Memoirs of a Former Västerås GM

[Corco 1,242]

I don’t intend this article to be a “woe is me” story or something similar, I intend this to be more of an airing of grievances/explanation of why I did the things I did in my time as GM of Vasteras (S31-S39). By the time I stepped down at the end of S39, I was so burnt out from the constant negativity surrounding the franchise for so many seasons that I had no desire to even remain active, but I’ll get more into that later; I have been meaning to write an article like this for awhile, and I kept putting it off and off for whatever reason, but regardless, here it is.

 

Author’s Note

I guess I should start from the beginning of my entire sim league experience; my first ever foray into sim leagues was in the SHL, as I joined the site in ~September of 2011 at the ripe old age of 14. I created a goaltender in S5, Tom Corcoran, who actually ended up in the SHL Hall of Fame. The SHL was my only league for a few months, before I heard some members talking about the VHL; still being in high school and having all the time in the world to do anything, I joined the VHL in late January of 2012 (S26), also creating a goaltender named Tom Corcoran. And I HATED the VHL at first; I had no idea of how the PT structure worked, and I felt that the members were much more standoffish and snooty compared to the SHL (funny how perspectives work). I only earned 26 TPE with Tom Corcoran in the VHL before going inactive and fully focusing on the SHL again. I wouldn’t return to the VHL until June of 2012, creating a forward, Thomas Corcoran, who would end up being selected 2nd overall by the Vasteras Iron Eagles in one of the worst VHL drafts of all-time, Season 29; and that, is where my VHL story truly begins.

 

Prologue 

When I was drafted, Vasteras was amidst a stagnating rebuild. Despite being only 3 seasons removed from breaking the curse in S26, the team was a shell of its former self; the Iron Eagles had missed the playoffs in the 3 seasons following their S26 championship. Tyler Owens (@Tyler), the GM responsible for bringing the Continental Cup back to Vasteras, stepped down following the S26 season and handed the reigns of the organization over to Damien Walec (@.sniffuM and his star player, Tukka Reikkinen. Walec wasn’t left with much to work with in his early days as GM, as the only returning players for the Iron Eagles in S27 from the S26 squad were Walec’s own player Reikkinen and Lasse Milo, a player from the agency that founded the entire franchise itself (@PensFan101 - Lucas Tannehill). The cup run had broken the 25 season curse, but at what cost? 

