Claimed:3 Things I’m Watching Out for Heading into The Off-Season

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The Cleganes

 

A lot of focus this off-season will once again be on the big-name skaters such as Koponen, Unassisted, Velvet, Kohler and Hamilton that are re-entering free agency for the second consecutive season, but in my opinion, the two Free Agents that I believe will not only have the most impact for their new team but also the most impact on how Free Agency pans out as a whole are the Clegane brothers Greg and Sandro. They way that I see it, barring some ridiculous Free Agency or trade-coupery from the rebuilding teams, there are three teams with a good shot at either of the Cleganes in New York, Toronto and Riga, with the Express potentially as a fourth option if Victor’s recent notice of consideration has made them consider their initial rebuilding intentions.

 

All three teams with the best chances have very different situations going into the off-season. New York have a good amount of young and inexpensive talent like Maxwell, Ravenwing and Digital, but would need one of the Clegane’s to commit to signing with them early in the Free Agency period to convince other Free Agents that New York can potentially compete. Toronto are the one team in contention for a Clegane that has proven elite talent signed up in Molholt and Parechkin, but their current setup is set to be ravaged by regression, as even their youngest players currently on their roster are in their seventh season. Riga has some good players on their roster in Maximoff and Kopralkov, but they aren’t as cheap as New York’s current players, nor are they at the level of Molholt and Parechkin. What could ultimately end up being the deciding factor for the free agency period is not where the Clegane brothers go, but when they make it clear where they are going. People will remember last season that Greg Clegane didn’t decide which team he was joining in Free Agency until three days after the other elite free agents had already made their decision and, if the Clegane brothers were to wait a similar length this off-season, we could see the elite free agents again moving to the teams that have the guaranteed goalies.

 

Seattle Bears

 

One of the team’s that are looking to break out the pack in Season 52 are the Seattle Bears and they have some good pieces to build around with a solid goalie in Holik, a strong forward in Podarok and good young players with cheap contracts like Wolf and Petenis. What makes them particularly interesting to me though is the recent trade that saw them acquire the rights to both Phil Hamilton and Biggu Kyanon. Now don’t get me wrong here, both guys are great defensemen obviously and lots of teams would be interested in acquiring their services, I just don’t think signing the pair of them would be a smart decision for Seattle.

 

If they were to sign both players to new deals, it would remind me a lot of their failed S49 run where, despite acquiring Kyanon and Jeff Hamilton in Free Agency, they ended up switching to a rebuild halfway through the season because they were that far away from competing for the playoffs, let alone the Continental Cup. While that would have been a particularly difficult season for them regardless, as the S49 NA Conference was fierce, I think the main reason that they struggled that season was because they dedicated so much of their salary to their defensemen. With Kyanon, Hamilton, Mengsk and Nuck on their roster, the Bears were spending a total of $13.75M on defensemen. To use some historical facts as comparison, the most any Continental Cup winning team has spent on their defensemen since Season 24 (the earliest season I could gather this info from) was $10.75M (the Season 38 Dynamo) and the average amount spent on defensemen by cup winning teams from Season 24-present is $8.65M. If they were to sign Kyanon and Hamilton to new deals, their salaries combined with Rodriguez and Petenis would take the Bears defenseman spending for S52 to $14.25M, which if you combine that with the $4.5M they’ll be paying Holik in Season 52, would leave them with only $13.25M to spend on forwards (an average of $2.2M per forward in a six-forward setup).  Now if both players were to sign, then maybe the Bears have a plan in that regards, maybe Rodriguez would be OK to move to forward for example, but it’s certainly a situation that has my interest.  

 

Last Year’s FA Winners

 

Last season’s Free Agency period saw a couple of teams make some big free agency acquisitions that took them from fringe playoff teams to title contenders in the Calgary Wranglers and the Riga Reign. While both teams already had some solid assets already on their team, Calgary and Riga heavily relied on new blood to make them the contenders that they became with a huge chunk of their salary caps being devoted to players who came in through free agency (57% of Calgary’s total spending, 44% of Riga’s total spending). However, the big talking point outside of the quality of the players that these teams brought in is the length of the contracts that they signed, as all seven of the free agents that signed for Calgary or Riga are all set to once again return to Free Agency this off-season.  

 

Calgary’s situation is interesting in that they cannot retain all their players from last season even if they wanted to, as signing all their current players to extensions would take them to $36M, $4M over the cap. Riga don’t have the same problems, as resigning all their current players would only take them to $31.25M total spending, but that is only because one of their forwards (Kai Roberts, who would have been earning $2.5M) will not be playing next season after declaring his retirement midway through this season, but they have the added problem of not currently having a goalie under contract as Sandro Clegane is another player set to enter Free Agency. Another aspect that makes this interesting is that usually when a team that was competing the previous season loses or is potentially set to lose that number of players, teams will usually struggle to operate in the trade market as they’ve forfeited a lot of picks to other teams to acquire the assets that allowed them to compete. That will not be the case with either Calgary or Riga though as because of their successful Free Agency, they were able to build their teams without giving up their S53 first round selections, something that could prove very useful in the trade market. While I don’t expect Riga or Calgary to have quite the same success they had in the last Free Agency period, I think they will be able to still secure a couple of Free Agents each that will help them in their attempts to rebuild their team back to a competing level for Season 52.

[evrydayimbyfuglien 600]

Good article. To answer your question, no, I wouldn't want to move to forward. 

[Toast 887]

Riga has my goalie.

[Tagger 2,722]

13 minutes ago, Toast said:

Riga has my goalie.

Ah yes, my bad. It's weird cause if Riga wins the championship, I had a VHL.com article planned to talk about how it was thanks to their backup goalie, so people should draft Threencarnacion, but then I completely forgot about it here. Guess that happens when you submit an article at 1AM 

[Banackock 7,978]

A dman WOULD move to forward.  

[Victor 10,829]

Having achieved CLEGANEBOWL, I think the next logical step is all out domination on one team followed by a World Cup swansong.

 

Unless Riga wins, in which case I'll murder Jardy.

[Kesler 1,514]

Bigger question, will Cologne re-sign Saul Hackett?  

[Kendrick 4,741]

Claimed