A Gustav 30 in 30, #10: This Old House

[Gustav 6,469]

 

I could have been DC's GM if it weren't for you meddling kids--who knows what would have happened?

 

 

I also would have had way, way less to say about my time in the VHLM if I ended up being promoted in S68 with the addition of a couple new teams. The BoG toyed with the idea, but eventually they'd decided that they hated me some others were better fits at the time. But I was pretty darn good, after all...

 

Spoiler

 

 

At least, according to most people...

 

Most people are also classy enough not to bully me on my birthday.

 

...and my time was going to come eventually.

 

Cue @ShawnGlade fucking up.

 

I mostly joke because I think I would have been moved up sometime not far from S70 anyway. At one point, I was the one @Advantage wanted to take over Malmo eventually, and had the league known that he'd be giving up the team right after S70, they definitely would have waited a little bit on hiring me and done that instead. I almost could have flushed Malmo's hopes and dreams down the toilet too--could you imagine? At least two franchises should be glad I was unlucky.

 

But anyway, back to what I said earlier. When I joined the league, I knew Shawn as the builder of a solid player and a passionate GM in Davos who made a lot of moves that people questioned. Davos got made fun of a lot, even when they were good on paper. So did Shawn, by extension. Even when the team was good on paper, they just couldn't seem to piece it together. Which, by itself, wasn't a negative reflection on his management. With that being said, it certainly meant that when there was an actual shortcoming, the league picked up on it and ran with it.

 

After pinging Shawn, I hope I can keep it clear that I like him a lot while also fairly saying that I don't blame league leadership for considering it a red flag when he missed a couple drafts in a row without notice. Which is essentially all that presented a serious issue to the league. Things happen, and sometimes things matter a little more than this website--so when that runs to enough of an extent that the league has to BPA your picks and your players start leaving in free agency (future HoFer Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen was a big loss), it's enough for the league to also consider that maybe your team could use a bigger loser with more time and energy to devote.

 

I came across the BoG thread on the matter a couple seasons later when they let me in, and it actually started out as a discussion about (deservedly) removing Bushito as Calgary's GM after the Wranglers were functionally run by Dil and/or Blade for a few seasons on end. But S70's draft came and went with that thread up, and with Davos discourse becoming very public afterward, the topic quickly shifted. To be honest, things went into "who should we hire" pretty soon after that, and it was @Rin who pretty soon after that managed to avoid a lot of debate and lists and whatnot by recommending me specifically for the job. Really, the only bump in the road was Advantage bringing up that maybe I could run Malmo at some point--which he walked back later on saying that he wasn't sure what his plans were yet. So it was settled--I'd known myself that I was the heir to the Nighthawks and was a little bit disappointed to find out that it wouldn't be working out that way, but I've also mentioned before that S70 wasn't very happening in Mississauga and I was really excited when Beav contacted me to offer the big-league job. It was also cool to watch my then-both-former-and-future AGM @Berocka, who had just been hired in Halifax and made a questionable trade there, be moved over to run the Hounds because the personal connection we'd both built with the franchise was strong enough to warrant it.

 

With all the hype around me moving up, I was also a bit conflicted because I really didn't want it to happen the way it did. I'd seen Shawn's resignation post (the league asked him to quit instead of announcing it officially, but it was no secret) and subsequent discussion thread, and really did feel a bit bad. I also wasn't really sure how to approach the situation from my end. Here was someone I really had no issue with, whose team I'd inherited and would have to work with, who was a rostered player on that team, and who also probably was not a fan of me in that moment. I did reach out and we talked briefly, but we mostly gave each other some space at the start.

