This was supposed to be the Vegas Awards post, but then this happened! <insert surprised face thumbnail>

[Shindigs 1,772]

So yeah, I was going to make this the Awards post. But I saw that one Juan Ceson really wanted a crack at taking care of the Awards this season. So I'll hold off on that until he either does/doesn't actually do that. I'm not holding my breath, but if he wants to do captain stuff. I figured I may as well give him the opportunity. That being said even if he does it I'd say it's Vegas odds in favor of him giving every award to himself (yes, even the goalie ones) anyways.

 

So that leaves me with this glorious placeholder MS in its stead. I guess I'll just talk about my 1st season as a VHLM GM.

 

Getting started early

My job as Vegas GM actually started before I got the job. I approached it the same way I do most things, but excessive amounts of preparation even before I know it's going to happen. While I was still just applying for the gig I made a full draft board and since I had the scout role in the JST from being Bratislava AGM at the time I also fully scouted the JST. But again, I didn't know if I would get it. So I also fully scouted the VHLE draft in case I kept my job in Bratislava. So that was a bit of work. Though the overlap of the two drafts was relatively considerable. So it was more like scouting 1½ draft than 2, really.

 

Interview Time

As soon as I got the gig it was on to scouting interviews. I never really did them as part of the job in Bratislava, and besides Frosty's scouting interviews are known for being very to the point. So I decided to try out doing DM interviews, since I got one of those from @McWolf  in my own VHL draft season and it is the only draft interview I can still remember after the fact. So clearly to me doing it that way seemed like the way to go about it. Even though it's A LOT more work. Especially if you handle it like a dynamic interview, not just like another medium for your copy paste interview.

 

1½ Aussies Drafts

The prep took a lot of time because of all that, but it meant I felt quite confident going into my first draft that I'd be handling myself. I prepped graphics in PS that I could just drop a non-extracted render into and change some text in to have draft graphics ready for the players I drafted. I also managed to draft almost exactly who I planned for, there were some players I hoped to get, but didn't expect to, @samx being the first big one. I'd assumed she'd go sooner than our pick at 10th. But when she still had Velociraptor Greg on the board at that point. It was a done deal, especially since she had asked if I could draft her if I got Vegas. Even before the interviews for the GM job happened.

 

I obviously went off the board a bit at 4th by picking @dogwoodmaple. But I knew that him being like 30-50 something TPE behind the front of the pack didn't really matter. Because between his earn rate and the long off-season he'd be close to capped. I also knew he was a top prospect over in the SBA and his draft interview was the best one I've had so far. Knowing that Ledge who picked after me at 5th had him on his team the season before, waiting any longer to pick him was just too much of a risk. I had to have him on Vegas. The only player in the draft I would have even considered picking over him is Thad, and Thad opted up to the E. Interestingly enough ending up playing for the team I just finished AGMing for in Bratislava. So both teams with my top two players from the draft on them won Cups this season (Bratislava + Vegas). So that's kind of funny, and something I hadn't considered until I wrote this paragraph.

 

Then there was @Xflexz who was on my draft board to get picked right where I picked him since after I had my interview with him. He has a very healthy approach to the league and earning and knows what he wants his player to be. I really respect that and figured he'd be a rock on the blue line. Since I like running 1 Defensive + 1 Offensive Dman on each pairing if possible. It turned out that after the hybrid change those defensive rocks are really darn good too. No small part in our cup run that we had 2 of the best defensive Dmen in the league on our team. When drafting him I never would have dreamed to end up having him for two season. But based on a presser answer it was obvious that was his plan. So we talked it over in DMs and I just told him to make sure the VHL/E GMs knew and didn't draft him thinking he'd play up this season, which he did.

 

That left a final 4th round pick to sort out our 1 missing Center, except it turned out we actually needed a winger instead. Since one of our players decided to build his winger as a center. So our 4th round pick @MatiasMa was asked if he minded building as a winger for this season. Which he didn't, and boy did he have a season playing on that wing. If anyone wanted proof that SC>PA gap doesn't really matter at the VHLM level. James Kagelberg was here to provide just that. With 66PA and 66SC he was consistently among the top 3-5 shooters in the league and ended up with the most goals in the entire league. Cause as it turns out, just having A LOT of SC with no gap at low TPE yields as many shots as having a small gap with slightly less SC. Which is the trade-off you make in the VHLM TPA range. Again, I was not expecting a second season out of James either. But had he not missed updating last week (which he did) he still would have been 199 TPE before the cutoff, just barely making it. And when I asked him about his plans for next season he had already declared that we wanted to play down for another season.

 

Faceoff God

From the draft forward there really isn't too much to say. I've been doing a lot of work posting stat breakdowns after every sim in the LR. Part of that is just that it's what I use to make my line decisions anyways, but in Bratislava I had been posting it in the LR as well to some effect. So I expanded on the idea in the Vegas LR, and it's been a pretty good thing to help the players see how they are doing. We also had some amazing waivers join us throughout the season, mostly recreates and affiliate people who either had Vegas connections, or I knew from other leagues. But also a promising 1st gen in @Futch. Who ended up being absolutely massive for us in the playoffs where he lead our 3rd line to being arguably the most dominant 3rd line in the league. It was actually our most lethal line offensively for the entire playoffs, if normalized for ice time. With William Futch glued to 1st place in FO% they just made so much happen, while also being very good defensively.

 

Playoff Stuff

Then playoffs came around, other than shuffling our PP a bit (and then making it virtually the same it had been to end the regular season) I didn't really need to change anything. Other than some rough sim luck against Ottawa in the first sim, we just kinda did our thing. Sure we got outshot badly by SDM most games, but that had been a thing all season. Us taking too many penalties, them getting a lot of shots as a result. Then us just having the edge in goal to kill said penalties and win 5v5. Can't say I was expecting to win a cup my first season. I knew we had a good team but with the hybrid changes and everything I just had no idea what to expect.

 

Heading into S84

Now with the playoffs over we've had to let most our players go due to either graduating the M or being waivers. Which is always a sad time. But even in that regard we fared a lot better than I had expected. Taking a roster of 3F/2D/1G into next season, unless someone goes IA over the off-season. I was expecting that number to be 0F/1D/1G to be honest. So i guess Vegas will be a lot better than I had anticipated next season. Considering the somewhat shallow draft class, that's a bit of a relief. Because if the draft class was stacked we may end up with issues giving players suitable play with with us having players stay down. That doesn't really look like it will be an issue though, as our 1C slot is open. As well as most our 2nd line and the offensive Defenseman slot on both our top 2 pairings. So there's a lot of room for new blood to make their mark. Which is how it should be.

 

Well, turns out I had a lot more to say than I anticipated for this placeholder. Since I'm just a bit north of 1500 words, so if so inclined I could multi-claim this bad boy for some time. But knowing myself, I probably won't.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Shindigs

[Lemorse7 1,040]

you sure you don't have a YouTube Chanel 

[Shindigs 1,772]

9 minutes ago, Lemorse7 said:

you sure you don't have a YouTube Chanel 

<insert red arrow> I have no idea what you're talking about. But I do have this one weird trick that doctors hate, which would help me find out what you're talking about.

[nurx 917]

3 hours ago, Shindigs said:

Knowing that Ledge who picked after me at 5th had him on his team the season before, waiting any longer to pick him was just too much of a risk

yeah he would of been our pick in that spot we actually talked about trading up to get him.

[Shindigs 1,772]

3 minutes ago, nurx said:

yeah he would of been our pick in that spot we actually talked about trading up to get him.

Guess my read was correct then.