Before the start of S26, then-GM Tyler Owens [rightfully] traded away Vasteras’ S28 1st pick in a deal with Toronto to acquire key members of the S26 run, Phil Gerrard and Clint Guite; in an interesting piece of trivia, that pick would eventually turn out to be Owens’ own player, Connor Evans. You make that deal 10 times out of 10 if you’re Owens, as you’re getting two star players for a few throw-in players and a 1st round pick that’s two drafts away. Owens also traded away Vasteras’ S28 2nd round pick in a rental deal that brought another impact player, Kevyn Hesje, on board for the S26 run; once again, another deal that’s an easy no-brainer for Owens, as that pick turned into Pekka Svenson, who only ever reached 1B goalie status at his peak, and without even checking I’m pretty sure he didn’t even eclipse 400 TPE. That would be Owens’ last move as GM of Vasteras, as he would step down after the cup win, promoting 1st-time GM Walec to his old position. Walec was handed a pretty decent situation in my opinion; coming off a championship victory needing to rebuild, and you still have your 1st round pick (8th overall) in the draft, not too shabby. But alas, Damien decided to delay his rebuild, and in his 1st big move as Vasteras GM, sent the S27 VAS 1st to Davos in exchange for Davos’ S28 1st round pick and winger Jesse McGahn. I can only guess that this was a deal to acquire a depth piece for S27, should Vasteras somehow be able to contend that year (they did not), while basically getting a draft pick at the same spot or better in the next draft. If I had to guess, I would say that this move was likely thought of as a good trade for Vasteras at the time, as they really didn’t seem to lose much in this deal, although that S27 8th overall pick did end up being Ying Qin, a member of the esteemed tfong agency, and a player of his pedigree certainly would have helped Vasteras’ image and coming rebuild. But again, not a bad trade at the time. Damien’s next trade is where I begin to wonder what happened to cause him to make said move; towards the end of that offseason, Walec shipped off four members from the championship team to the Riga Reign (Kevyn Hesje, RJ Stafford, Clint Guite, and Andreas Bjorkman) in exchange for Riga’s S29 1st & 2nd round picks as well as two prospects, JaMarcus Simmons and Jesper Jakobsen. Since the forum where this trade occurred is gone, I have no idea what the public perception of this trade was, but personally I don’t think I agree with it (there are likely reasons it happened that I’m just unaware of). The four of those players had a combined 8 seasons left in the league before auto-retirement and still had some gas in their tanks; given that Vasteras only finished 20 points behind New York for the last playoff spot in S27, I don’t think it’s crazy to assume that had they kept those 4 players, they could have made the postseason despite the retirements of Gerrard/Guite and the departure of Jenstrom. In terms of value though, I don’t think the deal was bad at the time, as in return Vasteras received the JaMarcus Simmons, a S26 draftee who had been drafted 3rd overall the season before, and an eventual lottery pick (which eventually turned out to be the 1st overall pick) in Riga’s S29 1st. At the time Simmons’ agent, Spangle, was coming off the retirement of his 1st (and to-date best) player of his career, Hall-of-Famer Mathias Chouinard, so really this trade seemed to be setting up Vasteras quite nicely for the future. But boy, if you thought that the trade would actually work out for the Iron Eagles, you could not be more wrong.

 

Simmons would turn into the 1st bust in what would end up being a long line of draft/prospect failures for Walec; Simmons would play two seasons for Vasteras before leaving via Free Agency, never really becoming more than a 2nd-liner in his VHL career, and thus did nothing to improve the rebuilding situation in Vasteras. Walec would make no more trades during S27, as the Iron Eagles would miss the playoffs; thankfully for Vasteras,their S28 1st round pick that was property of the Toronto Legion as part of the aforementioned Gerrard/Guite trade, did NOT win the lottery, instead ending up being the 4th overall pick. Despite not having their own 1st rd pick in S28, Vasteras did have Davos’ 1st round pick via the aforementioned Jesse McGahn trade, and said pick would turn out to be 3rd overall! With a draft class that included Volodymyr Rybak (Slobo), Alexander Labatte (@sterling), Ryan Sullivan (@Advantage), Miles Larsson (@sherifflobo), Theseus Athera (@DGFX.), Brody Hodgson (@Tylar) and more, surely Vasteras would connect on that pick right? Wrong. Walec decided to continue to push the rebuild back another season, as Vasteras would send the S28 3rd overall pick (the pick that turned out to be Hall-of-Famer Ryan Sullivan) to the Calgary Wranglers in exchange for NYA’s S29 1st round pick and Calgary’s S28 2nd round pick (10th overall). It really hurts to see what Vasteras ended up doing with those picks, drafting goaltender Vincent Vega (@Maxy) with the 10th overall pick from Calgary and packaging the S29 NYA 1st in another deal I’ll get to later; Vega was a promising young goalie, and was expected to be the starter in Vasteras for a long time, but Maxy flamed out at around 300 TPE a few seasons later, basically leaving Walec chained down with an inactive goalie of the future while Ryan Sullivan began to put together his Hall of Fame career in Calgary. I’m not really sure why Damien kept pushing the rebuild back, but I can only guess that it was to have a plethora of picks and prospects in the S29 draft, and he obviously didn’t know it at the time, but he could not have picked a worse draft to stockpile picks in. After not making any moves during the S28 season, Damien had the following assets available to him going into the S29 Entry Draft: RIG 1st (1st OV), VAS 1st (2nd OV), NYA 1st (7th OV), VAS 2nd (9th OV), & RIG 2nd (11th OV). At the draft, Walec made a trade, sending the S29 NYA 1st (7th OV) as well as Vasteras’ S30 1st rounder (4th OV) to the Seattle Bears in exchange for Toronto’s S29 1st (4th OV) and Seattle’s S29 2nd (16th OV). I’m not sure if Damien intended to compete in S29, making the S30 1st a non-lottery pick (Hint: They didn’t), but regardless, he overpaid slightly to move up 3 spots in the draft. Of his 6 picks in the first 16 spots of the S29 draft, only three ever made it to the VHL, and of those three, only one ever made it past 400 TPE (me). At the time, I recall it not being too bad of a haul though, as 1st overall pick Al Wilson (mutigers) was coming off a successful career with Keon Henderson, and 4th overall pick Brandon Merritt (Brandon Holmes) also had a few successful players before Merritt. Walec’s final move as Vasteras GM would come in S29, as he traded his own player to the New York Americans in exchange for New York’s 1st round pick in S31 and his replacement at GM, Troy Athera (@8Ovechkin8). I still have a great amount of respect for Damien as a member, but I don’t think I would be very wrong to say that his attempted rebuild of Vasteras was a failure; obviously hindsight is 20/20, but of all of the picks/trades he made, the only one who ever made an arguable impact at the VHL level statistically for Vasteras was myself. To review, during his tenure as GM Damien:

 

Spoiler

Acquired/Drafted
S28 SEA 3rd (Anthony Donati)
S28 DAV 1st
(S21) Jesse McGhann
S29 RIG 1st (Al Wilson)
S29 RIG 2nd (Hashtag Manning)
(S26) JaMarcus Simmons
(S27) Jesper Jakobsen
S29 NYA 1st
S28 CGY 2nd (Vincent Vega)
S29 TOR 1st (Brandon Merritt)
S29 SEA 2nd (Calle Falk)
(S28) Troy Athera
S31 NYA 1st
S27 VAS 4th (Alexander James Murphy)*
S28 VAS 3rd (Jonah Liuzza)*
(S29) VAS 1st (Thomas Corcoran)*
S29 VAS 2nd (Zakir Krylov)*
S29 VAS 3rd (Kevin Despaties)*
*= Drafted with own pick

 

Traded Away
(S21) Markus Jenstrom FA rights
S27 VAS 1st (Ying Qin)
S28 DAV 1st (Ryan Sullivan)
(S20) Kevyn Hesje
(S21) R.J. Stafford
(S21) Andreas Bjorkman
(S22) Clint Guite
S29 NYA 1st (Jussi Valkonen)
S30 VAS 1st (Adam Harris)
(S25) Tukka Reikkinen

It doesn’t look horrible at 1st glance, but it gets worse the deeper you dig, especially when you consider how much success Qin, Sullivan, and Reikkinen would go on to have in their careers. Like I said, hindsight is 20/20 and there’s not a doubt in my mind Damien would undo most of those trades if given the chance with the information he has now, but at the end of the day, the franchise wasn’t really in that much better of a position when he left versus when he was handed the GM job. 

 

Before GMing

Thomas Corcoran was my 1st real VHL player, drafted 2nd overall in S29 by Vasteras

 

I rejoined the VHL in late May of 2012 after getting tired of SHL drama. Although I wasn’t technically a 1st-gen player, I felt like I was, since I really only stayed on the VHL for about a week in my 1st go around with my player in S26. I felt like the SHL was more about community, while VHL was more about the actual sim/statistics, which I preferred, and I was as active as someone can be in their draft season, earning my max TPE, posting on the forums, etc. 

I remember how excited I was when Damien messaged me before the draft asking about my feelings towards joining Vasteras; I was still getting to know all the teams/members in the league, so I  didn’t really have any idea of what team I wanted to go to in the draft. I recall hearing murmurings that Vasteras was a bad franchise, but I thought nothing of it at the time; I was just happy to be considered a top prospect. I stayed in the VHLM the season after the draft (S29), but Vasteras was still unable to find success with new GM Japinder Singh (8Ovechkin8), missing the playoffs again. 

