Season 62 Re-Draft

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While there have been considerably deeper draft classes since, the Season 62 Draft will be remembered as the draft that signalled the revitalization of the VHL to it’s best form. The last ten seasons of drafts had only 11 first generation players (members creating a player in the VHL for the first time) that would go on to make the VHL professional level by right (exceeding 200 TPE) and the league was pretty much surviving based off of veteran members continuing to recreate, even after a decision to cut the league down from ten teams to eight. However, the Season 62 Draft would wind up producing 11 first generation players alone and while that figure pales in comparison to the drafts that would follow, it was certainly the turning point that got the VHL heading in the direction that it currently is today.

 

Despite the increase in new members, the top end of the draft was still primarily focused on the recreating players and the top two picks in this draft were pretty much set in stone heading into it. Set to go number one to the Riga Reign (the winners of the draft lottery despite only finishing with the third worst record in Season 61) was Leph Twinger, a player whose associated member DollarAndADream had made several very good players in the past 25 seasons, most notably Hall of Fame winger and first overall selection from the Season 46 Draft Zach Parechkin. Not only was history on Twinger’s side, he entered the draft with a pretty convincing lead in TPE as he was 43 ahead of his nearest challenger Rauno Palo. The league’s worst team from Season 61, the Seattle Bears, held the second pick of the draft and while there was quite a TPE difference between himself and some of the other players available, Maxim Kovalchuk was pencilled in as the team’s second overall selection. The Russian defenseman was 70 TPE off of fellow recreates Vesto Slipher and Rauno Palo, but Kovalchuk’s associated member is also the GM of the Seattle Bears, meaning that they’d pretty much guaranteed either eight seasons of Kovalchuk or however long he was required at the Bears as an asset to their Championship goals. The biggest surprise of the draft was Toronto Legion picking goalie Johnny Havenk Carison third overall. While this did fill a need for Toronto as they were without a goalie at the time and there were no guarantees yet about the young goalies in the Season 63 Draft, the high pick was surprising given that Carison was over 100 TPE behind Palo and Slipher (two players who he joined the league in the same week as) at the time of the draft.  

 

But how would the draft go if we gave them another shot at it, here’s how I think it would’ve looked:

 

1-Vesto Slipher

Was: Leph Twinger

 

This was between Slipher and a repick of Twinger as history shows that Riga needed a winger of these two player’s calibre for the Championship run in Season 63. Even though Slipher has put up fairly mediocre stats to this point of his career (which I’d mainly put down to rough team compositions with the defense-heavy Meute and the three line Titans), I’m going to slot him in at first overall due to his lead in TPE, although it would have been interesting to see if Slipher would have faced a similar fate to Twinger this off-season just gone where the winger was traded to New York to free up cap space.

 

2- Maxim Kovalchuk

Was: Maxim Kovalchuk

 

TPE wise, Kovalchuk is still as far behind the top prospects in this draft as he was before it took place. However, he’s still the highest TPE defenseman taken in this draft (and the Bears didn’t have a single defenseman leading into this draft so the pick filled a need) and the added bonus of the Seattle GM being able to draft his own player makes this a no brainer.

 

3-Leph Twinger

Was: Johnny Havenk Carison

 

One of the notable points of the Legion’s last few seasons is their complete lack of luck in the lottery, as they’ve either found themselves move down a pick or traded their own pick that wound up becoming first overall. In this timeline though, DollarAndADream gets a bit more luck and is able to take his own player for the Legion.

 

4-Rauno Palo

Was: Rauno Palo

 

While his early career build choice (he didn’t add to passing or scoring until the end of his second season) was part of the reason why he fell both in the actual draft and this re-draft, his current build is much more in line with the norm, allowing him to make the most of being second from this draft class in TPE.

 

5-Jake Davis

Was: Vesto Slipher

 

Quebec would go on to compete in the Continental Cup final after this season, so with Slipher gone already, they need another player who made the VHL in his first season of eligibility to take his place. That will be Jake Davis, who has earned the most TPE out of all the first-gens in this draft. and has been over a point per game in his last two seasons.

