Spartan

Part 1 - HERE I already did the spiel about how this works in part one for the NA conference above. Check that out for any background details you might need. European Conference HC Davos Dynamo - @Alex Hey, look at that. Davos finally traded Lachlan Summers @kirbithan away! Oh wait, it was to WAR. Rip HOF chances. Davos is done with the contending phase and have now entered a full rebuild with fringe VHL players and David Jokinen @Ahma making up their roster. Due to a combination of Seattle rulebreaking and a little bit of fortune, Davos received the 1st overall selection in the S93 Draft where they selected Antonia Bucatini @CowboyinAmerica to become their new franchise cornerstone. Davos ended up with a total of 11 draft picks, with Forum Content @frescoelmo, Aleksanteri Kaskiniemi-Kekkonen @Snussu, Steve French @Seabass and Billy Joel @The goat of hockey as some of their most notable selections behind Bucatini. Another underrated move might be the inclusion of Sunset Moth @McWolf from Warsaw in the Summers trade, where Davos will hope to get the once highly touted defenseman back on track. Davos had some quality picks along with a lot of developmental prospect selections, so their future success will lie considerably in their ability to develop prospects. Grade: A- Helsinki Titans - @samx Helsinki's biggest concern entering the offseason was the status of rumored disgruntled young star, Grimgor Ironhide @FrostBeard. News broke midway through S92 that Ironhide had already expressed displeasure with the organization in his VHL rookie season, second season on his ELC, and had notified management that he would not re-sign with the organization. This prompted GM Mickey Dickson to explore the trade market around the S92 TDL, but a deal never got finalized as HSK pushed for the playoffs with their strong core. Finally on the first day of the new season, Ironhide was traded to Moscow in exchange for winger prospect Adi Dassler @BOOM, a prospect drafted one season after Ironhide and at the same position, with a pick swap as well. In the draft, HSK selected Tyler Lawson @Nyx, a prospect who slipped down draft boards due to inactivity fears close to the draft, but had been responsive during the scouting process to some GMs. Samuel Wazinski @samthemancubwas also selected in the 2nd round, as a potential future backup to superstar Fuukka Rask @Jubis or even potential future starter once Rask retires. While having a top young player ask out of the organization is a noted concern, a return of Dassler makes up for it a bit. Grade: C+ London United - @jacobcarson877 I'm not sure if it was by design, but London was content to simply take a nap through the offseason. Their most significant moves may have been to just re-sign Sjin @Sjin before he hit FA, and to pick up a mutual option on Leonard Triller @Triller. Beyond that, London made no trades and only had 2 draft picks this draft, both of which were in the 4th round. With those picks, London selected Jacob Longstreet @Dynamicmlb_42 and Owen two @do3bo1 to flesh out their fairly shallow prospect pool. After a narrow game 7 loss to miss out on the Continental Cup, London seems confident in their existing roster to run it back for another season. While it could pan out well for them, it's certainly interesting to see the team get older by another season and not attempt to replenish their roster in a deeper draft than usual. There's not much to say about a quiet offseason, but that'd be the one mild criticism as London will see 4 players retire this season, and another 2 next season including superstar goalie Jesse Teno @aimkin. London also still has $5 million in cap space to play around with, and I'd assume they look to add a 4th defenseman to the roster. Whether they'll be able to do that and add a quality defenseman might shape their offseason. Grade: B- Malmo Nighthawks - @KaleebtheMighty Malmo has been the team gatekeeping the EU for a few seasons now, but has never quite gotten over the hump and into the finals. They're facing some cap issues, running just 5 forwards so far as of the time of writing this with $3.5 million in cap space. Only one of their players, Philip Rave @tcookie, is still on their rookie contract, while the rest of their roster are on prime deals. Jacob Stone @scoop is in his literal prime, rising to fill the role of one of the top defensemen in the league, and the team has Ash Sparks facing retirement after S94. Interestingly enough, rising star defenseman Jebediah Big Ol Doinks in Amish @hylands seemed to not want to stick around in Malmo, so a subpar trade was made for the pending UFA - with Malmo trading up just 4 picks in the draft from 11oa to 7oa while losing the defenseman. With 7oa, Malmo takes Jorgen Lovstrom @Pifferfish, who they hope will step in to be the starter of the future. Personally, I had a different goalie rated as the first one to go off the board, and I believe that there were concerns whether Lovstrom will be able to maintain his development arc over the course of a full career. Another draft/offseason recap, another question about a Malmo draft pick's activity . I'm sure the Malmo crowd will be thrilled. Hopefully Lovstrom will be the goalie that makes it out of the Malmo prospect pool. I will say though, adding Eric Queefson @twists to replace Amish was a strong add, bringing in a fairly young defenseman for a well valued pick. And I really like the selection of Ocean Codoller @FreshOceanCod as well who flashes a lot of potential as a sleeper pick. It's a mixed bag here, having a player leave at the end of their ELC along with a sketchy top draft pick - but the team did bring in a replacement and still has a strong roster pending FA/trade for a final forward. Grade: B Moscow Menace - @Spartan Moscow had a couple of question marks heading into this offseason. First, how would they manage 7 VHL-eligible forwards with both George Richmond @badcolethetitan and Adi Dassler @BOOM ready to make the jump to the VHL, and how would they remain competitive after the retirement of their rental piece, Dogwood Maple @dogwoodmaple? The trades seemed to happen quickly at the start of the offseason - veteran winger Left Alone @okochastar was moved to Vancouver in exchange for 19th overall. Dassler was also flipped for Grimgor Ironhide @FrostBeard with Moscow upgrading a 3rd to a 2nd in S94, with the potential for both picks to jump up by a round pending Ironhide's contract status. Between Richmond and Ironhide, with both being over 600 TPA to start the season, the hope is that Moscow won't take a significant step backwards from their playoff appearance in S92. In the draft, Moscow was fairly happy to trade out of the draft entirely, with little glaring needs on their current roster outside of depth defense. With 9th overall, Moscow selected Benjamin Abenduct @Schnee, a very active and engaged first gen defenseman. 10th overall was promptly flipped over to Seattle for an S94 WAR 1 and a later 2nd in S93, and 19th overall was sent to D.C. earlier in the day for their S94 1st as well, increasing the Moscow future asset pool. Moscow's big question will be if they can keep taking steps towards remaining competitive and making playoff runs before their entire young core are off of their ELCs. Grade: A- Prague Phantoms - @Tetricide Hey look! A brand new GM! Tetricide was hired to lead Prague just a week or so before the S93 Draft, and he had to move quickly to get up to speed with scouting and the state of the team. Prague is in a fairly uncomfortable spot, with stars Matt Murdock @Acydburn, Nikolas Kauppi @Tetricide and John Jameson @Frank all facing retirement after S93. It seems like Prague will be yet another team comfortable to let their aging stars retire in Prague without receiving any assets for them. As of the time of writing this, Prague also has an incomplete roster, sporting just 5 forwards and 3 defensemen with $12 million in cap space. Prague only acquired Pope Francis @nurx via trade with LA during their fire sale, and haven't had much success in FA so far. In the draft, Prague selected Ondrej Vencko @Mutti, potentially the highest ceiling goalie in the draft class. Prague made a couple of safe picks with Vanuza Kolesinska @chikn (who was promptly traded away) and Chuck E Cheese @a_Ferk, who should provide cheap depth for the future. However, Prague will definitely face tough times when their superstar trio retires with little other young talent on the roster outside of Spanish Moon Moth @Renomitsu. Dark days seem to lie ahead for Prague, but kudos to a new GM for respecting players' wishes to retire with their lifelong organization. Grade: D Riga Reign - @hedgehog337 Riga also had a fairly quiet offseason when it comes to trades, choosing to continue letting their fairly young team continue to develop after their sales in prior seasons. Those moves left them with a fair amount of picks in the S93 Draft, including three first round picks. With 3oa, they went with Lucy Leitner @LucyXpher, the highest ranked first gen in the class who should look to lead their defense for seasons to come. With picks 15 and 16, Riga took a gamble on Yermolai Nabokov @fonziGG and Ray Stanton @horoscope, two players who have a lot of potential but may need a bit of help and motivation to reach that potential. Fonzi has had a shaky history with getting his players through a full career, and Stanton has had mixed developmental weeks with some concern of a recent slowdown. Their other selections in Elf Shoes @ELF_SH0ES, Isaak Robinson @isaak and French Fries @solyom will be much more developmental prospects, who will need a lot of time to make the VHL roster. Overall, Riga seemed content to let their developmental process continue, but luck was not on their side with 2 of their 3 1sts landing at the end of the first round, where talent was starting to fall off from the max earners or pension earners at prior selections. Riga will need to be hands on with development to make this offseason a true value add beyond just Leitner. Grade: B Warsaw Predators - @N0HBDY Ah, the final team to cover, with Cody Toland @ctoland102 as their sole pick in the top two rounds of the S93 Draft. Warsaw has made some interesting moves over the past couple seasons - they've gone in multiple times to build a competitive team around young talent Maxim Anisimov @McLovin and King Kisslinger @Kisslinger, while also adding an S91 top draft pick in Thor Reingaard @N0HBDY. But they struggled miserably in S92 and decided to try it again in S93, trading yet another 1st round pick away in exchange for Lachlan Summers @kirbithan. For some reason, by trading away Sunset Moth, they're now at only 3 defensemen. And there was no cap issue there, the Predators have a whopping 14.5 million in cap space right now, but no FA adds or trades made as of the time of writing this. They also only have 5 forwards on the VHL roster. Joseph Dubois @Dubois is ready for the VHL call up on defense, but the defense group looks extremely poor for a competitive team. Jacob Smith Jr @jacobaa19 could also complete their forward group, but they'd be leaving so much cap space on the table. If they don't end up making mid-season or late offseason trades, Warsaw would likely have just been better off to sell the young talent they have. So many teams we've covered today and yesterday in the NA conference have incomplete rosters and the cap space for solid players. It would have been a fantastic time for WAR to work the phones and get a very nice haul to replenish their subpar future asset pool and give their young talent in their large but low quality prospect pool some playing time and motivation. Warsaw is definitely not in as bad a situation as they were last season, but if there's no results to show for the aggressive spending, Warsaw will keep taking the heat. Grade: C-

