A Look at a Couple of the Interesting Trade Sagas of the Off-Season

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Jack The Ripper

 

This off-season has seen a lot of players traded twice, but only one player was traded three times this offseason and that was defenseman Jack The Ripper. Jack is set to make their debut in the VHL this season having spent two post-VHL Draft seasons each in the VHLM and the VHLE, but despite that they’ve been on more VHL teams this offseason than most players will play on in their entire career. Entering the off-season, Jack looked set to play for the Los Angeles Stars team that drafted them 30^th overall back in Season 84 having accepted a one season contract extension to keep them on the roster for Season 88 (which is a key point we’ll be addressing later). However, Los Angeles decided to part ways with Jack just nine days after signing the extension and the defenseman was moved to the Malmo Nighthawks in exchange for the 47^th overall pick in the Season 88 Draft (which was used on Perry Winkle, a player who, while starting their career very promisingly, hasn’t updated in a month and a half).

 

Meanwhile, Warsaw were looking to find one more defenseman that they could fit within their budget to start Season 88 and decided that Jack The Ripper would fit the bill for them. This led to Malmo trading Jack four days after acquiring them to Warsaw but in the process gained a pick higher than they gave up to acquire Jack, sending The Ripper and their Season 90 fourth round selection in exchange for a Season 90 second round selection. However, this is the point where the extension that Jack The Ripper signed at the start of the off-season with Los Angeles becomes relevant, as while Jack The Ripper’s TPA count would have usually seen them slotted in the $1.75 million bracket (with the new rule that players playing their first season in the VHL will always be under the Rookie contract brackets), the offer that Los Angeles gave to Jack was $2.5 million and Warsaw, who presumably traded for The Ripper just looking at their TPA, only had $2 million left to spend on new players, meaning trading for Jack The Ripper put them $500K over the salary cap. This meant that Warsaw had to trade a player to get back under the salary cap and that player was once again Jack The Ripper, with Warsaw having to add a Season 89 second round selection to Jack in order to exchange them with Helsinki for Doug Britton, a fellow Season 84 draftee of similar capabilities.

 

Ultimately the biggest winners of this trade saga were Malmo and Helsinki, as Malmo were able to move up a round in the draft while only technically giving up a 4^th rounder and Helsinki were able to add a fifth second round selection to their Season 89 Draft pick collection for just a small TPE drop-off. There’s not really a loser in this trade as everyone ultimately wound up fixing one of the issues they were trying to fix, although the two other teams may have hoped they could have either gotten more or given up less in their trades than they did. While Los Angeles did trade an active VHL player for a pick that got them a player that likely will not make the VHL based on current activity, they had to make a trade to get under the cap and this achieved that. In the same vein, while Warsaw giving up two second round selections in this process would probably have to be considered an overpayment compared to what other similar/better players were going for this off-season, they entered this situation looking for a depth defenseman and they ultimately got one in Doug Britton who is under contract with the team for the next two seasons.

 

The Eleven Asset Trade Between Malmo and Prague

 

There aren’t many trades in VHL history that have seen as many assets traded between teams as the trade the Malmo Nighthawks and the Prague Phantoms made early on in the off-season, a trade which saw 6 players and 5 picks moved to different teams. The trade looked like this:

 

 

To break down where the picks were in the draft, Prague essentially traded up one pick in the first round (#6 to #5) but subsequently traded down a couple of picks in the second round (#28->30) along with giving Malmo the #37 pick in the draft. It’s also worth pointing out that one of the reasons why there are so many players being traded to Malmo in this trade. At this point, there was no way that Prague could keep all of these players around as they were already struggling for cap space before this trade and all of the players Malmo acquired bar Kotkakoivu were set to enter Free Agency. In addition, Kotkakoivu (who is entering their final season in the league) was in a similar predicament to Jack The Ripper as they were signed to a contract that was $1.5 million more expensive than the salary bracket they belonged to (although unlike Jack, this contract was signed a season in advance), likely making them a less attractive option for a team like Prague who were running thin on cap space.  It would also be fair to say that, while this first round had a lot of talented players, there was an indication that the top five players in this draft class were particularly sought-after, so moving up one pick to get to number five is more significant than it looks purely by the numbers.

 

Where things get interesting though is after the picks used in this draft have taken place. With the fifth overall pick that Prague acquired in this trade, they selected the highest TPE player in this draft class Jacob Stone. Now this would ordinarily be the best choice available as who wouldn’t want the highest TPE player in the class right? But with Prague, this caused some complications as Stone only just made it into the 401-500 TPE bracket being exactly 401 TPE at the financial cut-off, which moved Stone from a $1.5 million contract to a $1.75 million contract. That extra $250K made a big difference for Prague as they only had $1.5 million of cap space available to sign Stone (a figure the Prague GM believed would be enough to sign Stone at the point of drafting them) and thus Prague had to make a trade to get back under the cap, which they did by essentially undoing part of this 11 asset trade, with Jacob Stone going to Malmo and Moritz Stauffer (the player who was selected with the sixth overall pick that Prague sent to Malmo) going to Prague.

 

These weren’t the only assets that were acquired in this trade that would go on to move elsewhere though as Dabnad Shaw was traded to Los Angeles for the #26 pick in the Season 88 Draft, which Prague later traded along with the #32 overall pick to acquire the #22 pick from London, which Prague used to acquire goalie Olivier Gauthier. While the trade for Gauthier makes sense given Gauthier has a much higher TPE ceiling than the players selected at #26 (Dalton Canders II) and #32 (Brad Marchand), I do wonder if Prague could have just traded Dabnad Shaw on their own for the pick that acquired Gauthier as Shaw would have been affordable for London and would have been a good replacement for Branden Skuin who hasn’t visited the site since December.

 

The final asset that Prague acquired from Malmo was also traded mid-draft, with the #30 pick being traded alongside a Season 89 Prague third so that Prague could move up to #29 to select BjorkaBjorn BjornaBjorkson, a high risk pick given that the member behind the player JardyB10 has given every indication to suggest they will stay in the VHLE for their entire career, but if for whatever reason Jardy decides to abandon that plan or maybe even accidentally goes over 400 TPE with successful off-season PTs, it could potentially pay off big time.

 

All in all, Malmo definitely came out of this trade looking good. While it’s a little sad to see long-time Nighthawks player Shaw move on from the franchise, they got a very good return and managed to not only move up in the second round, but technically keeping their pick in the first round as well to get the best prospect in the draft in Jacob Stone along with three solid young players in McLaughlin, Torbjorn and Karppinen. As for Prague, like Warsaw in the previous saga, it’s difficult to look at this set of trades and not wonder if they could have approached this trade and the other subsequent trades in a different way that could have benefitted them more. It’s good for them that they got the assets that they clearly wanted in the second round in Gauthier and BjornaBjorkson even with the risks attached, but I think it would be fair to say they could have either given up less to get to a point where they could select them or received more for the assets that they did give up.

 

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Review:

Great article! Enjoyed the presentation and the content. I have been quite busy so have not been able to follow all the trades this season and this article really summed up one of the bigger trades this season. Before this article I didn't even know an 11 asset trade happened haha!  Well done and can't really comment on what to improve as it was all solid. 10/10!

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