In his 1st season as GM, Singh shipped off homegrown hero Lasse Milo to the Seattle Bears in exchange for Toronto’s S30 1st Rd pick & Seattle’s S31 2nd & 3rd round picks; at the deadline Singh also acquired two depth pieces in (S22) Dan Jones and (S23) Nick Fisher in exchange for Vasteras’ S31 3rd. Even in hindsight, these were not terrible deals; Milo was Vasteras’ best player at the time, but he was aging and didn’t have a place on a team that needed younger talent, and the S31 3rd Singh traded away for depth/cap floor reaching predictably ended up being a nothing-pick. Singh would continue to wheel & deal in the offseason, making three trades in the S29 offseason. The 1st trade he made was a bit of a head-scratcher, as he sent the 1st overall pick from a season before, Al Wilson, to Riga in exchange for Seattle’s S30 1st (6th overall) and Calgary’s S30 2nd (12th overall); I can’t recall how I felt about this trade, or even why 8O8 did it. Maybe Wilson requested a trade or something of the like, but regardless, Vasteras would eventually lose this trade (surprise surprise). The player selected, Roberto Martucci (Otrebor13), would go inactive for a few seasons after the draft, only to come back to the league at full activity for the Quebec City Meute, after I traded him there prior to S31 for Calgary’s S32 2nd. Singh’s 2nd deal of the S29 offseason was re-acquiring Lasse Milo from the New York Americans in exchange for Seattle’s S31 2nd round pick; when you factor in the trade that sent Milo out of Vasteras and this one, Vasteras had a net gain of a 1st round pick and a 3rd round pick basically for free, not bad. In his last move of the offseason, Singh sent Seattle’s S31 3rd round pick to the Toronto Legion in exchange for Toronto’s 3rd rounder in S31 and depth defenseman, (S26) Lars Strundman.

 In his relatively short stint as Vasteras GM, 8O8 only really made one questionable deal (the Al Wilson trade), but even then, in hindsight the deal was basically a wash as Wilson would never reach the expectations of a 1st overall pick, earning less than 400 TPE in his career. Outside of that deal, Singh actually did a pretty decent job in my opinion, given the situation he stepped into; I think he just didn’t feel like dealing with the negative attitudes towards the team from members outside the organization. 8O8 would made no trades during S30, and would eventually step down at the conclusion of the S30 playoffs (Early December 2012) due to disinterest, naming me as his successor.

 

Rookie GM-ing

If I remember correctly, the reason I was chosen as the next GM was because nobody else really wanted to do it, and I was one of the few members who actually enjoyed playing for Vasteras. I believe the league asked PensFan about taking the job, but he declined, as his activity level was already fading. Outside of myself, there was really no other option in-house; all other roster players were inactive, and I was the most qualified of our “prospects”. Even saying I was the most qualified is a stretch, considering that my management experience in all sim-leagues up to that point was one season as GM of the VHLM’s Oslo Storm during S30. I was a 16-year old kid with minimal experience who was just thrown into one of the worst possible situations a seasoned VHL GM could be thrown into, let alone one with basically no experience. I don’t want to point fingers and put the blame on anybody else, since I did want the position and was excited to get it, but it probably wasn’t the smartest decision by league management to allow a 2nd season member to become a GM after only one season of VHLM GM experience, especially considering the franchise I was taking over.