 

Something that was really important to me was the buildup of team culture. Davos was not in any position to win games in S70, and I'd heard a lot about how the team's community needed work. I didn't really want to deal with figuring out what that meant or how true that was, so I almost immediately created a new team server altogether. I followed the same exact strategy I had in building a locker room in Mississauga (which was mostly a carryover from my first season in Houston), which was to try to focus discussion into publicly accessible channels as much as possible and try to create a mutually beneficial environment for the team and the rest of the community. With the Hounds, I'd never had the need to bring in people who weren't affiliated with the team (and there were some cases where people would join the team for this reason!), but with a gutted and mostly demoralized roster, and no alumni network in my newly-created server, I decided to invite a handful of people who had been particularly good to me up to that point. I especially remember people like @Doomsday, @GlowyGoat, @McWolf, and @Esso2264 at the start, some of which would stay active in that server through my entire tenure even if they never made it onto my roster. On the roster itself was...really not much. We had the ever-reliable @Ahma on defense, and right around the time I was hired was when @Brrbisbrr (one of the nicest people I've ever met on this website) decided to make a comeback. Samuel Ross was my first Davos goaler, and he faced the absolute barrage of pucks faithfully in S70.

 

As you might guess, the biggest event of S70 was my hiring. I won't act like we won much of anything (we finished last, of course). My GM tenure had gotten off to a rocky start. I could have just thrown lines together and checked out until I finally got to draft in S71. But I felt that it was worth putting the time and effort into making a team run, at least a little bit, and I felt that our server benefited from that. I was really proud of some of the ways I felt appreciated by my new team, and haven't quite forgotten this article that's over 4 years old at this point. 

 

My first year with Davos reinforced a lot of what I already knew--that running your VHL team like a VHLM team and actually trying to see that your players have a positive experience instead of zoning them out and doing your lines when you have to is something that pays off. I'd much rather have the record I did in S70, and know that my team had a good time getting there, than have no connection with them and win a bit more. And while it's unfortunate that I couldn't do both of those things at once, you'll see as I cover the rest of my GM tenure that I don't regret it.

 

 

Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience:

 

#1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name

#2: Can't We All Just Get Along?

#3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway?

#4: The House That I Built

#5: Can We Fix It?

#6: American Beauty

#7: The Kids Are Alright

#8: Dogs In A Pile

#9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

[Doomsday 4,143]

DAVID

[ShawnGlade 1,010]

7 hours ago, Gustav said:

Cue @ShawnGlade fucking up.

 

I mostly joke because I think I would have been moved up sometime not far from S70 anyway. At one point, I was the one @Advantage wanted to take over Malmo eventually, and had the league known that he'd be giving up the team right after S70, they definitely would have waited a little bit on hiring me and done that instead. I almost could have flushed Malmo's hopes and dreams down the toilet too--could you imagine? At least two franchises should be glad I was unlucky.

 

But anyway, back to what I said earlier. When I joined the league, I knew Shawn as the builder of a solid player and a passionate GM in Davos who made a lot of moves that people questioned. Davos got made fun of a lot, even when they were good on paper. So did Shawn, by extension. Even when the team was good on paper, they just couldn't seem to piece it together. Which, by itself, wasn't a negative reflection on his management. With that being said, it certainly meant that when there was an actual shortcoming, the league picked up on it and ran with it.

 

After pinging Shawn, I hope I can keep it clear that I like him a lot while also fairly saying that I don't blame league leadership for considering it a red flag when he missed a couple drafts in a row without notice. Which is essentially all that presented a serious issue to the league. Things happen, and sometimes things matter a little more than this website--so when that runs to enough of an extent that the league has to BPA your picks and your players start leaving in free agency (future HoFer Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen was a big loss), it's enough for the league to also consider that maybe your team could use a bigger loser with more time and energy to devote.

Oh phew, it had been a couple months since my Davos stint was mentioned, I was starting to get worried

 

Jokes aside, I will say I think both sides could've done better. The site has seen multiple users pour their hearts out in posts about how shitty it is to be the butt of a joke or have your entire existence being memed, and those users have gotten support.......except I was told to suck it up. Some other GMs who I worked alongside (who will remain nameless) were actually kinda dicks about it too. People can question my trades and whatnot, but truth is I did what I thought would be best.