Can I claim 1 TPE from this

10/10 would drink (12/10 with Yakult)

Per @JCarson's request during the VHL Draft stream last night, I'm back with another post-draft/offseason recap/grading article! I could only find the S90 article for the last time I did this, so I've missed a few seasons and am due to write another behemoth on the forums #forumcontent. For some context, I used to just grade the first round, but I'm going to grade on a team by team basis this season so that I can look at a team's moves and picks as a whole and shout out more folks who were selected this draft. I will also try and keep it concise with less emphasis on formatting and making it look pretty. Also as a disclaimer, I'm usually pretty pessimistic vs being optimistic. So if you want to feel better about your grades, bump it up a sign I guess. Like B+ to A-, or C- to C. Take it with a grain of salt though I'm just writing some shit for fun. I'm not an expert, clearly. Nothing here is personal. You're all lovely people for the most part and I wish you all the best (unless you play against Moscow). Edit: Turns out that this will just be part 1 of 2, as I don't want to cover both NA and EU in a single sitting. See you later in the week for the EU Conference coverage! North American Conference Calgary Wranglers - @leandrofg Calgary entered this offseason as the only team facing both cap and roster issues, and had to find ways to navigate around this. They began by sending out Sadie St. Louis @sadie to Seattle as a cap dump, then proceeded to also ship out Oreo McFleury @JB123 in another trade to Seattle. Seems like the Seattle - Calgary pipeline will be continuing even without Ricer at the helm of the Wranglers, as CGY made a whopping 3 trades with Seattle in a single offseason (although the third trade was just a pick upgrade/swap). While Calgary is cap compliant now, they roster only 4 forwards and 3 defensemen with just 6.5 million in cap space. It'll be interesting to see how CGY will fill out their roster, or if they'll choose to just retool/rebuild their roster and ship out players to other teams with cap and roster space. In the draft though, CGY brings home a familiar user in @Rhynex Entertainment and Miner Vhler, along with Carson Tripp @Cartripp14, Oliver Loo @Peiffy, Wladyslaw Mintus @mintusaurus and some other folks in the 4th round, including recently MIA user @jake and Trimiskez Artav. Miner Vhler was a player expected to slip in the draft due to a very odd build, while the other prospects will be projects that Calgary will need to significantly invest in to see development. There's certainly potential for steals in Carson Tripp and Wladyslaw Mintus who have been around discord/forum/draft stream, but the earning will need to match the activity to see proper value. Overall, I'm confused about Calgary's direction this offseason - shipping out strong players but going for draft pick quantity over quality, and whether they'll ice a decent enough roster for next season. With just about a week left in the offseason, they will have to be praying for a free agent pickup or for trades to go their way. Grade: C Chicago Phoenix - @badcolethetitan My last article in S90 called Chicago's situation "one of the worst ever involving GM transitions" and that Cole would have his work cut out for him. Chicago has surprised, flashing potential off of the back of Scotty Sundin in S91, but also playing their way out of lottery picks that they desperately needed. Chicago's roster looks better on paper now, but is still very young and needs time to develop. Chicago was quiet this offseason, not making any trades pre-draft despite rumors circling of various offers and discussions in the works. In the draft though, Chicago landed UghSike @UghSike at 5th overall, bringing home a very solid forward prospect who should be VHL ready within a season. With their 2nd round pick, they decided to take a gamble on Jean-Pierre Devote @eagle_3450, a projected top 3 player who had his draft stock tank in the weeks leading up to the draft due to inactivity concerns. It'll be a risk for Chicago, but with UghSike's selection in the first, they decided that the risk might be worth the gamble. Interestingly enough, it seems like their real target all along was Vanuza Kolesinska @chikn, a