This media spot would be tens of thousands of words long if I went over every trade I ever made, so I’ll try to only go over the most notable ones. I made quite a few small trades in my first offseason as GM, with the most major being a trade with Ryan Power’s (@Devise) Americans that sent former GM player (S28) Troy Athera and disgruntled recent Vasteras draftee (S31) Samu Heiskanen to New York in exchange for NYA’s S33 1st rounder, two 3rd round picks, aging forward (S24) Gunnar Axelson and the 6th overall pick a season removed, (S30) Jeff Phinney. I felt like this was pretty fair value at the time, as Athera had requested to move on from Vasteras and there was a miscommunication between myself and Heiskanen’s agent regarding his desire to play for Vasteras, so really, Devise gave me pretty fair value knowing that my hands were tied. There would be a few smaller trades made during that offseason (the Martucci trade being the next-most notable), but my first big notorious trade wouldn’t happen until the trade deadline of S31.

At the deadline, Vasteras was where they had been for the last 5 seasons - out of the playoff race and in the doldrums of VHL mediocrity. At this point I was starting to take note of how many prominent VHL members seemed to just shit on Vasteras, the sole reason being “lol/fuck vasteras”. In the four seasons since the Continental Cup, the Iron Eagles had went a combined 88-175-26, and I desperately wanted to shift that trend. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place though; I was the only prospect that had panned out for the team in the past 5 seasons, and very very few free agents wanted to join what seemed to be a ship that was sinking and on fire at the same time. I saw there being no end in sight if I maintained what had been the status quo for the previous half-decade, so I decided that my best course of action would be to make a trade. The trade that follows is what would turn out to be the 1st of many huge gambles that I took as GM, none of them ever panning out. My only real good player on the team was my own, so I basically needed to acquire an entire team if I wanted to compete; luckily for me, Seattle was in the business of selling off most of their aging core. I jumped at the opportunity, acquiring future Hall-of-Famers (S25) CAL G (@JardyB10), (S26) Jarvis Baldwin (@CoachReilly), and 2nd-pairing defenseman (S24) Genghis Khan (@Shyft) in an attempt to go all-in for S32. In return, I practically gave up the farm, trading away Vasteras’ 1sts in both the S32+S33 drafts, Calgary’s S32 2nd round pick, and some depth players. At the time, the trade was met with mostly apprehension, as the team would certainly be better, but the roster only had two good forwards, one defenseman, and a top-tier goalie; I still needed to make more moves to put the team in a position to contend, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make people respect Vasteras again. 

My first order of business in the offseason was to acquire fan-favorite defender Vladimir Boomchenko (@BOOM™) from the Express in exchange for Vasteras’ S34 2nd round pick and (S27) Luukas Laaksonen. Continuing to add to the roster, I acquired journeyman depth defender (S26) Lars Strundman for Brandon Merritt, now nearly a complete draft bust. I believe Quebec City GM Koradek intended on getting Merritt to return to the league, but that never panned out. That same offseason, I made perhaps one of my biggest free agent signings of my entire GM career, signing under-the-radar defenseman Klaus Muller (@solas) to join my ragtag team of contenders. This would be the beginning of what I would consider to be a long partnership between lightning25 and the franchise, as it seemed like he enjoyed playing for Vasteras just as much as I did, with his next player, Willem Janssen, being the face of the franchise starting a few seasons later. I don’t recall us ever talking about it much in depth, but I think he enjoyed being part of the franchise for the same reason I did, in that he wanted to be part of a team that would prove people wrong, having a soft spot for the eternal underdog. 

If I can remember correctly, the most prevalent league-wide opinion of my attempts to bring Vasteras in contention was one of wary scepticism. I can recall a few members who applauded my efforts to make VHL hockey in Vasteras exciting again, whilst some others giddily anticipated the likely-negative results of my acquisitions *cough* @Kyle *cough*. I never understood why he hated Vasteras so much, and if he did ever say why, I don’t recall what it was. Regardless, I acquired a few other depth pieces during the season to round out the roster, most notably Nikolai Chershenko (@Munk), and went into the S32 postseason campaign with a state of nervous excitement; this would be my 1st time in the VHL on a competitive team, and the stakes were higher than ever. There was only one problem; the rest of the European Conference was a bloodbath that year; four teams had winning records, the top 3 all having over 100 points. Even the last-place Cologne Express, who finished with 55 Points, would have made the playoffs if they were in the North American Conference. The Iron Eagles were led by both of their star acquisitions the previous season; Jarvis Baldwin had a 101-point season to lead the offense, whilst CAL G had a Shaw-caliber season, posting a .934 SVPCT, 1.79 GAA, along with 9 SOs. CAL G would ultimate lose out on the Shaw Trophy due to an even more stellar season from his counterpart in Riga, Alexander Labatte, who sported a sparkling .935 SVPCT & 1.64 GAA, as well as 8 SOs. 

