What's a Rebuild? The Vancouver and Riga Story

[Victor 10,845]

In Season 62, a young Quebec City Meute team surprised the defending champions from Davos in Game 7 of the semi-finals and advanced to their first finals appearance in 5 seasons. Earlier in the playoffs, an even younger Riga Reign squad featuring lots of goals but no defence to speak of, as well as the inactive Arvid Aamo in net, made much less noise going out in the wildcard round, but left with the promise of much more to come.

 

Although containing few similarities at the time, since that season, the Meute (now the Vancouver Wolves) and Reign have made the playoffs every season with one exception – the Wolves in their first season in Vancouver, S65 – made three combined trips to the finals, claiming a Continental Cup each. What unites the two teams, other than longevity at the top, is a commitment to rebuild on the fly, not mortgaging the future and constantly refreshing the team with homegrown players. Together, GMs Keaton Louth @Beaviss and Benjamin Zeptenbergs @hedgehog337 have shown the way to compete in the modern VHL with deeper drafts – here's how they've done it.

 

 Vancouver Wolves – Competing since S62

The Meute got to that surprise S62 run through a more conventional rebuild. Legendary GM Frank Chadwick stepped down not long after orchestrating 4 straight finals appearances and a championship in S56, with a ready made replacement available in the young Louth; one of the few smooth GM transitions in the 50s. The drafts on which Quebec focused were not the greatest (S59, S60, S61 offering little depth and only a handful of quality players), but they had enough picks to make it work. After trading himself to Calgary and bringing in a younger player in Beau Louth, Louth had a solid core to work with going into S62 – Tristan Iseult in goal, Samuel Gate on defence, and a very promising forward lineup of Beau Louth, Veran Dragomir, Rauno Palo, and Vesto Slipher.

 

Things didn't quite work out for the young Meute, the S62 finals ultimately being the highlight of all these players' time in Quebec. Gate went inactive, Iseult publically imploded after the S64 playoffs and the infamous Keaton Louth Rule, while the forwards struggled to find much chemistry and the team consistently underperformed, hovering around the wildcard round places instead of making a push for the Victory Cup. Parallels can be drawn between the early 60s Quebec and the recently blown up New York team but with one very key difference – Louth didn't throw in the kitchen sink to compete in S63 and S64. The veterans he had acquired for the S62 run (Colton Rayne, Casey Jones, Jeff Gow, Sergei Komarov) cost very little (the Meute effectively gave up Dan Wilinsky and Roctrion King to get them), meaning another full-blown rebuild wasn't necessary. Even when the newly relocated Wolves hit their lowest ebb by missing the playoff entirely in S65, there was no panic – the process was already underway building the team that would win it all by S67.

 

The remarkable thing about the back-to-back finals Vancouver just made in S66 and S67 is that they featured just two of those original core members from S62 – Palo and Louth. However, the S67 squad featured a further 9 players drafted by Vancouver since S65. Some of those high-end picks like Gritty, Julius Freeman, Denver Wolfe, but others were classic diamonds in the rough – Jagger Philliefan, Hans Gruber or even the 6^th rounder Ben Hafkey. Another recent cup winner in Shawnomir Jagr is the latest in a long line of underrated Quebec/Vancouver second round picks. First they drafted Oleksiy Revchenko, Karl von Moltke, and Lando Baxter in S62, then they traded that trio to Calgary for cap reasons and picked up Jose Gonzalez and Randoms with their new S63 picks. When the cap squeezed again, Gonzalez and Randoms were shipped off to Davos for a S65 pick (Bald Guy) and the S66 second used on Jagr.

 

As a result, the Wolves are again entering a slight transition phase with the retirement of Beau Louth, but will undoubtedly remain near the top of the North American Conference and can look forward to four first-round picks in the next two drafts, having just added the highly rated Jeff Downey to the team. Having acquired Shawn Glade on the cheap and got more when sending him back to Davos, as well as surviving a turbulent goaltending era featuring Rogert Sterling and Ismond Kingfisher by now handing the long-term reins to Greg Eagles, Vancouver has won a Continental Cup without needing to rebuild and it will surely not be their last.

