A Gustav 30 in 30, #21: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 3

[Gustav 6,468]

 

Had I managed to get a Cup the second time through the competitive cycle, I think all would have been forgiven and I would have gone down quite positively in VHL GM history as the one to break the curse. Instead, I'm writing the third article of this same variety.

 

 

Part 2 of this series-within-a-series took you through my second intentionally non-competitive period. I'd been a GM for nine seasons through S78. Over that time, I'd had some of the league's highest-TPE players on my roster, made some massive free agent signings, and swung and missed on a large handful of big-name trades. All that translated to a couple wild-card appearances and a second rebuild after I managed myself into some roster turnover through retirement that let the whole bottom of the roster fall out in the middle of what I thought was just a bit of a retool.

 

Regardless, Davos after S78 was an interesting case. I'd just brought my own player, Taro Tsujimoto, into his prime, I was doing OK in terms of draft capital, and prospects like Reylynn Reinhart had spent enough time in the organization that they were set to make a real impact in S79. What I also had coming up in S79, though, were a whole bunch of prospects--I don't want to say "no-name" and I don't want to dismiss them as "clickers," but the objective fact was that my system was loaded with more players than I had room for and that most of these players were around to hit the welfare button and check out for the rest of the week. I needed to get lots of room freed up on my roster if I wanted to compete, and this was a huge issue because we were a few seasons after the S75 draft. Players that objectively needed to be dismissed as clickers for a team to make it to the next level were a problem for everyone, and no one wanted who I had. I'd need to pay up big-time for my roster to have room.

 

Which was an opportunity I jumped on the second I saw that Helsinki was tanking.

 

 

PROBABLY THE BIGGEST TRADE I'VE EVER MADE (S79 PRESEASON):

 

 receives:

Declan Wolf

Griff Mackenzie

Raihan Heavems

S80 CGY 1st

S80 DAV 2nd

S80 DAV 4th

S81 DAV 2nd

 

 receives:

Patrik Laine

S80 HSK 4th

S81 HSK 4th

 

*condition added that would send ezechiele pierde enel to Helsinki if making it up to the VHL

 

 

I'm not sure how much it comes across to anyone who wasn't around at the time that this was a HUGE trade. If it happened today, it might puzzle some people--all that draft capital for a player with two seasons left whose activity had dropped off a little? Why would I do that? Consider that no other team was willing to help me solve my problems. Also consider that if I didn't jump at the chance to empty out my prospect pool, someone else was right around the corner. On top of that, @Laine was a solid player and there wasn't really anyone else selling. If any other team, at all, got in before me and worked out a deal to either buy Laine or to send low-earning prospects to the Titans, Davos would have been completely locked in to the lower tier of the league for S78 and possibly beyond that. I justified it a tiny bit more on my end by reasoning that clearing out as many picks as I was would serve to keep my prospect pool on the emptier end in the future, which might actually be a good thing. Nonetheless, I remember spending a very long time handling all the specifics of this with @Rayzor_7--I'm sure I gave up quite a bit, but it was not a trade I regretted at all. At a time when other teams still had to deal with overcrowded farm systems and had a hard time buying players, creating really terrible opportunities for team mobility, I'd managed to swing Davos around the corner and into being competitive on paper, with a 6-4-2 roster and a prospect situation I wasn't worried about.

 

On to the rest:

 

OTHER NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S79:

 

Preseason:

S80 DAV 3rd traded to Calgary for rights to Gunnar Odinsson

S80 DAV 1st traded to Seattle for S81 SEA 4th and Marshall James Frostbeard

Poopy Peepants drafted 4th overall

Jakub Brozik drafted 18th overall

 

In-Season:

Jakub Brozik, S81 DAV 1st, and S81 DAV 3rd traded to Toronto for S81 TOR 4th and Addison McLaren

 

 

And we were serious about competing! Lots of the offseason was spent on trying to figure out defense, and I thought I'd shoot my shot on @BOOM. He was taking his player to free agency immediately after his rookie contract was up, and as a max-earning player entering his prime, he was worth a ton to whoever ended up signing him. It was pretty clear that free agency was his priority from the start (Odinsson would go to Malmo where he immediately put up a run of a few historic seasons), but we had a good talk and I could have made a great move for cheap--you just never know. After that fell through, though, I still needed a spot. I had two first-round picks in S81, and one of them went off to Seattle. Thankfully, I got a return I was happy with in @FrostBeard, who formed the second half of a top pairing with Reinhart and gave me who I needed on the back end.

 

The last big-name player I ever drafted came in S79, too. @JardyB10 was inactive when I joined the VHL and was always a member whose name I heard come up in one story or another. So, when he came back and all the old members were super happy, and I had a great time getting to know him as he max-earned his way through the VHLM, Poopy Peepants ended up high up on my draft board. He was a pass-first build, but still solid defensively and I figured I was getting a good addition to my locker room on top of someone who would cover the ice well off the stat sheet (maybe I should have learned my lesson from building Garcia).