 

Something I see people bring up a lot is that I traded my own player through Davos to contenders for personal gain. Without context, sure that seems to be the case. Except both times I traded for my own player, I gave up Davos assets because my player was the exact player Davos needed. People forget that in the mid-late seasons of my tenure, Davos was a playoff team, in fact if memory servers, we were one win away from a finals appearance at one point. Those teams were offense heavy with subpar defense, and my player was a top dman in the league at the time. Figured I'd trade for myself and BOTH stints he had with Davos sucked, so he was a deadline deal both times to recoupe something. Yes, my player went on to win a cup both times he was traded away, and honestly for that I'll just call it blind luck.

 

ANYWAYS, it was shitty to go through what I did, I didn't even wanna log on to the site or discord anymore. With the drafts, what had happened was I wasn't available to make the time for a draft one season and instead of trying to find a different time like we usually did when the league was smaller and had less schedules to work with, but I was pretty much told I was fucked and I had to be there. Well I was on vacation so didn't have a PC to sit there forever and make it a list, so I just typed something up on notes and sent it away, and put "BPA" at the bottom when my list ran out, which is what happened. Sure enough, the next season I couldn't make the live draft again, and was again told I was shit outta luck. So I figured, what the fuck ever who cares then, and no showed. I could've handled it better, but it was a not-so-secret that I was on the chopping block regardless of the draft, so I figured I just didn't care anymore. Not justifying what I did and ultimately it was wrong, but it's the truth.

 

I'm pretty much over it now. It was an overall shitty time in my life and I was happy to move on from something that brought me no value. I just can't get over how public everything became. Did my best to keep things private and behind doors, but everyone in the community knew what was happening because nobody really kept their mouth shut. It's pretty damn hard to do ANYTHING  when that kind of info is out there, but GMs like Bush can get away with being genuinely MIA for over a season. Just felt like every little thing that happened to me was some big story that had to go public

 

Anyways, rant over

 

EDIT: Yikes, I forgot about those threads I created. Oof, yeah I don't have much to say about those, those are pretty bad and cringey to read looking back

Edited May 1 by ShawnGlade

[Gustav 6,469]

2 hours ago, ShawnGlade said:

Oh phew, it had been a couple months since my Davos stint was mentioned, I was starting to get worried

 

Jokes aside, I will say I think both sides could've done better. The site has seen multiple users pour their hearts out in posts about how shitty it is to be the butt of a joke or have your entire existence being memed, and those users have gotten support.......except I was told to suck it up. Some other GMs who I worked alongside (who will remain nameless) were actually kinda dicks about it too. People can question my trades and whatnot, but truth is I did what I thought would be best.

 

Something I see people bring up a lot is that I traded my own player through Davos to contenders for personal gain. Without context, sure that seems to be the case. Except both times I traded for my own player, I gave up Davos assets because my player was the exact player Davos needed. People forget that in the mid-late seasons of my tenure, Davos was a playoff team, in fact if memory servers, we were one win away from a finals appearance at one point. Those teams were offense heavy with subpar defense, and my player was a top dman in the league at the time. Figured I'd trade for myself and BOTH stints he had with Davos sucked, so he was a deadline deal both times to recoupe something. Yes, my player went on to win a cup both times he was traded away, and honestly for that I'll just call it blind luck.

 

ANYWAYS, it was shitty to go through what I did, I didn't even wanna log on to the site or discord anymore. With the drafts, what had happened was I wasn't available to make the time for a draft one season and instead of trying to find a different time like we usually did when the league was smaller and had less schedules to work with, but I was pretty much told I was fucked and I had to be there. Well I was on vacation so didn't have a PC to sit there forever and make it a list, so I just typed something up on notes and sent it away, and put "BPA" at the bottom when my list ran out, which is what happened. Sure enough, the next season I couldn't make the live draft again, and was again told I was shit outta luck. So I figured, what the fuck ever who cares then, and no showed. I could've handled it better, but it was a not-so-secret that I was on the chopping block regardless of the draft, so I figured I just didn't care anymore. Not justifying what I did and ultimately it was wrong, but it's the truth.

 

I'm pretty much over it now. It was an overall shitty time in my life and I was happy to move on from something that brought me no value. I just can't get over how public everything became. Did my best to keep things private and behind doors, but everyone in the community knew what was happening because nobody really kept their mouth shut. It's pretty damn hard to do ANYTHING  when that kind of info is out there, but GMs like Bush can get away with being genuinely MIA for over a season. Just felt like every little thing that happened to me was some big story that had to go public

 

Anyways, rant over

 

EDIT: Yikes, I forgot about those threads I created. Oof, yeah I don't have much to say about those, those are pretty bad and cringey to read looking back

 

Oh, for sure. I think most of what I've written here so far can be read from the standpoint of "there are real people on the other end of the screen." That can be positive (as in, "you wouldn't believe the difference you can make it some people's lives here") or negative (as in, "stop being assholes to each other"), and I think you caught a lot of the negative. You're not the first person I've seen saying that a lot of what went down in the S60s did not make you want to stick around too closely, and I understand that.

 

I think that isn't something I picked up on as a new player, but I hope I didn't contribute to it too much. Looking back, it was definitely more normal to go after specific teams or people--not even to be mean, but just because that's how it was and that was how you could be seen as funny. I definitely think you had it worse than I did in this regard, but it did hurt to really try to make things work and then open Discord to find people talking about how I sucked as a GM.

 

It's also really hard to lose a negative label as a GM once you get it. I remember lots of people wanting to play for me at first, even wanting to sign with me in FA, and that's something that disappeared as I kept losing. Well, that's fine and people get to do whatever they want--but then isn't that another obstacle when no one wants to sign with you? That's just a practical aspect of it, too. It isn't fun to watch people not even take your moves seriously because "there he goes again" or whatever. I'm not convinced I'll ever want to GM again, and that's a big part of why.

[McWolf 3,116]

I'm still active on Davos, where are you now?

[ShawnGlade 1,010]

On 5/1/2024 at 5:42 PM, Gustav said:

 

Oh, for sure. I think most of what I've written here so far can be read from the standpoint of "there are real people on the other end of the screen." That can be positive (as in, "you wouldn't believe the difference you can make it some people's lives here") or negative (as in, "stop being assholes to each other"), and I think you caught a lot of the negative. You're not the first person I've seen saying that a lot of what went down in the S60s did not make you want to stick around too closely, and I understand that.

 

I think that isn't something I picked up on as a new player, but I hope I didn't contribute to it too much. Looking back, it was definitely more normal to go after specific teams or people--not even to be mean, but just because that's how it was and that was how you could be seen as funny. I definitely think you had it worse than I did in this regard, but it did hurt to really try to make things work and then open Discord to find people talking about how I sucked as a GM.

 

It's also really hard to lose a negative label as a GM once you get it. I remember lots of people wanting to play for me at first, even wanting to sign with me in FA, and that's something that disappeared as I kept losing. Well, that's fine and people get to do whatever they want--but then isn't that another obstacle when no one wants to sign with you? That's just a practical aspect of it, too. It isn't fun to watch people not even take your moves seriously because "there he goes again" or whatever. I'm not convinced I'll ever want to GM again, and that's a big part of why.

GMing is just so hard in the VHL because to be successful, you need to have a high reputation. Which, yeah that makes sense, but people like you and I may never have a successful GM stint again because of it. It is what it is, I've realized the league is more fun when I'm not in charge of something. Logging in multiple times a day and not paying attention to my own player is no fun. I'd be willing to take on another job on the site, but unlinkely GMing anytime soon

 

And no, you didn't contribute to my hatred of the site lol. I frankly didn't really know you when you took over for me, but every interaction since has been good