Although Vasteras ultimately finished 3rd in the European Conference that season, I wasn’t super nervous about our 1st round opponent, the Helsinki Titans. While they concluded S32 with 10 more points than us, I thought we matched up against them decently well; they certainly had us beat in the Forward department, in depth and skill, as their 2nd line of Qin-Hodgson-Schwarz Esq. had 250+ PTS while ours of Mason-Strundman-Noel only tallied 152 PTS. Defense was a closer, with Helsinki’s top 4 of Nic Riopel, Theseus Athera, Till Lindemann, & Dmitry Baurzahn scoring 243 PTS between them, whilst our defense of Vladimir Boomchenko, Klaus Muller, and Blake Knight tallied 193 PTS; when averaged out per defenseman, Titan defenders scored an average of 61 PTS, while Iron Eagle d-men averaged out to 64 PTS, I’d say it was about a wash. Our biggest advantage in my opinion was at goaltender; I already spoke about CAL G’s fantastic season, but future Hall-of-Famer Tuomas Tukio’s (@Higgins) stats that season were nothing to scoff at either: .927SVPCT/1.80GAA/7SOs. Despite being close statistically to CAL G, Tukio was not nearly as high in TPE at the time, with most of his attributes being in the 80s as opposed to CAL G’s, which were mostly in the 90s. I believed that all we had to do to beat them was to score some timely goals, and get the same goaltending from CAL G that we had been getting all season.

I was wrong. Although we took the Titans to 7 games, it would not be the goaltending that got us there; in fact, both teams had lackluster performances in comparison to the regular season from their netminders in the series, CAL G having a .911SVPCT & 2.72 GAA and Tukio posting a .912SVPCT & 2.14 GAA. The away team would not win a single game the whole series, making our 3rd-place finish in the Euro sting even more. Even if we won, I’m not sure we would have been able to beat 1st place Riga in the next round, as the Titans would go on to be swept by them, but who knows? We finished the regular season 3-3-2 against them, so maybe we would have had a shot. Alas, we were sent home, and I was left with a 1st round exit and no 1st round picks in the next two drafts; time for Vasteras to rebuild...again.

My intend with going all-in on S32 was to bring some legitimacy back to Vasteras’ name, but the end result was far from my intentions; my failure to bring the team deep in the playoffs only continued the stigmata of the franchise. The game thread from Game 7 isn’t available anymore since that site died, but I remember seeing “fuck vasteras”, “typical vasteras”, and comments of the like, and I couldn’t even be mad because they were right! Despite how disappointed I was though, I had to suck it up and attempt to rebuild now, without two of my future 1st round picks. Boomchenko and CAL G were auto-retired, so there was no possible return on them; I sold off depth piece Jack Mason for a 3rd rounder, traded Klaus Muller to Cologne for a 3rd rounder and journeyman goaltender (Rock Star) to fill in whilst the rebuild was going on, retired my S29 player and sent him to Riga for a S34 2nd, shipped Baldwin off to Calgary for arguably the best (of that offseason) return, depth player Andrei Zhirenkov and a S33 2nd, which turned into a loyal Vasteras player in Adam Kylrad. The returns were not great because the market was extremely saturated at the positions I was selling; Muller was the most valuable asset, and I wasn’t able to trade him away before other teams jumped on trades for defenders of similar caliber, such as Radislav Mjers, Troy Athera, Theseus Athera, Cody Inko, and Malcom Spud. My other big trade chip, Jarvis Baldwin, was in his final season and getting hit with depreciation hard, but he ended up having a 138 point season for the Wranglers in S33, so Calgary certainly got the better end of the deal, even if they didn’t win the cup that season. I was disappointed that I had to retire my own player so early in his career; he was going into his prime with 650+ TPE, and there is no doubt in my mind I would have reached the 1,000 TPE plateau with him had he played out his entire career. It was bittersweet that he ended up winning a cup with Riga in S33, as I was excited to have a Continental Cup victory for one of my players so soon in my VHL career, but it felt hollow, as it wasn’t with my team. 

