Claimed:Ottawa Looks to Improve in S37

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Ottawa Looks to Improve in Season Thirty-Seven

 

 

          After the Bratislava Watchmen defeated the Yukon Rush 4-2 in the Season Thirty-Six Founder’s Cup, the Ottawa Lynx could no longer call themselves champions of the VHLM. All of the glory and accolades that come with the territory now mean nothing; all the praise from fans and the press forgotten.  The Lynx’s Season Thirty-Seven roster will not feature a player that played a minute in Ottawa in Season Thirty-Five. General Manager Jim Gow can no longer point to the success in Season Thirty-Five as a reason or contributing factor for failure. The future of the Lynx starts this season.

 

http://youtu.be/MEuUXLFbV9A

Pergher doing his best Michael Fucking Leighton impression at the end of Season Thirty-Six

 

          Season Thirty-Six was an interesting year in Ottawa. Going into the season, fans and hockey pundits alike were predicting the Lynx to be neck and neck with the Turku Outlaws for worst team in the league. However, the waiver wire acquisitions of Konstantin Azhishchenkov, Jack Ryan, Travis Boychuk, and Dimothenis Vlasis, as well as the late season signing of goaltender Magalhães Pergher, propelled the Lynx into a playoff race. After battling with the Saskatoon Wild all season for third place in the North American Conference, it all came down to the last four games of the season. With the Wild up by one point, the Lynx had some ground to make up, but their end of season schedule was easier than Saskatoon’s. Nevertheless, a disappointing effort from Pergher in all four games saw the Lynx lose out the rest of the season and miss the playoffs for the first time under the reign of Gow. This year, KJA, Boychuk, Vlasis, and Ryan are all eligible to be drafted in the VHLM and will more than likely be gone by the time the sixteenth pick rolls around. Going forward, the team must be built from scratch.

 

Lynx General Manager Jim Gow with his son, Robin, at the S35 VHLM Dispersal Draft

 

          Similar to when Jim took over the team in S33, Ottawa holds only two second round picks (the sixteenth and nineteenth overall) in the Season Thirty-Seven VHLM Dispersal Draft. With the large wave of recruits that entered the VHLM in Season Thirty-Six and a relatively strong re-create class, there should be two long-term projects at this point in the draft who could possibly turn out to be this team’s version of Matteo Gallo (young promising player traded for multiple picks) or Brennan McQueen, a pick from the second half of the second round who progressed to be captain of the Season Thirty-Five team and one of the VHLM’s best. Players who fall to the second round usually do so for a reason, whether it’s a low amount of practice hours, spotty activity, or just being a lesser known member.  Being able to find a gem outside of the first round is part of what separates the average general managers from the good general managers. If Jim wants to confirm to the rest of the league that he is an upper-echelon VHLM general manager, he’ll have to prove that he can once again raise a team from nothing into something.

[eaglesfan036 4,602]

Content: 3/3 - Looks like you have come full circle during you time in Ottawa, as you are back to circumstances similar to how you started. Every VHLM team goes through cycles of being a contender and rebuilding, and I'm sure after a short time of rebuilding Ottawa will be right back in the thick of things. Also, was it necessary to show that painful Leighton goal?

 

Grammar: 2/2 - Couldn't find anything.

 

Appearance: 1/1 - Looks good.

 

Overall: 6/6 - Give me extra points for grading this.

 

Final: 6/6

[Smarch 3,153]

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