Houston Bulls TDL Talk

[AJW 2,200]

With the Trade Deadline approaching tonight at 3am EST, Houston is preparing for the swarm of new players of recreates and new members to the league from now until playoffs. Houston has been a top 4 team all season and are building for a cup. Coming into S84, Houston experienced a GM change with Arce being promoted to the VHLE and myself being hired. I was left with 5 solid draft picks but no players on my roster. I went into the draft wanting to pick up 3 forwards and 2 defence, hoping I could sign a waiver goalie throughout the season. The plan went as expected and here is what the Bulls roster looked like after the draft:

 

F - Daniel Weaver

F - Todd Cooke

F - Alex Ovechkin II

D - Jani Karppinen

D - Izaak Bobs

 

With a very small roster, I had a good feeling that this would be a rebuild year to be ready and actually competitive for the next season. After talking with the team and getting to know everyone, I kind of did not want to wait to be competitive, I wanted the team to be strong now. I looked at my future season draft picks and saw that I had all of them, so why not make some trades to plump the team a bit. Here are the results of the four trades I made so far:

 

IN	OUT
F - Damian Steele	S85 HOU 1st
D - Lloyd Braun	S85 HOU 2nd
D - Phil Strasmore	S86 HOU 1st
S85 PHI 3rd	S86 HOU 2nd
S85 SDM 3rd	S86 HOU 3rd
S84 SDM 4th	S86 HOU 4th
S86 PHI 3rd	S86 HOU 7th

 

 

So by taking a look at these trades, you can sort of see what I am doing. I wanted Strasmore and Braun from San Diego to fill out and complete my defensive depth since getting defence seemed like a struggle this season. Both players are recreates and the members behind these players know how to build. Then I traded for Damian Steele from Miami to give my forwards another top skater since we only had Weaver and Cooke as capped TPE forwards. I did end up trading a lot of picks, including both my 1sts and 2nds for the next two seasons. But for the future I am not too worried since in S85 I have four 3rd round picks and 2 4th round picks. I believe those six picks can produce pretty decent players, and maybe even players that play for more than one season.

 

Now for waiver signings. Waiver signings in the VHLM is the easiest way to buff up your team. Fortunately this season, Houston leads the league in waiver signings with 7. 7 new players can make a huge improvement in your team's performance throughout the season. I have clearly seen improvements since the start of our season with 5 players on the roster, to now 15 players on our roster. It has been amazing meeting all the new people who signed and teaching them/motivating them to earn the most TPE they can. Not every waiver signing is a steal, but some of the players I signed have been amazing at earning so far. 

 

So now lets compare what the roster looked like at the beginning of the season, to what it looks like now:

 

Pre - Season	Present
F - Daniel Weaver	F - Daniel Weaver
F - Todd Cooke	F - Todd Cooke
F - Alex Ovechkin II	F - Alex Ovechkin II
D - Izaak Bobs	F - Damian Steele
D - Jani Karppinen	F - Brayden Albrecht
	F - Johnny Kalamazoo
	F - So-jun Lim
	F - Cash Aleksic
	D - Izaak Bobs
	D - Jani Karppinen
	D - Phil Strasmore
	D - Lloyd Braun
	D - Isamu Knievel
	D - Joel Rogers
	G - B.N.T.P. Guy

 

 

I would say the present roster looks A LOT better than before. We now have a 8-6-1 roster with a good amount of depth. Here is the average TPA per position:

 

Forwards: 132

Defence: 160

Goalie: 142

 

Having a team TPA average of about 144 is pretty crazy to me, especially with 15 players. While we lack a bit of depth in forwards (only 3/8 forwards being above that average TPA), we make up for it with our defence who you could argue are the best top 6 on a team in the whole league. Our goalie is also a max earner and should be close to the cap by the first playoff sim. I am really proud of what this team has accomplished so far heading into trade deadline. We are 3rd in the league and my goal is to catch up to Vegas if we can. Houston will be gunning for some more forwards in the next couple of days, and hopefully we can build a great roster for playoffs. Why not go for the cup right? The league seems to only have 4 good competitors with Philadelphia maybe being an exception at 5th. So let's do this.