 

6-Ryuu Crimson

Was: Dan Montgomery

 

While Jake Davis has the most TPE out of this drafts first-gens, Crimson leads all players in this draft (first-gen or not) in TPE earned since the draft. While part of that will be down to his extra season in the VHLM (taking advantage of the extra TPE bonuses there), he wouldn’t have gotten to that point without a lot of hard work and Helsinki get the star forward of the future they thought they were getting with Dan Montgomery.

 

7-Shawn Glade

Was: Dylan Nguyen

 

Glade goes back to the Reign team that he was also taken by in the actual draft, just four picks earlier this time. Over 600 TPE, Glade has kept consistent with Kovalchuk in terms of TPE earning and, now with a VSN editor job, may eventually catch up to the second overall pick.

 

8-Oleksiy Revchenko

Was: Konstantin Mulligan

 

The pre-draft concern for Revchenko was that the Ukrainian forward was only earning TPE through affiliate welfare and not doing many VHL activities. However, over the last few months, he’s started engaging in considerably more VHL activities and looks set to become a very solid center prospect (although his activity might not have been enough to save him from the same fate Konstantin Mulligan met when he was selected by Davos, an early season trade to acquire defenseman Ay Ay Ron).

 

9- Roctrion King

Was: Ryuu Crimson

 

From last pick of the second round in the original draft to first pick of the second round in the re-draft, King doesn’t earn a ton of capped TPE per week (regularly relying on welfare and Brand executive job pay), but he does engage in quite a few of the uncapped activities, which has helped him move up the draft.

 

10-Johnny Havenk Carison

Was: Jake Davis

 

The reason why the former third overall pick falls down nearly an entire round worth of picks is that I think, even with their need at the position, if you told Helsinki and Toronto that Carison would be 457 TPE at the start of his fourth VHL season, they would rather shore up their skating talent with players with much higher TPE than use their first on the goalie. Therefore, instead of addressing the need right away, Toronto grabbed their 700+ TPE winger before grabbing Carison in the second.

 

11-Paolo Nano

Was: Shawn Glade

 

I was considering Mulligan and Montgomery here, but given that the team already has five active forwards in accordance with this draft (Cast, Preencarnacion, Slipher, King, Pajari), they would rather make Nano their second active talent on defense alongside Glade.

 

12-Konstantin Mulligan

Was: Oleksiy Revchenko

 

The same concerns that centered around Revchenko pre-draft were also true about Mulligan, although Mulligan also had a peculiar build through the first three seasons of his career and that build led to him being a third line player on Helsinki in Season 64, before being traded to Quebec mid-season.

 

13-Dan Montgomery

Was: Karl Von Moltke

 

Montgomery was the leading first generation player in TPE heading into this draft, but he’s now fallen down to being the sixth-best first generation player in TPE, in part because his only source of capped TPE is welfare. Along with Mulligan, this pair of seconds would give them two VHL talents for their push at a Continental Cup in Season 62 (although if they’d have the cap is another thing, something I can’t check back on because the forum for old finances has been moved).

 

This is also the only instance where the player originally selected doesn't feature at all on the re-draft. Karl Von Moltke went inactive not long after the draft, despite his player doing extremely well in the VHLM with the Halifax 21st. He's currently on Moscow Menace's books, but he'll likely be one of the first to give way for newer members to take his place given he has only 4 points in 18 games this season.

 

14-Lando Baxter

Was: Lando Baxter

 

One of the few players to be re-drafted in exactly the same spot, I had considered Baxter for number 11, but the rate in which Nano has gained on Baxter in TPE since the draft (turning a 92 TPE gap to just 11) convinced me otherwise.

 

15-Cayden Saint

Was: Cayden Saint

 

The first player taken here who has had spells of inactivity, Saint was recently traded to Davos for a second and a third round selection in Season 67, but I think that’s more reflective on Davos wanting depth at defenseman and having several 1sts anyway rather than the actual value of Saint, who is a solid but unspectacular player.

 

16-Dylan Nguyen

Was: Roctrion King

 

The biggest faller in this Re-draft, Nguyen fell off of full activity not long after making it to the VHL as personal stuff kept him off the site. Hasn’t posted on the site this calendar year and looks set to be a filler player for the remainder of his career.