Looking Back, Oslo Had A Lot Of Bad Luck This Season

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While I had Aackckqz Ky on the Storm roster and it would have been nice for him to win a Founders Cup with him since I've never won that trophy, when the Oslo Storm and the Las Vegas Aces played each other in the Semi-Finals this season, there was only one team that I wanted to win and that was my Las Vegas Aces. But, while I don't condone people holding up the process of the league for any reason, I look back on this season that the Storm had and you have to say, they had very little go their way. 

 

1) Lyle Smallwood

 

While they were missing Lyle Smallwood for the first few games of the season (or at least they were supposed to, he was added in error), the idea was that they were supposed to be getting them back for the remainder of Season 55. However, as Smallwood had been offered a $4M contract by the Express, he was not allowed to be sent back down (I believe that contract was offered without knowledge that this would be the case). I think in some ways this call-up hurts the most as while one of his call-ups went to the playoffs, Smallwood was stuck on a team who was actively rebuilding.

 

2) Peter Quill

 

Having been drafted fifth overall, Oslo had to have taken Quill with the hope that he would help lead the Storm to Founders Cup success in Season 55. Unfortunately a day after the draft, they would find out that would not be the case as the team that he was drafted by (Davos Dynamo) informed the Oslo GM that he would be called up to help with the team's playoff push. This isn't anyone's fault really, (Storm would have been under the usual impression that they'd get the player the entire season and Davos did end up getting helped by Quill in the unlikely Quarter-Final win over Stockholm) and the way Oslo personnel reacted to the call-up was poor (I had actually originally set to title this "I feel slighty bad for Oslo", but remembering this outburst left me no choice but to change my choice of words).

 

3) Should That Call-Up Even Have Happened?

 

Having a look-back at other situations, maybe Davos were too late in their attempts to call up Quill and as a result should have been kept on the Storm? While the main rulebook does not hold any mention of a deadline for call-ups (which I remembered looking to at the time as League Financier), there is another set of call-up/send down rules that are mentioned here and, for those who don't want to click a link, there is an interesting segment that differs from the main rulebook:

 

Quote

No call-ups or send-downs are allowed between trade deadline and the end of playoffs. A player can be called up for the playoffs once their VHLM team is eliminated or sent down once their VHL team is eliminated.

 

Now the key point here is that Quill was sent down on July 7th, whereas the trade deadline was July 5th. Using those rules, Quill would not have been allowed to have been called up. I had a check around for the most recent mid-season call-up that would use those rules (which was Robert Jelen send-down where the rule was enforced) and the announcements page for any potential changes to the call-up rule since the last use of the rule (there were none that I could see), so perhaps this should not have stood. Why was it not spotted? Well, the big issue is that we have two very different sets of rules, and the more fleshed out of the two is not present in the main rule-book (Will actually points out that he planned on amending these, but I guess that never happened). Really there should be no reason for anyone to check that waiver rules thread if they've already checked the main rulebook. In addition, the person who pointed out the last post-deadline call-up was Will, who was going through a period of absence at the time of the Quill call-up. There's a few other things that didn't help the matter (No actual trades meant that people probably forgot when the trade deadline even was and the thread itself turned into an attack/defense of United States healthcare, because of course it did) but yeah, maybe this shouldn't have happened. 

 

4) Mats Johnsson

 

Johnsson was signed to a deal by the Oslo Storm with only a few games remaining in the season, but didn't actually play his first VHLM game till Game 7 of the Semi-Finals. At the same time, Mike Szatkowski III (who joined the Las Vegas Aces seven hours after Johnsson joined the Storm) managed to play three regular season games and all of the playoffs. How did this happen? It...really isn't clear to be honest. As a rule, VHLM General Managers are supposed to PM Higgins of any changes to their roster, and every time that I've done that this season it went through. All we know about this situation is that a PM was sent to Higgins at some point telling him Johnsson had signed (wasn't made clear when), but didn't receive one from Frank, the VHLM Commissionner. I don't know whether that means Higgins needs to receive the PM from both GM and VHLM commissioner to put the transaction through in the sim, but if that's the case, that's real stupid. Funnily enough, when Johnsson was finally added to the game, his attributes were a lot higher than they should have been (he was added with the most recent update, despite the fact that no-one else had received an update in the sim since July 11), but even that wasn't enough to put the Aces away. 

 

For Threencarnac

Edited July 30, 2017 by YEAH!stlemania

[Higgins 3,618]

Saskatoon v Oslo would have been a pretty epic final.