Phantom Times

[diamond_ace 3,106]

Coming into the S77 VHL Draft, Prague only had one single pick, 43rd overall in the 3rd round, so it was always going to get a bit interesting in terms of who we could manage to get and who we couldn't. It was perhaps a bit ironic that this draft in particular was the one we barely had any picks in, given that there were so many Prague alumni with their recreates in it. That Dude @Cornholio, Druss Deathwalker @animal74, Brussels Sprout @Liberty_Cabbage, and Gary Tarantino @Garrett, were all guys who we greatly enjoyed having on the team and would have definitely preferred to bring back, had circumstances gone in a direction as to allow it, but ultimately I'm still happy with the trade that netted us Grekkark Gyrfalcon @Sharkstrong even if it took away the opportunities on bringing back some of these guys. It was pretty interesting though seeing the mid first round to the early second full of members of the Phamily, and I hope these guys all enjoy their new locations. Honestly, given the way a few of them fell, I'd thrown the idea around in our strategy area of potentially trading into the draft to pick one up, but never ended up pulling the trigger - mostly because work was particularly busy and I couldn't guarantee being able to take the time away to fully negotiate a deal with anyone, but still. All of these guys are 100% welcome in Prague at any time and they know that. That's simply the way the Phamily works - for that matter, Animal is still doing the team awards, despite no longer being on the team, and it's probably one of my favorite little personal touches that Prague offers despite being done by a now former member.

A few hours before draft night, I took a look through all the VHLM Discords (the perks of being one of the guys running the thing after all) to see what I could find in terms of activity from the type of players who were likely to be around at 43. At first, I did have one specific target, Baldur Poulsen @GlowyGoat who at that stage would have been more of a locker room presence type of player than one that would necessarily be a huge help for us on the ice. Still, Glowy is a great person to have around, and so I wanted to try to make that happen. Unfortunately, I'd gotten word from my AGM Dominic Gobeil @Domg5 that he speculated Malmo at 40 might be looking that way, and my source ended up being correct on that front.

 

I found a few players just down the draft list that I'd also seen in their respective discords, and added Raphael Sonier @raphaelsonier9815 and Raihan Heavems @RstortonYT in particular to my list (and had I not gone with the guy I did, these two were the next targets) but there was one message in particular that intrigued me. "Appreciate the heads up, but sticking to the basics is just temporary until I'm not stressed with school and also learn the league in more detail. I would definitely do more in the future!" This was found in the Houston discord, and it came from a guy that perhaps on paper would have been maybe half a round later, Nicholas Mariani @Mistxh J. A guy who is active already, but who plans to increase that as time goes on, and just needs to learn the league? I was immediately sold. After all, where better for a member to learn the league than on the team with both VHLM commissioners? I'm confident Mariani will significantly outperform his 43rd overall selection. In fact, while he was somewhere in the early to mid 50s TPE-wise on draft night, just over the last few days he's climbed to 47th.

 

Shortly thereafter, it was time to turn our attention to free agency. We had Jungkok @tfong that was set to test the market, although we were considered to have a fair chance of retaining him as a fairly contending team. Ultimately, it did not work out that way, and while it's unfortunate to see him go, it's hard for a guy looking to compete for cups to turn down an offer from the team that most recently won it, which is where Jungkok ended up. This left us with 7 million in cap and the rest of the market to play with. Obviously, an attempt was made to go after Venus Thightrap @BladeMaiden as well - similarly to the people mentioned in the first paragraph, Blade and any of her players will always be welcome in Prague. This time, it wasn't to be - my work schedule for the Saturday in which FA opened got changed to 7 PM-3 AM, so I didn't wake up until 6 PM, by which time she'd already signed with Helsinki (I'd talked briefly with her the day before though, when FA talks were open but signings were not). This narrowed our focus onto two players, Xavier LeFlamant @BarzalGoat and Brian Strong Jr @Wheaties.

 

Both guys I added to the discord, let them talk with the team for a bit, created a role for FA with basically the same perms as the Players role, and let the guys get down to the business of swaying them to our side. The plan was to offer on both players, and if we got one, to then put in an inactive claim on Hugh Jass which combined would take up most of our cap space. While it seemed stressful at the time, and I could never be 100% sure of where either guy would go until they signed, I'm ultimately not sure how close it was in the end for either guy. Barzy took to our discord like he was meant to be there the whole time, immediately meshing with the guys as though he was a long lost member of the Phamily. Given we could match the few things he had a preference for, he agreed to sign fairly early for us, which solidified the plans a bit and most importantly, it removed the possibility of a complete strikeout. Given we'd lost Jungkok, getting LeFlamant was a major relief in my mind.

 

Then the focus turned to Strong. He'd already been talking with us a little during the talking period, but went out the first night FA was open and wasn't around quite as much as Barzy initially. Still, Wheaties is a guy I go back some way with, having been on his Miami Neptune in EFL for a while with one of my old players (not my shiny new auto 12s, but a guy I had to do work for and ultimately didn't most of the time) plus was just generally aware of him anyway and got along well. There's also a few other guys on the team (the aforementioned Shark, as well as @Doomsday) that know Wheaties and could make it a place of familiarity. At this point, FA largely became a series of if-then statements: IF Strong : THEN Done - IF Not Strong : THEN IA claim on Jass. It never came down to that though, as Strong also signed on with us and while admittedly landing both does fill up the forwards a bit, it still makes us a much stronger team than we were, which is saying a lot because we were already in a pretty good spot. Definitely happy to bring Wheaties on board and the even nicer part is he's still a pretty young player as a season 74 draftee, so potentially he fits in well with the whole extended window, both pre and post the Landry timeline.

 

This whole thing turns our arguably weakest area from last season, centers, into a position of strength. We now have four players with a developed FO attribute as both FAs have done so (Strong may want to bump his up a little, as he's at 70 compared to Bouchard's 75, LeFlamant's 77, and Landry's 85) and can actually move people about the lines a bit more freely and look for matchups rather than having the center availability largely dictate things for us. Also, and this appears to be somewhat of a footnote because it didn't require any separate transactional work over the last few days, but it's certainly much more important than just the brief mention at the end: we are set to see the debut of hard working winger Braxton Hunter @dshervill. He's given everything he's had to the Saskatoon Wild program in the VHLM, and it's time for him to take a step up the pipeline and crack the opening day roster. He deserves every bit of this chance and will surely be a key part of the Phantoms going forward. It's especially impressive that a guy who was in somewhat of the dregs of his draft, at 72 overall, has kept such consistent work over the seasons and now finds himself on the Phantoms roster proper.

 

1504 words

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by diamond_ace

[Dom 1,442]

39 minutes ago, diamond_ace said:

Unfortunately, I'd gotten word from my AGM Dominic Gobeil @Domg5 that he speculated Malmo at 40 might be looking that way, and my source ended up being correct on that front.

@HylandsI read your mind

[Baozi 1,638]

DA is good guy, I'd play for him. Ya'll should like the guy. Nice guy to have in the LR.

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

....Prague Prague Prague?

[diamond_ace 3,106]

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