 

It became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that we were still lacking in forward power. In a deal that was probably an overpayment, I (more or less) gave up a first-round pick for @tcookie's Addison McLaren. Like Laine, his activity had dipped down a bit by the time he ended up on Davos, but I did have someone with a decent amount of TPE and almost half a career left. I felt a little bad about this one because I gave away my other first-round pick in S81--I had S81 draftee @Doomsday strongly hint that he wanted to play for me and up until that point did intend to follow through on that--but moves needed to be made to win.

 

And after all was said and done in S79, Davos was back in the playoffs! We got past Prague in the wild-card round, too--I believe the first time I'd ever won any sort of playoff series in the VHL. Our next round would be a taller order, as Malmo was top in the conference, and that proved to be the end of our campaign in six games. Still, despite losing and despite forking over lots of our assets to other teams, I was very happy with how things went. We had taken care of our super pressing issues before the season and had watched that pay off during it. Plus, we had star players young enough to stick with us for a while and newer draftees who were set to be our next generation.

 

Sound familiar?

 

 

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S80:

 

Preseason:

Miles Johnson traded to DC for S82 DCD 3rd

S82 DAV 1st traded to Seattle for Isabella Campbell

 

 

Me, and trading first-round picks for aging players--name a better combo. I'm not completely sure why I always found myself in these situations, but I'll say that GMs aren't typically willing to let go of players with lots of time left and there's a bit of a sweet spot where a player still has a couple seasons and will be a real short-term addition, but has a GM who is usually looking a step ahead and has replacements lined up. The key to long-term success is to be able to properly cycle those players in and out, and that's a big part of the reason why GMs like @Banackock usually tend to have lots of high picks from GMs like me. In any case, I moved another first-rounder for Bana's own player.

 

And Davos looked GOOD on paper. We were right up against the cap (necessitating our sell of Johnson in a cap dump), and most of our roster had only gotten better. I remember scrolling through the predictions before this season and seeing lots and lots of Davos. Taro was even a pick for lots of awards. We underperformed a bit--making the wild-card round for a repeat matchup against Prague--but making it into the playoffs was an accomplishment that we knew not to take for granted.

 

This time, though, Prague got the best of us in the wild-card round. This was a disappointment, to be sure. But things weren't over yet--I had most of the team returning (and still doing pretty well) in S81.

 

 

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S81:

 

---

(basically)

 

 

Because I had most of the team returning, and still doing pretty well, S81 had a highly uneventful offseason. Laine retired, and that was about it. We still had a good roster and had our eyes set on success. This was something that would come to us in the regular season, and we had our best time in it yet! I managed to take Davos to fourth in the conference for the third season in a row, still good enough for a wild-card spot. This time, we had a matchup that wasn't against Prague, as fifth place went to Warsaw. The Predators knocked us out in four games.

 

I'd taken the Dynamo to the playoffs three seasons in a row, and it looked like the writing was on the wall again, and yet again more quickly than most would expect. I had Campbell retiring and three players--Tsujimoto, UnGuri, and McLaren--going into their last seasons. It's possible that I could end up trying to squeeze one last playoff run out of S82, but why bother when I already had no draft assets? It was going to be a long rebuild if I entered it in S82, but it was going to be an even longer one in S83.

 

Plus, I was starting to not care anymore. Davos would need time and energy spent on them that I just didn't have. So, I left--and I'll get into that whole thing some other time.

 

 

It was frustrating to try season in and season out and watch my team continue to perform mediocre at best. And there are reasons for that that I'll get into in other articles. There are other things, though, that were my fault. I mentioned earlier on in this article that I was very prone to giving away draft resources for players near the end of their careers, and it's not all that much of a stretch to imagine that giving up 8-season-long assets for 2-season-long ones will lead to shorter competitive windows if you do so very often. I think I was driven quite strongly by a desire to make Davos good NOW, and that I always felt bad sitting around watching my young and promising players build up their careers on teams that I didn't think were quite ready to support them. I still look at most trades I made and understand their reasoning. I still put myself in the place of looking at my roster, imagining where the holes were, and realizing that I took steps to fill them--and that for the most part, it worked just fine, on paper, at the immediate time that I made the deal.

 

But deals that look good don't always work out, and that's why I need three whole articles to describe one thing: How I Messed Up Davos.

 

 

 

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

#10: This Old House

#11: Go Directly to Jail

#12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball

#13: How I Messed Up Davos

#14: Ello Gov'nor

#15: Weewoo

#16: Jolly Kranchers

#17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2

#18: I've Been Everywhere, Man

#19: The Sun Also Rises

#20: Ripple In Still Water

 

[Gustav 6,468]

Back-claiming a week 2 on this for last week because I'm stupid