Each North American Conference Team's Worst Draft Pick of the S60's

[Tagger 2,722]

Intro Notes:

-  This is the first of four parts. I will also be doing the worst picks of the S60’s for the EU Conference and the best picks for both the NA and EU conference. I've got a WIP spreadsheet here where I shortlisted some of the other potential options for this article and also potential options for best NA picks. 

- These are not necessarily bad picks on the part of the General Manager, in fact most of these players were selected in the rounds that pretty much everyone expected them to be picked in.

- Some of the criteria that go into my selections are as follows

           o   Pick the player was taken with

           o   How well the player did for the team

           o   If the player was relatively quickly moved to another team, what value they got for them

           o   Strength of the Draft Class

           o   Any miscellaneous issues I feel are relevant to the selection

- As mentioned in the D.C bit, it's obviously a bit early to be analyzing the prospects of Season 68 and Season 69 players. However, I feel I have good candidates (at least for now) for all teams and, if there are any significant changes, I will probably do a follow-up article to address those.

 

 

Calgary

Donat Szita

Season 65 – 20^th Overall (3^rd Round)

 

When I was writing this article, I did not think that I was going to writing that a third rounder was going to be a team’s worst draft pick of the S60’s, but here we are. Donat Szita (who had the username Famished Blanket) had a very promising start to his career, earning ten capped TPE in each of his first three weeks in the league and passing the 100 TPE plateau in his fourth week. However, that fourth week would also be his final week as an active member of the VHL as he was permanently banned for inappropriate language and behaviour in the league’s discord channel. Despite the fact that the Season 65 Draft took place over two months after this ban was put into effect, the Wranglers decided to select him in the third round of the Season 65 Draft even though there were still active members on the board (in fact six of the eight picks immediately following Calgary’s selection of Szita would go on to make the VHL). While I think some in the Calgary organization felt that his ban should be overturned, that was never going to be the case and Calgary essentially wasted their pick on someone who would never play a single minute for them. The bit that makes this Calgary’s worst pick of the S60’s though is because of what they did with Brian Strong, a player who was selected two picks later than Szita by the Vancouver Wolves. Just a couple of weeks after the draft, the Wranglers acquired Strong in a trade. However, the piece they had to send was a Season 66 2^nd round selection, despite the Season 66 draft being widely regarded as a much more promising draft class than the Season 65 one and Strong having only been selected a round later a few weeks previous in a supposed weaker draft class. If Calgary valued Strong that much, why did they not just draft him instead of Szita and save the Season 66 2^nd rounder to strengthen their roster elsewhere?

 

D.C.

Kaspars Claude

Season 68 – 14^th Overall (2^nd Round)

 

It’s obviously very early to be talking about the success (or I guess in this case, lack of) of the players selected by the D.C. Dragons and the Prague Phantoms given that they’ve only been in two VHL Drafts and there’s a chance I will come back at a later date should things change, but I think both teams already have solid candidates for best and worst selections so I’ll at least share them for now and maybe make some amendments if things change.

 

I remember back in mid-October when I talked with Enorama on our podcast that we did together that every player who he had taken in the Season 68 Draft had updated within the last week and how that was an impressive feat for a team, especially an expansion team in its first season that will obviously not be set to compete with the other VHL teams for a few seasons. Unfortunately however, some of those players have now fallen off and probably the highest profile of these players is Kaspars Claude. Claude’s earning started off real strong and he was frequently earning 10-12 capped TPE per week and his first season on the Dragons was a fairly productive one, finishing fourth on the Dragons in points. However, real life issues have prevented Claude from progressing his player further since the start of Season 69 and he now only sees minutes on the fourth line of the Dragons offense.  On the positive side however, if he is able to come back, he’s still got a potential six seasons to go, which is more than enough time to make up any deficit.

