diamond_ace

would be willing to go with something like Tampere if they were to be considered the successor to Kolari, and carry over the history etc

because i liked them when they had a team

Dorog Deathbringers (no, this has nothing to do with my FM21 save with Dorog...)

I'll support you with Madrid if you support me with Kolari

@Domg5 group is complete

SAKHALIN OBLAST HYPE

D Viktor Alexei Kamenov @Doomsday also @Toast still then the group will be complete when these two picks are made

Skipping @Toast. @Shane Laz can go, and his clock starts now. Toast can pick whenever - fortunately this is the final pick, so it's not possible for him to be DQ'd and he basically has however long, provided he does eventually pick. It's just that the others can also go now.

This is not a joke, but no VHL level teams will need to be added, only E level teams, and they'll all be in Europe and former teams we used to have here. I'm from Pittsburgh, so if this opened up a possibility for that, I'd be with you on it.

KOLARI KOLARI KOLARI KOLARI KOLARI KOLARI KOLARI KOLARI

G Grekkark Gyrfalcon @Hoopydog

D Linus Zetterstrom @Doomsday

Jim Bob is an addition, we did not have him last season

Like many other recent VHLM GM openings, there were a lot of really strong candidates (seriously, anyone on the shortlist could easily fill the role just fine, and even a few outside of the shortlist could as well). If you did not get this, it's likely not a matter of you necessarily doing something wrong (and please keep that in mind) but more a matter of only having a single spot to give and far more than a single qualified candidate. In this particular case, the guy we went with is (drum roll please)

F Thomas Landry @Hoopydog

F Jim Bob @Doomsday

@thadthrasherat least you recognize your beard is subpar, as it's not my beard

It remains @Shane Laz' pick, for another 4 hours or so.

Rosters so far post Doomsday F Groovy Dood F Robin Winter F Ola Vikingstad D Kasper Kankkunen D Spencer Elsby G Artem Tretiak Me F Onde Sandstrom F Jim Bob F Thomas Landry D Linus Zetterstrom D Viktor Alexei Kamenov G Grekkark Gyrfalcon Hoopydog F Taro Tsujimoto F SS Hornet F Valtteri Vaakanainen D Latrell Mitchell D Roque Davis G Stone Wolski Shane Laz F Timothy Brown F Dakota Lamb F The Terrible Trivium D Alex Letang D Matty Socks G Jean Pierre Camus Toast F Andrew Su F Venus Thightrap F Muffbeav D Erik Killinger D Zeedayno Chara G Ajay Krishna Advantage F Christian Mingle F Luke Thornton F Rhynex Entertainment D Tyler Walker D Chris Hylands G Doug Dimmadome

What's your most recent FM save? Good to see someone else plays FM. I have one going right now with Dorog of the Hungarian second tier, got them promoted, currently on pace to make the Europa Conference League

This is fantastic and deep and just the sort of thought experiment I enjoy, both to read about and to sometimes have for myself. Honestly feel like I've learned something about you as a member.

F - Onde Sandstrom @Hoopydog

This year was no different than most in that I feel like my first rounder was pretty well telegraphed ahead of time. Most people who knew any insider draft info at all knew that barring one of a handful of guys inexplicably falling, Nathan Powers @JB123 was coming to Prague at 9th. TPE-wise he would arguably have been projected more toward the back end of the first round, rather than almost exactly in the middle, but honestly I have a bit of a type. The job of VHLM Commissioner gives me a leg up on guys like Powers, coming in and almost immediately getting the Ottawa AGM job (not to mention a Pro Am GM job, even though that's not directly affiliated with the league). It shows me he's already integrating into the community in a way that some with a higher pure TPE count might or might not be, and it makes him in my eyes a particularly certain bet to become good. In the second, I'll admit to a bit more uncertainty. I actually didn't know a whole lot about Otto Numminen @Otto Numminen before the draft, but work was dead enough that I started looking a little down the list of draftees at around 13-14th pick at who was likely to still be around at that stage, to see if I could spot anyone that seemed under the radar, or at least more valuable than where their TPE put them. I had about 10 tabs open just among draftee portal pages, but Numminen's stood out to me over several others, plus as one of the few members in every VHLM discord, I can just take a quick look and check on them to see if a guy is around, which is a great tool to have on draft night. Basically at that point barring any fallers (and Miklavs went by then as expected, despite his fall earlier) Numminen was going to be the pick. By the early 3rd, there were a lot of teams looking to trade out of the draft, in some cases due to this draft largely being considered less deep and a preference to maybe take a shot at a different season's pick, and in other cases simply a matter of the GM wanting to sleep or do other things at that stage. One of the guys I'd had a tab open for from earlier, Alexander Rivers @DrummerBoy15, was still around and @Domg5 was hyping him up some in the draft strats area of Prague discord as well. When you have a guy that both the GM and the AGM want, and the trade up value is decent, it's kind of a no brainer. We sent a later season 3rd to Riga and picked up Rivers at this stage which has so far looked like a fantastic decision. The later 3rd was a bit more of a matter of taking anyone who was left and had updated recently, and by the time my pick came up (despite adding and removing different tabs as things went on) I was down to just three tabs with players I wanted. One of these was Deke Rike @JCV and he looked a little better than the other two (Bjorn Ceaf had missed a few later weeks, and Ron Gorgonzola had an unusual combo of press conference and practice facility but no welfare) so we went with Rike, and honestly much like the other two, he's looking like the right decision. Normally these draft articles go longer than this, but when I sat down to start this I had 2 hours before the draft, and I've been pinged so many times in so many channels (with pre draft prep stuff mostly) that I haven't been able to put nearly that amount of time into actually writing the article. It's at 582 before this last explanation paragraph, so it's good enough for now, and I'll do up one for FA next week which should cover me for multiple weeks.