player and user with close ties to defenseman Karol Lamb @dlamb, as CHI traded two future 2nds to PRG for the player. Also drafting Micah Cederbaum @MicahC and Kevin OConnor @Luke033, Chicago has seemingly replenished their prospect pool - for their forwards at least, which was already their strongest group on paper. With only 3 defensemen contracted for S93 and 5 forwards, Chicago is also in a position where they're lacking a complete roster. Without any trades to fill holes and free agency seemingly not going their way so far, they're left to play the waiting game and see what limited opportunities are left. Grade: B- D.C. Dragons - @FrostBeard A team coming off of a Continental Cup win simply can't be criticized, right? WRONG, according to members of the VHL peanut gallery. GM John FrostBeard invited the wrath of the public when he made a curious draft day trade with Moscow, acquiring 19th overall from Moscow in exchange for their S94 DCD 1st round pick. What was he thinking?? Was there collusion?? Does Euron Leonidas have nude pics of GMs around the league??? Speculation was rampant, but DC quickly put concerns to rest with the selection of goalie Herald Benson @Benson at 19th overall during the draft. D.C. sorely needs a goalie prospect for the future with Henry Tucker @NSG facing retirement, and they entered the draft knowing they couldn't risk missing out in another goalie rich draft. D.C. otherwise is bringing back most, if not all of their cup winning roster, setting the stage for another strong season for the Dragons. With Brash Candicoot @TrinityMonk (name of the draft candidate??) and potential future backup goalie Connor Hellebuyck @HockeyFan4Life joining the organization via the draft as well, the Dragons are comfortable with their prospect pool as they look to expand upon their current success. Grade: A- (gave Moscow another 1st so it drops from an A ) Los Angeles Stars - @InstantRockstar S90: "Simply put, the Stars are stuck in the mud." We can probably keep that leading sentence for LA as they enter an era without any of their top players. LA decided to take the route of Chicago back in the late 70's and attempt to compete all the way through the retirement of their top stars including Art Vandelay @Gustav and Todd Cooke @KRZY. Now they're in a spot with minimal roster players, a shallow prospect pool, but a deceent collection of future draft picks from trading away Eric Queefson @twists, Sunglasses Joyo @JetsGoalie101 and Larry Abass Jr @RileyL. This draft, LA decided to take the best players they could get their hands on at each pick - as their position need was everything. WWumbo @Fire Tortorella, Taylor Swift @lilchrist, Connor Simard @Alex99 and Marc-Andre Fleury @ElementStyx9 won't move the needle for LA anytime soon, but some may turn out to be solid foundation pieces in LA's rags to riches rebuild. LA's biggest worry is meeting minimum roster requirements, which is probably the first time a VHL team has had that issue in recent memory. They've got a long road to success ahead, and this offseason just didn't really move the needle for them. There's still time to get roster compliant, but they sorely need young players to start some path out of the rebuild. Grade: F New York Americans - @STZ Another team with a new GM since my last offseason recap! NYA got an F for their roster management and sketchy draft picks last go around. This season though, NYA made just one trade with Malmo to acquire Jebediah Big Ol Doinks in Amish @hylands while trading down just a few picks in the 1st round of the draft. With their sole S93 selection at 11th overall, New York took Chris Reynolds Jr @Crstats23 who is quickly becoming very well known around the league for churning out extremely solid pension players while remaining very loyal to a franchise. Most of New York's roster stuck around, with Callum Gary Yannick Janser @Daniel Janser signing a long-term extension as well with the American team. Between Jasper Davis @Josh and FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY Analfist @STZ leading the forwards, a strong trio of young defensemen and the top rookie goalie from last season @rory, New York will certainly be considered one of the favorites to make a deep playoff run in the NA this season. Grade: A Seattle Bears - @Banackock Might be best to just skip over Seattle, otherwise I risk facing Bana's wrath regardless of what I say. But I'm a sucker for punishment so lets cover em anyways! Seattle entered the offseason with controversy, taking a mild lottery odds punishment from the VHL Commissioner's Office for illegal backup goalie management. That punishment ended up with Seattle losing out on the 1st overall pick to Davos, but instead securing 2nd overall due to lottery rules on dropping spots. Gianfranco Del Rocco @Victor was an easy pick for Seattle who will hope that Victor can go back to his HoF player ways. Seattle was also active in the middle of the 1st round, trading a S94 WAR 1st round pick to Moscow along with pick 31 to Moscow in exchange for 10th overall and 34th overall, where they selected Nathan Ecker @Nathan_8 and Marek Nowaczyk @Chillybro. Add in Cole Stermer @Bazeus, Filip Zinek @FiZi and Enn Jinn @jhatty8, Seattle has added a lot of youth to their once depleted prospect pool. Outside of the draft though, Seattle was very involved in trades with Calgary, acquiring the aforementioned Sadie St. Louis and Oreo McFleury for cheap as they enter retirement. Add in Henry Eagles @Greg_Di who oddly passed over multiple FA offers from presumed cup contenders, and Seattle seems to be attempting a speedrun out of a rebuild. Whether their forward trio acquisitions will be enough to move the needle is yet to be seen, but Seattle still lacks a quality goalie starter and talent on defense. If Seattle crashes and burns this season, they may regret the picks spent to bail Calgary out of cap hell, as they didn't add any strong defense or goalie talent - instead choosing to add Ecker to an already young forward group. I'm mostly curious to see if Bana convinces someone on the roster to position swap to defense. Severyus Targaryen anyone? Grade: B Toronto Legion - @Moon Did Toronto even show up to the offseason? With just 2 picks in the S93 draft and 0 trades made, Toronto seemed to be content to sit tight and bring back their entire roster from last season. Toronto added defensemen Gul Dukat @MSouthworth and Phil Taylor @Legacy in the draft to replenish their very shallow defense room, but they still only have 2 defensemen on the roster right now. Toronto also has just 2.5 million in cap space, so it'll be extremely tough for them to add more than just a single cheap defenseman. Are they really this confident in their forwards and goaltending? And what moves will they make to get a defenseman, as half the league seems to be actively looking for cheap defensemen to fill their roster out with. Toronto will need to wake up and make a move, or risk just gambling away another season of Jimi Jaks @ke1vi and Mac Atlas @v.2 who are still hot commodities around the VHL trade market. Grade: D Vancouver Wolves - @Frank Despite being fairly deep into a rebuild, Vancouver surprisingly had just a single pick in the S93 Draft, and that was to select Annie Oaks @Noodle Enjoyer at 4th overall. Oaks was considered one of the top first gen prospects in the class, considered somewhat interchangeable with UghSike and Nathan Ecker for forwards. The Wolves got to take their pick of the litter and came out with a very strong forward pick to join the team in S94. Vancouver was surprisingly active with trades, moving 19th overall for Left Alone @okochastar from Moscow, and a small package of picks for veterans Sunglasses Joyo and Larry Abass Jr from LA's fire sale. Some might speculate if this is an attempt to have a rebound season and keep Liv Slater @Subject056 happy, as the rest of the roster still does not have a single player over 700 TPE. Could VAN be tanking their chances for a high draft pick next season with these moves? Or is Frank being shrewd and holding onto 3 veteran players who will likely fetch some interest at the deadline? However, I still believe that Slater still being on the roster after Analfist was traded last offseason is a criminal offense, and that Slater has effectively been put in VHL jail. While she had a fantastic individual season in S92, she's not getting any younger - and the trade offers that VAN once would have received for Slater are starting to dry up. Grade: B- See you later in the week for European Conference coverage! (2,237 words)

Honestly, we tried quite hard to get Jaks and/or Atlas last season before we landed Burns who was then flipped for Maple. Both indicated they wanted to be lifetime Legion players, so that all fell through. This deal also seems very steep based on where Ironhide is in his career, and with how many seasons Jaks has left. Add on losing our 3D who is mostly IA but very cost effective with a solid build, seems a little overkill imo. I liked the other trade with WAR though to upgrade defense, gave me some ideas and inspiration to maybe check some stuff out

Whole draft is in there! Your portion included

Whoops, fixed

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2086258885 @jacobcarson877 4 weeks for you, have fun! Thanks to @Alex, @samx, @CowboyinAmerica, @Victor, @Snussu, @badcolethetitan, @Moon, and @Starchychaff all for joining the stream as well and making it a fun draft stream!

Cheers @FrostBeard

Trade to handle condition from this trade:

Axle Gunner has been released by the Moscow Menace

League nerfs skaters when I make a skater, then goalies when I make a goalie. Rigged shit smh

S88 had Nordic under JB and Minion, can check the GM hiring post. S90 became Scandinavia because of the script Josh used being named "Scandinavia" or something like that. Guess the new commies just didn't use the right name of Nordic when announcing. Sims will still output them as Nordic regardless.

That was after I was WC commish. I still had perms as a commish in general to chat. You can see the game results when I was commish, they say Nordic.

Was not me, Nordic all the way.

Boy do I have news for you

sus

A podcast for @Thunder, shoutouts to anyone involved in the Moscow trades and VHFL/Super Coach since S72

Not a banger, denied

Hello all, Once again, we have come to a situation where we are hiring more GMs than we initially expected. First of all, congrats to @Tetricide who is leaving Miami to lead the Prague Phantoms in the VHL. We are also saying goodbye to @vincentlg2007 who is stepping down from Mississauga due to irl priorities. We appreciate both of them and their work in the role, along with the previously mentioned @hylands and @ShawnGlade. Before we get into hirings, we'd also like to note that @Ricer13 was brought in mid-season in S92 to step in as an interim GM for Saskatoon. He will be remaining with us as a permanent GM for S93, but will be changing teams based on our overall hirings. Without further ado, here are all of our S93 VHLM GM hires and team changes: Congrats to all our new GMs! Looking forward to working with you all to continue to improve the VHLM and the new player experience!