnkemptCL4PTP, it's been too long since you played for us Special welcome to @Tape-to-Tape, a promising young addition to our defense corps! Excited to have you both on the team!

@ErictheFish reminder for a back to back pick

are you kidding me??? where is 69????

@GrittyIsKing skipped, @qripll is up

Yeah what fishy said G - Cole Pearce That wraps the group up!

At the same time, your one player won't singlehandedly destroy your team if you play against your team. If they do, shit, hope you win some individual awards lol. There is also always the possibility to trade for your player, as many GM's have done since the rules were changed. Josh traded for Davis once his contract was up with Moscow, I traded for Letang once his contract was up with DC. Ricer just traded for himself from Davos. Eno traded for himself from Moscow as well. There are still plenty of avenues to get your own player should you want to. But yeah, I think that the current rules put too much of a spotlight on the presumed conflict of interest Between GM'S and their players which results in creating more GM desire for themselves. You can't auto-draft them with a first, they're not assigned to the team, and you can't sign them in FA. Those restrictions feel like your GM player is a lot more valuable asset than they really are. It's a tough debate with no real "clear" direction to go in.

The argument here is that this naturally benefits teams that do well. If Moscow was the worst team in the league, I have to take myself at 1oa. If Moscow won the cup, I get myself at 16oa. That hardly seems fair. I used to be of this mentality, that GM's should be the most active members of the community, and therefore the best earners. But GM players also have the convenience of being flexible to the team, potentially being a cheap cap option as well. I don't think low earning means a GM doesn't care about their team. A lack of overall activity and effort fits that narrative better. But yeah, from a personal standpoint I think even a welfare GM player is valuable to the team due to the flexibility they bring. I don't know if I'd just assign GM players to their teams for free though. Even though every GM could do it, I think teams need to pay a suitable price for career players that can be molded to the team's future.

Congrats on the induction @hylands, and nicely written OD!

There's a lot of differing opinions on how GM players should be treated. With expansion, it didn't make much sense for a max earner at the top of their class to get selected at 16oa if the GM traded down for that pick, knowing he only had to use a first on his player. It made sense that it wasn't the fairest overall, as a team that did poorly but had a GM player in the draft would likely have to use a higher pick if no one wanted to trade up for the pick. The rules were changed because of how GM players put other teams into unfavorable situations, denying teams the opportunity to take the players that they felt were the "best" for their teams. The counter-argument around GM tethering here is that all teams would still be able to take their GM players, but not all GM players are the same. Some are max earners, some claim welfare and practice facility. No one would bat an eye if a non-max earning GM went in the low first or the early second round because that's their natural value. There's room to discuss whether the process around GM players needs to be reevaluated, which I'd agree with. But this situation was a pretty clear and blatant case of draft stock tanking and frankly, the punishment was light imo.

Chatted a bit about the week my name turned blue and the chaos surrounding it. Took questions from @Arce and @Berocka as well, thank you both!

G - Cole Pearce @GrittyIsKing

I realized that I need to do one last task to claim in other leagues this week. Unfortunately, I only realized this after I got on the couch and left my laptop on my desk. So basically I'm trying out this text to speak feature on my phone and let's see how accurate this can get. Overall last week or I guess this week, was pretty much a whirlwind. A lot of activity happened for me personally. I had to do financier stuff for the league, and then I ended up becoming a blue. When I say blue, I just generally mean a member of the league staff team and I didn't really think that financier was part of that crew. But turns out it was. So then I had to open up free agency and that caused a lot of problems, and then there's just a lot of stuff that happened in the week and I'm going to cover it in my podcast tomorrow! I always ask people to give me topics to talk about on my podcast, but no one ever gives me any topics. So if anyone reads this article, please give me topics! I'm starting to run out of stuff to talk about, but I do enjoy recording them for the two people that listen. Not bad text to speech!

G - Cole Pearce @hedgehog337

F - Jonathan Ori @MubbleFubbles

D - Chicken Wing F - Robert Bouchard For the DQ team

For the DQ team D - Robin Galante Nilsson D - Chicken Wing

It's you now, his 12+12 started about 26 hours ago. @UnkemptCL4PTP is skipped and DQ'd unfortunately.

@OrbitingDeath skip, @dlamb up

@MattyFired skip one, 11 hours left on pick two

@NJDevils24 skipped, @Ahma on the clock

Nilsson is already selected, please repick there F - Robert Bouchard @solas