 

New York

Carles Puigdemont

Season 65 – 1^st Overall

 

When Ryan Kastelic was taken first overall in the Season 63 Draft, it had ended an over-thirty season wait for a first gen to be taken with the first pick in the VHL Draft. However, we didn’t have to wait nearly as long for the next instance as, just two seasons later, the New York Americans followed suit and selected the Spanish center Carles Puigdemont with the first overall pick in the Season 65 Draft. The pick was not considered to be a surprise as Puigdemont was the highest TPE player entering the draft and had a considerable 100 TPE lead over his nearest forward rival Gritty, who went fourth overall. While Puigdemont certainly didn’t have a terrible first season on the ice (putting up 28 goals and 28 assists), the work rate that saw him get selected first overall was no longer there.  Prior to the draft, Puigdemont had recorded 13 weeks where he had earned the maximum possible 12 capped TPE, but after being drafted to the Americans, his first week on the team would be the only week he would record 12 capped TPE as a player on a VHL roster. After a couple of months of weekly earnings that varied between 2 and 8 TPE per week, he looked like he was finally getting back on track with a 10 TPE week at the start of May entering Season 66, but those were actually some of the last posts we would see from Eudaldkp, as he has not posted on the site at all since then. After another season of similar production, New York elected to cut their losses and traded Puigdemont to the Seattle Bears for Chace Trepanier, who was a third-round selection in Season 63. The Bears would move Puigdemont to defenseman and he even wound up playing a part in their S68 Continental Cup winning season, albeit a very limited part (he played 5 mins per game over the course of the playoffs). Now in his fifth season, he’s currently playing as a second-line defenseman for the Toronto Legion although with free agency and regression both on the horizon, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was his last season in the VHL. 

 

Quebec City/Vancouver

Samuel Gate

Season 61 - 2^nd Overall

 

In terms of actual production based on the pick they were taken with, this definitely isn’t Quebec City/Vancouver’s worst pick. Back in Season 63, they selected Jose Gonzalez with the eighth overall pick (the last pick of the first round), but he clearly didn’t want to play for Quebec City and only gave them seven points in his rookie season before being sent off to Davos. At least they got some VHL minutes out of him though, Season 66 second rounder Kyle Sabertooth retired from the VHL before the Wolves even got chance to put his name on a jersey. It’s also not like Gate was a terrible player for them either; while he never broke a point per game for the Meute/Wolves (although he did when he got traded to Seattle in Season 66, his final VHL season), he was hitting just short of that more seasons than he wasn’t. Finally, while Gate’s 610 TPE isn’t exactly what you want out of your second overall pick, it’s certainly serviceable enough to make a decent player. So why is Gate their worst pick of the S60’s? Well, quite simply, he wasn’t Podrick Cast, who was the player selected with the pick immediately after Gate's. A future (potentially first-ballot) HOFer, Cast was a free-scoring center who recorded over the double the points that Gate did in his career and finished his career with over 1000 more TPE. Looking at the Meute consistently ranking around the middle of the standings in goals in the four/five seasons following the draft, you could see how a player like Cast could have really given them a proper shot at the Continental Cup in those earlier seasons, especially while Rauno Palo was developing (Palo, while possessing a high TPE count, had a lot of early struggles given his unique initial build that had him start with very little offensive capabilities).

 

Seattle

Shane Mars

Season 66 – 3^rd Overall

 

This was a close call between two players Seattle picked with the third overall selection, Season 66’s Shane Mars and Season 68’s Thorny Underyew. While both went inactive very early on in their careers, their careers with the Bears went in different ways. Mars had an exceptional rookie season that saw him win the Rookie of the Year Award in a period where Seattle was starting a proper rebuild but saw extremely limited minutes once the Bears were ready to compete and they wound up letting him walk in Free Agency once his rookie deal expired. Underyew on the other hand didn’t even register a full season with the Bears before being sent off to the Wranglers as part of a package that allowed the Bears to bring in Joel Ylonen. The one thing that they do have in common though is that, despite both being on rosters, neither of them feature on any of their current team’s lines. Ultimately I decided to go with Mars as the worst pick for the Bears in the S60’s for a couple of reasons. One is that while they did trade Underyew for value, they didn’t really get any value out of keeping Mars. The second reason was that while Underyew was undoubtedly a disappointing pick for the Bears, if we say that they were definitely after a forward, there weren’t really any other good options taken in the first round (you’d have to go down to Owen Nolan in the second round for the best forward in the class as both Frans Eller and Teemu Lehtinen Jr. have gone inactive) whereas in the Season 66 Draft’s first round, Jet Jaguar and Mikko Aaltonen were also taken in the first round and they both feature prominently in the VHL at this minute (as of writing, both are in the top 10 in goals).

 

Toronto

Mikhail Vega

Season 61 – 9^th Overall (2^nd Round)

 

As has been well-memed previously, Devise does not do drafts, so there really isn’t that much to play with when it comes to picking out specific draft picks, as most of them were selected in the three seasons of the S60’s when DollarAndADream was the Legion’s general manager. While you could maybe make an argument that Johnny Havenk Carison’s career as a whole didn’t justify being selected as high as third overall (especially given the next pick wound up being one of the best forwards of the last few seasons), he justified his selection with his Playoff MVP performance in Season 65, one of only two seasons he played as a starter in his four seasons with the team. So instead, I will go with the player who went with the first pick in the second round of the Season 61 VHL Draft Mikhail Vega. Vega very nearly joined some of the other players in this article on the list of players retiring before they made it to the VHL, as he declared his intent to retire prior to the start of Season 62 having spent Season 61 down in the VHLM. His reasons at the time for retiring stood out as bizarre; citing his dislike of the portal update system which he had yet to even try and in fact hadn’t even earned any TPE through PT’s to use it for anyway along with insisting, despite his retirement, that he’d stick around as VHLM GM (which was never going to happen as, obviously with the role, you’re required to have at least some knowledge of the basic league systems). Vega did end up unretiring, but still never used the portal update system in his VHL career, although he has gone on to do much better things with Denver Wolfe (a contender for one of Vancouver’s best picks). Curiously enough, Vega wound up winning the Continental Cup with the Legion in Season 65 despite the fact that Wolfe had already been drafted in the VHL, which technically isn’t allowed, so I will be demanding that the Toronto Legion be stripped of their Continental Cup and it be given to Riga and EdwinCast. Thank you and goodnight.

 

2000+ Words. Using for weeks ending 12/29, 1/5, 1/12 and 1/19 (barring other circumstances)

Edited January 15, 2020 by Tagger

[Banackock 8,044]

DA BEARZ. 
 

I like what I see. Will do more than skim later

[Gustav 6,407]

5 minutes ago, Tagger said:

I did not think that I was going to writing that a third rounder was going to be a team’s worst draft pick of the S60’s, but here we are. Donat Szita

I mean, I've never heard of him, but I'm sure there were worse picks that they've made...

 

5 minutes ago, Tagger said:

(who had the username Famished Blanket)

Ah, OK. Never mind, carry on.

[Esso2264 774]

hell yeah i didnt make that pick (dont talk about Eller pls)

[Tagger 2,722]

1 minute ago, Esso2264 said:

hell yeah i didnt make that pick (dont talk about Eller pls)

Not to do exactly what you mentioned I shouldn't and talk about Eller 

 

He was my second guy I had in mind (considered Shawinganen as well but he had some decent seasons at least), he was partly saved for same reason Underyew was in that all the first round forwards in that draft fell off pretty quickly. 

[Esso2264 774]

5 minutes ago, Tagger said:

Not to do exactly what you mentioned I shouldn't and talk about Eller 

 

He was my second guy I had in mind (considered Shawinganen as well but he had some decent seasons at least), he was partly saved for same reason Underyew was in that all the first round forwards in that draft fell off pretty quickly. 

also that i had like 30% of the first 2 rounds lmao

[diamond_ace 3,112]

4 hours ago, Esso2264 said:

also that i had like 30% of the first 2 rounds lmao

Pretty sure I had similar 2nds to you (not 1sts though).

 

Also: worst for me will prob be Grimaldi  @Psyduck77,best will prob be Perry @Liberty_Cabbage given how late he was

[Tagger 2,722]

2nd Week Claim W/E 1/5

[Tagger 2,722]

3rd Week Claim W/E 1/12

[Tagger 2,722]

4th Week Claim W/E 1/19