FrostBeard's Chronicles "Calgary and Bushito"

[FrostBeard 1,994]

FrostBeard's Chronicles "Calgary and Bushito"
 

Well then, we haven't seen this in a few weeks, and now that my previous FrostBeard's Chronicles article is buried deep down in Thunderdome I can come here and speak openly about my first experience as a member of Calgary Wranglers back in S67. It was truly a wild time and I am not gonna sit here and sugarcoat it but there was a lot of bad blood between members and teams, we had no real rules and some GMs were just generally lazy and didn't want to do anything.

 

When I moved from S66 Founder's Cup-winning Philadelphia Reapers to Calgary Wranglers, I have to say, I was extremely excited. I was hyped up by my VHLM GM Blade who's player Brick Wahl was a goaltender for the Wranglers and by other members who were active in the Philly locker room and said that Calgary is going to be an amazing place. When I first joined the team and I was greeted by all these amazing people I felt lucky and honored to be among so many league-wide known community members.  It however didn't take long before my GM Bushito or Bush as I will refer to him from now on was quite distant from me. We never had a conversation, he always was cold and really only communicated with BladeMaiden and Dil at the time. It was fine but I was used to actually having chats and discussions with GMs rather than them being someone who you see rarely on. I don't think anyone really thought that Calgary had the greatest chances at the cup that season, we had a lot of younger players and older players that were not really that great anymore. Surely, we had rising stars like Wahl and Starload but it felt like we needed to get ourselves ready and spend time developing our players. 

 

I wanted to be a member of Calgary because I knew people there and they knew me and it felt natural but after joining the team didn't feel like home. It felt like I was thrown into a situation where I was the third wheel, discussion in Discord LR general chat made me realize that there were different opinions surfacing and that one of the strongest opinions was that Calgary had to improve and become a true contender instantly. And so it began. There were two sides of the story - I would call it Dil side and the Blade side. Dil side was the one who really wanted to compete right now and felt like we didn't have the time to wait for my player John Frostbeard and some other prospects to grow. Blade's side was a lot more favorable - she wanted to make Calgary home to players and she really strived to make Calgary a place where everyone is accepted and people are not traded just because we need to win right now.

 

Discussions about this topic ranged from talking about the fact that Calgary won't play John Frostbeard and other prospects in playoffs because the format 6-4-1 didn't permit other, younger and weaker players to have a role to blowing up the team and selling off some of the really older players and just building the new Wranglers around Wahl, Fish, and Starload. These discussions never really led to anything and to me, a newcomer to the team it felt weird, I felt left out and I thought that Bush wasn't even interested in anything that was discussed. 

 

The trade

 

It was quite a shock to receive a message, without a real warning just a fact that I am getting traded. It is interesting that I didn't even take it as bad as I thought I would. I understood that I am just an asset, nothing else and if an asset is not going to be ready to perform when the team needs it to, the asset is getting moved. What did however make no sense was that I actually didn't even get any warning that it would happen, GM Bush told me that I am going to be a part of the future for Calgary and yet I am getting moved? 

 

After a lot of thinking, my first idea was that maybe they want to get a truly huge, superstar player on their team like Matt Thompson. I thought that Calgary might have another deal locking in and that I was just gonna be traded to free some cap space. Boom! The trade is announced and to me, it honestly didn't make any sense for Calgary. Calgary decided to part ways with John Frostbeard, a young and perspective player, Maxim Kovalchuk, a future Hall-of-Famer and an important piece in their defensive core and a third-round pick to get their hands on Joel Ylonen, a player that was well known around the league for underperforming with high potential. At first, I looked at it as a desperate move by incompetent GM, and yet the more I looked I understood that it didn't make any sense to me at all. Why would you trade away a significant part of your future (Consider that my player, John Frostbeard was picked as 12th Overall in S66 VHL Draft) and a star player that was still able to help your team dominate? It made and still makes no sense. 

 

This situation also created tension between players and GMs. There was a great rift that formed between Bush and some part of his team as this trade was seen as a pander to Dil's wishes. It also created a huge rift between GM Bush and GM Bana. GM Bana was looked at as a traitor and a terrible GM and even my role in Calgary LR was cur short and I got kicked out due to the fact that I was labeled a Bana spy. It made no sense to me and still doesn't due to the fact that I was willing to be a member of Calgary Wranglers for all my career, I wanted to be there and contribute to the team. GM saw it differently. The fact that there was no real communication between me and my GM made it even worse an it felt like my huge anticipation for VHL was just beaten into the ground by someone who didn't care about anyone else except himself.

 

To me, this just shows that Bushito was a weak GM and a GM that wouldn't hold his job right now for longer than a week. It was an experience that opened my eyes to different GMs, their approaches. It allowed me to understand that Calgary wasn't really GMed, it was run as a rivalry between Dil and Blade where Bush was trying to make peace with both.

And that is going to be it, thanks to anyone who actually read it, and cheers! I will catch with my next FrostBeard's Chronicles in 2 weeks!

[Victor 10,661]

Never understood why some players were so loyal to him throughout all his stints which generally always ended as trainwrecks with no leadership.

[OrbitingDeath 3,002]

37 minutes ago, Victor said:

Never understood why some players were so loyal to him throughout all his stints which generally always ended as trainwrecks with no leadership.

Probably because he promises stuff and people give him the benefit of the doubt and fall for it.

[Gooningitup 1,290]

Honestly, as someone who never played for Bushito. This is a cool look into abit of the window that was his tenure as GM. Well i have no doubt he was a good guy it always shocked me how long he maintained being a general manager. That being said this article checks all the boxes i look for pictures, and titles. Easy to read.

 

10/10

[FrostBeard 1,994]

Claiming for Week 2

[Ricer13 2,665]

Good thing Calgary has had a string of Goodluck with GMs since then. I joined at the tail end of the Bush era. Dark times.