There must always be a diamond_ace in Calgary

[diamond_ace 3,112]

Evan R. Lawson, former CFO of Hank Med, must now add one more former to his title: former LW/C of the Calgary Wranglers. Traded to the Toronto Legion, he will be leaving the franchise he's called home for 5 seasons and that his agent has called home for 30 plus. It's a bittersweet trade, and the bitter side is the more immediately obvious, as Calgary is home (I've never personally been in Calgary but between GMing and player, I've become pretty synonymous with the franchise). From the first draft in S20, where @JardyB10 traded down from the 2nd pick to the 4th pick to get Lars Intranquilo despite the fact that there were 2 players largely considered to be far and away the best in the class (Japinder Singh and Kevyn Hesje, one of which worked out significantly better than the other - plus it meant I got to troll @Sandro for a while about taking Cam Merrill at 3 when I ended my career with 3x the TPE - he needed a forward so it fit the need and looked much more logical at the time than it did in hindsight, but it was fun to bring up). Then 6 seasons later, Intranquilo was nearing the end and I'd proven myself GMing Ottawa (another thing I'm generally known for) so Jardy promoted me to GMing Calgary, which went until S41, seeing Clark Marcellin go down with the ship and Martin Brookside on Cologne for one season at the end after I'd handed the franchise off. Then the mediocre Kerkko Hyvarinen, despite me not being a GM player anymore, was drafted to Calgary by @eaglesfan036because it was the pick that made the most sense at the time. I actually made a 590 after that draft called Coming Home, talking about how happy I was to be back to "my" team, and I'm pretty sure I linked the youtube video to that I'm Coming Home song in there too. For a while, Hyvarinen was on Toronto and I believe was on one of the Threepeat teams, but he'd started off back in Calgary. Then I left for a while while Vaclav Hrdina was in the minors, and Hrdina only played one season in the bigs with Hrdina, with @STZ in New York where we had an interesting experiment that Hrdina would be on the team, but not in the lines, so that when the sim might have been inclined to put in NYA C it would put in Hrdina instead (Hrdina at that point was essentially a throwaway player, and I only kept him to see if I was truly back before wasting the beginning of Lawson). Because of that experiment and how little icetime Hrdina got because of it, I briefly led the league in P/20 and I think I ended up top 10, not bothering to go back and check it. So when Lawson was in the draft, it was only natural that @Bushito drafted me back home.

The sweet part is a little more complex, but also shorter to type - if Calgary is home, then I want the best thing that can happen to Calgary to be the thing that happens. Given the direction the team is heading, the best thing for Calgary is if I'm not on it. As tempting as it might have been, I wasn't going to @PensFan101/Vasteras my way into insisting I had to stay on Calgary, because it wasn't best for Calgary. I'm on Toronto now. I hope Toronto knows (and I'm certain @Devise does) that even when I'm on Toronto I'll always be with Calgary in some capacity, even if it's just a support role, but with Calgary out of the playoff picture that essentially means the same thing as loyalty to Toronto at the moment. So to end my tagfest, half of whom aren't even here anymore:

 

[diamond_ace 3,112]

Also, there's a possible trivia question hidden in here: what was the only diamond_ace player to have never been on Calgary?

Answer: Vaclav Hrdina. In 10 seasons or so, assuming my next guy is on Calgary at some point or another (and I already have a pretty good idea what I'm doing with him, coming soon to a world of ruin near you) when this 590 is buried somewhere, we could use that for trivia points.