 

 Riga Reign – Competing since S63

Riga was one of the teams that usurped Quebec at the top of the VHL, defeating the Meute in the S57 finals and following up with a second Continental Cup in S58. However, thanks to retaining the same GM in Zeptenbergs and the timing of their rebuild, they came out with a new core only a season behind Quebec. The Reign certainly benefited from their S63 championship-winning team featuring 3 free agents signed the previous off-season (James Faraday, Jeff Gow, and Joseph Bassolino), but the groundwork for long-term success was laid in the previous seasons. Maximising the sales of veterans like Lukas Muller and Markus King led directly to landing the draft picks for Edwin Preencarnacion, Ryuu Crimson, and Dylan Nguyen. Supplemented by high profile picks in Podrick Cast, Leph Twinger, and Ryan Kastelic in consecutive drafts, the core was in place for a long contending run, salary cap permitting.

 

The salary cap did permit it to an extent, but like Vancouver, Riga's management has had to make many difficult choices over the past few off-seasons. By not having to give up any assets to win the cup in S63, the Reign kept hold of their draft picks and a highly effective scouting network made sure they were transformed into what was at one point the VHL's most promising prospect pool. From Shawn Glade and Mikka Pajari, who graduated by S63, followed by the likes of Rylan Peace, Kisshan Shan, Dan Baillie, Basaraba Moose, Anthony Matthews, and Teagan Glover, it is a highly impressive draft track record but Riga has not been able to afford the vast majority of these draftees.

 

Nonetheless, the approach has paid some dividends. After the Victory and Continental Cup double in S63, the Reign finished second in the regular season for a further three seasons, although couldn't get past the first round of the playoffs each time. In the meantime, similar to the Wolves, the team's core got progressively younger and following the trade of Cast and Randoms to Moscow and the retirement of Preencarnacion, Kastelic and goalie Kallis Kriketers are the only remnants of the cup-winning team. Much of the rest of the team was drafted by Riga in S66 (Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Arnor Sigurdsson, and Apollo Hackett its leading lights), followed by Lincoln Tate in S67, and the acquisition of some older players from New York (Joseph McWolf) and Davos (Elias Dahlberg and Pat Svoboda). The latter trio cost more than either Vancouver or Riga had given up in years, but the Reign had built up such a collection of prospects and draft picks that they could afford it.

 

In S67, Riga had their best playoff performance in a while, coming within one win of the cup finals. They'll be looking to improve on that in S68 before their new core becomes too expensive to hold onto. Whatever the outcome, you would back them to extend their playoff streak (aiming for a 7th straight season in S68 which would put them joint third all time) as they continue to draft well and hang onto their key picks going forward.

 

 Is this the best approach in the modern VHL?

So, having praised Vancouver and Riga's adaptation to 60s VHL, is it however the best approach to building a cup winner? The other two teams to win the Continental Cup since S62, Helsinki and Toronto, have continued down the tried and tested road of buying to win now and worrying about the future later. The Legion did this to great effect in S64 and S65 and it looked for most of the S67 regular season that it could pay off again, but now they look to have entered the downturn of the Ryan Power style of management. The long-term effects will be interesting to assess, but the last team with which he went quite so gung ho, S42-S46 Cologne, disbanded just over 10 seasons later. Certainly, although Toronto got the most championships this decade, it is probably more advisable to go for Vancouver or Riga's more patient approach and extend the contending window given the fine margins on which a season can turn in the playoffs. The Titans, with another old school GM in Matt Bailey, have not quite gone to such an extreme, but having successfully banked on their S63 core delivering results, their four straight trips to the finals owe much to the sometimes expensive veteran pick-ups (Mats Johnsson, Jasper Canmore, Matt Thompson, Dan Wilinsky). Helsinki will probably avoid a long rebuild with a healthy collection of youth and future picks at the moment, but it won't be enough to avoid it entirely once this run comes to an end.

 

Therefore, both schools of thought remain active in the VHL. We shall see if firesales become a thing of the past or if we will look at these Wolves and Reign teams as anomalies which rode the wave of historically deep drafts.

[Beaviss 4,956]

Damn your not supposed to expose our style! @Victor Great read though and you are spot on

[Matt_O 897]

Whats a contender? The Davos story

[Victor 10,845]

1,600 words so week 2 of 3.

[Victor 10,845]

Week 3 of 3.