 

The Rebuild

Willem Janssen was one of the few Vasteras success stories during the S30's

 

My hands weren’t completely empty entering the S33 draft that offseason though, as I owned New York’s 1st round pick (10th overall), thanks to the trade that sent Troy Athera to the Americans a few offseasons prior. Despite it being 10th overall, the S33 was stacked, having eventual VHL players all the way until the end of the 2nd round. I selected David Collier with the 10th overall selection, and this pick still annoys me to this day. Collier was a 1st-gen sensation in the SHL at the time, and I still had a player in the SHL at that time so I figured he was a sure-bet to have a similar impact in the VHL. He did not, what I will describe next is to the best of my ability, this happened right before the smf forum broke, so I’m unable to access the PMs/posts from that time; his activity began to drop after being drafted, but Cologne’s GM at the time, Joey Kendrick, remained interested in him. During S33, I traded Collier to Cologne for Cologne’s S35 1st round pick, with the condition that if Collier stayed inactive/didn’t reach a certain TPE threshold (250 or something?), the pick would turn into a future 2nd round pick. Collier’s development stagnated that season, and he did not end up not reaching the TPE threshold Kendrick and I agreed upon, so a deal was made during the S34 offseason that sent Cologne’s S35 1st back to them in exchange for their S36 2nd round pick. At this point the trade was lose/lose for both sides, as Vasteras basically received a S36 2nd rounder for a 1st-round player who was supposed to be a key cog in the rebuild and Cologne traded a semi-valuable pick for a depth player at best… Only Collier didn’t stay inactive for long. As I recall, a few weeks after the trade where I gave Cologne their S35 1st back, Collier returned to the league in full force, earning his TPE and being everything I had hoped he would be, just not for Vasteras (he even became a Co-GM for Cologne a few seasons later); there was nothing I could do except wallow in my own misfortune; here was another case of that typical Vasteras luck. Seasons 33 and 34 were typical VHL rebuilding seasons, with the team losing 50+ games both seasons, but overall, things finally began to turn after S34.

I still owned Vasteras’ 1st in the S34 draft, which I used to select the future face of the franchise, Willem Janssen (solas/lightning25), at 2nd overall. While it wasn’t like there was a another player I wanted as much as Janssen in that draft that would have made my choice tough, I still consider this pick probably my best draft selection of my entire tenure. Janssen was dedicated to Vasteras through and through, and one of his main career goals was to win a cup with Vasteras. The S35 draft would not be nearly as kind to Vasteras, as the player we selected 3rd overall, Leon Leitner (@scotty), would barely pass 200 TPE before disappearing after the smf forum crashed. I attempted to contact him in a variety of ways, but to no avail. It seemed like the perfect marriage; the agent of the greatest VHL player of all time & key cog of both Vasteras cup-winning teams returning to the franchise at a time when they desperately needed one more big name to help them take it to the next level. I’m not sure if scotty just lost interest, couldn’t find the new site, or whatever, but the him not becoming our #1C of the future slowed down our rebuild considerably. Instead of having three powerhouse TPE-whores on the team, we only had two, in my own goaltender (Bagelface) and lightning25/solas’ Janssen. I know it’s kind of pointless to think about now, but I truly believe that things would have turned out different for the Iron Eagles had Collier/Leitner not gone inactive. Take S36 for example, Bagelface and Janssen were entering their primes and leading Vasteras to an unexpected playoff berth at the midway point of the season, 17 points ahead of the supposedly-contending Cologne Express. I didn’t expect to contend that season, so I was pleasantly surprised at how pretty we were sitting at the deadline; I decided to buy at the deadline, acquiring Cody Inko and Lauris Prikulis from Cologne in exchange for a 1st and two low-level prospects. Of course, I can’t talk about that deadline without talking about the one trade I made earlier that season that I was criticized for arguably just as much as the CAL G/Baldwin trade in S32 - the Keiji Toriyama (@street) trade. When you look at who was selected with the 1st rounder I traded for him, Tom Slaughter, it looks like the worst trade of all time. However, Slaughter was only taken 3rd overall to appease a 1st-gen player, Jakub Linholm, who wanted the honor of being drafted high. Had I kept the pick and not traded it, I would have selected Travis Boychuk or Logan Laich. The reason the pick ended up being so high is that somehow the team forgot how to play hockey in the second half of the season, ultimately losing the 17 point lead we had over Cologne and missing the playoffs by three points. Same shit, different day. The harshest trade reaction I think I’ve seen from the general public was indeed the Inko trade. I’ll admit it, I definitely overpaid, but I was the kind of GM who would much rather go for it and overpay, than sit back and just never even attempt to go in at all. People were calling for me to step down because of the trade, even though the 1st I traded ended up turning into a relatively forgettable player in Simon Tremblay (@Megster); if there was ever a trade where both teams lost, this was it. Vasteras would eventually make the playoffs in three straight seasons from S37-39, but we would never make it past the 1st round, losing to the Riga Reign every single time. By S39 I was burnt out; no matter what I did the team couldn’t find meaningful success, and the league was no longer fun for me. Looking back on my messages from that time, I definitely developed a chip on my shoulder early on from what felt like half of the league wanting me to fail; I became a bit ornery about trade negotiations near the end of my tenure (more on that later), but most of all, I just didn’t care anymore. I made my final trade in the S39 offseason, sending Leon Leitner, Devin Sundberg (@gregreg, who ironically actually wanted to be part of Vasteras, but didn’t fit the contention window), and a S41 1st to the Toronto Legion in exchange for star HOF #1C Niklas Lindberg (@boubabi) and #2D Ville Sixten. I acquired Lindberg not only to improve the roster, but to be my replacement as well, since being GM was the only thing tying me to the league at that point, and even then, that tie was hanging on by a thread. I stuck around during S39 to help boubabi out with transactions and showing him the ropes, but that was about it. I created a welfare player after Bagelface retired (Rift Pajodcast), but I didn’t pay too much attention to the league with him, going inactive ~Spring 2015 after a few seasons. 

 

Turning Over a New Leaf

When I stepped down from the GM position, I thought I would have felt sad or upset, but instead I felt nothing; seasons and seasons of having the weight/pressure of trying to succeed with Vasteras wore me down. I wasn’t upset that the franchise was being moved either, I knew that not only was it was inevitable, but that it was mostly my own fault as well. That’s where I actually felt a little sad, knowing that one of the VHL’s most notable (albeit infamous) franchises was going to be relocated because of my failures. I felt kind of dumb for even feeling sad about it, because it’s an online sim hockey league, it’s supposed to be fun; why did I care enough to feel sad that something was happening in an online community? Even if I didn’t want to admit it, the VHL had been something I took pride in and enjoyed for a few years, and while I wasn’t physically upset or anything, I was definitely sort of bummed at how those 9 seasons turned out. It certainly helped that boubabi made a sick logo for the new location, but I still was partial to Vasteras, which is why I asked to be traded when Rift Pajodcast was selected by the now-Stockholm Vikings in the S41 draft. