The S61 draft so far. Part 2

[hedgehog337 3,480]

 

*talking about steals*

 

 

This is the second part of my article. Here, I'm going to review the second round of this draft. Plus one more player after that.

 

9. C - Mikhail Vega

TPE: 174

Member: @iRockstar

 

And we will start the second part with this bust. Although it might be debatable to call a second round draftee a bust. But then, there were a couple of much better players being drafted after him. So yea, he is a BUST! Rockstar started off with a solid activity and even held a VHLM GM position for some time. So the Legion management started to believe that we will finally see a relevant Rockstar's player since Teuvo Ruutu retired. And now let's name the trend of all his players after Ruutu:

 

1. starting off as a very active member;

2. suddenly going semi-active before the season ends;

3. completily going inactive.

 

Nothing has changed since and the same applies to Vega. Toronto really needed a good draft after having a failure in S60. It didn't happen mainly thanks to this player.

 

10. LW - Marvin Harding

TPE: 590

Member: @.sniffuM

 

Toronto was likely even more upset to see they missed on this player. But to be fair, too few members knew this is going to be the first successful Muffins' player in a while. He had the same issues as with Rockstar: starting off well, but going inactive before even the draft approaches. But unlike Vega, Marvin's importance to Quebec is far more significant. I would even call this a mini steal considering that we had two busts drafted before him. He is also a VHLM commish which is saying a lot. And even though his activity level dropped for a bit, he is in same boat as Malenko. Harding is going to be a good player regardless until his sixth or seventh season.

 

11. D - Alvaro Jokinen

TPE: 444

Member: @Ahma

 

This is being considered as the mistake on Beaviss part despite Alvaro having 444 TPE so far. Why? I'm not sure if Quebec's GM knew about that before, but I'm sure he will know now: Ahma is a Davos for life member. It's pretty much impossible to convince him to play for other team. The proof of this is the S55 off-season when he came fresh of the VHL championship that he won with Helsinki. But you know what? He went to FA and signed with Davos, of course. So you can win 7 championships in a row with an inactive Ahma and then he comes back, realizes he was a part of the seven-peat and still sign with Davos in his last season. So it was obvious that Beav will have to trade Alvaro in the same off-season. The price was fair, a second round pick for this player. Which makes it even more fair, Ahma is still claiming welfare and being a good defenceman for Davos and that S62 second was a valuable one as they could get an active member with that pick.

 

12. D - Jacob Smith

TPE: 312

Member: @jacobaa19

 

So Davos just missed Jokinen because Quebec's GM decided to take a risk. But his Davos colleague came out from the off-season as even more happier than he would've been. Not only he managed to get Jokinen back to the Dynamo, he also drafted another promising D in Jacob Smith. This member didn't start off with a bang. But as time progressed, Jacob could pick it up and even become the Las Vegas GM. It was still kind of a risk to take a first gen member back in the day so his draft position wasn't very high. Anyways. Smith could make into the Davos squad in S62 and he is still playing there. I believe he will start in the first pair with the previous pick, Jokinen. Unfortunately, this member likely won't see it as he decided to step down from this league due to his commitement to school. He was claiming welfare at time, but it looks like it is pretty much over for him. Still, Smith could be a reliable second pair defenceman for some time before he regresses.

 

14. D - Chat

TPE: 90, retired

Member: @eaglesfan036

 

We could consider this as the first bad pick by Seattle. But to be fair, there was only one player left that became a solid steal, but we'll talk about him later. Let's go back to Chat. This was yet another try to get back into the activity by Eaglesfan as the league has decided to bring back the chat. However, this was yet another case of a veteran member creating a member and quickly fizzling out. The Bears management was hoping this will become a steal in the process, but it ended up with another retirement and admiting that this player didn't accomplish much. As much as Eagles' next player, King Gow.

 

15. D - Jesper Stomberg

TPE: 199, retired

Member: @Tim

 

Before even the first round ended I considered this player as the TOP 8 worthy draftee. And I was kinda in shambles when I figured it out nobody noticed him. It really was weird to see multiple teams missing this player, but then I got an explanation. It appeared that Jesper wasn't even added into the draft pool which made GM's forget about this player. Except for me and Toronto GM (Dollar at that moment). But my pick was higher and I picked this player with the hope he will become a real steal of this draft. I'm not sure why, but these hopes turned into a disappointment - not even the S61 was done and Tim already went inactive shortly after hitting 199 TPE. Then he was traded to Calgary for their cap purposes and even won the championship. This is the last achievement for this player: Tim returned in S63 and obviously retired Jesper as he had too little potential.

 

16. D - Lew Bronstein

TPE: 274

Member: @troy

 

Toronto really had a shit luck after their three-peat. But I can't say about drafting this player. Yes, he still has relatively low ammount of TPE. But what's more important, Troy a.k.a. Stevo actually is still claiming TPE. So we can consider him as a steal too. Not that much of a steal as the next guy, but Toronto is happy to have this guy as he is slowly becoming a solid second pair defenceman and maybe he will have some decent seasons before the regression is kicking off. Stevo is one of the three-peat members as he spent all three seasons with that team when this happened. So I guess that's another reason why he is still updating.

 

 

So this was the second round of the S61 draft. And I would wrap it up...or keep my promise and talk about another player who actually became the steal of the draft although there were not a lot of chances of that happening. This player is none other than:

 

 

22. C - Mikka Pajari

TPE: 359

Member: @Devise

 

I like to draft in late rounds in search of some steals, but this gotta be one of the best steals I've ever drafted alongside with Slava Aleksei and Paolo Nano. In fact, Mikka is already one of the best third or even lower round steals ever since Marcus Hurley. The reasoning of him falling this far is the same as Stromberg's - he was another draftee that wasn't added into the draftee pool. And the fact he created a player almost two months prior to this draft and never updated him (despite still doing some PT's in the process) made my life even easier as I knew about the existence if Pajari. So my plan worked very well: I was drafting some other players in hopes nobody knows about him and this is exactly what happened. But there was still no guarantee Devise would make a comeback as he was very semi-active at that time. But he did and I got a reliable player and the member of the S63 championship team. Also, the current second line player. Also also, Devise is now a Toronto GM. Lately, we are witnessing very deep drafts by VHL standarts and some third rounders are already making into the roster. In fact, five out of the eight S63 third round draftees are going to play in the big league this season. But drafting Pajari so late in not so deep S61 draft is still a special moment in my GM'ing career.

 

 

So this is the wrap of my article. Some of you (of course, nobody) will ask a question why I didn't do the S57 draft recap as I did it for the S56 last season. Well, there would still be time left after I will spend all three our four weeks for my players so it's not certain there would be no article about this draft. But I also may forget about this. Anyways, I hope you liked this recap. Thank you for reading this.

 

That's it and I'm out.

 

6x3=18 TPE goes to Randoms

 

17.12 - 23.12

24.12 - 30.12

31.12 - 06.01

 

 

[Victor 10,829]

Had to idea that was stevo, I was wondering where he went after the threepeat.

[Devise 4,475]

1 hour ago, Victor said:

Had to idea that was stevo, I was wondering where he went after the threepeat.

 

Somehow I always wind up GMing @troy and his players tbh. Ron World Peace was a staple in Cologne. I don't mind to be honest he's always been one of the most underrated steady members we got. Has there been a member who better exemplifies that solid welfare player than him? Probably not. 

[troy 36]

On 12/23/2018 at 4:48 PM, Victor said:

Had to idea that was stevo, I was wondering where he went after the threepeat.

allô allô

 

i went AWOL, though Trotzki's career has been shitty so far so maybe i should've just stayed in the land of inactivity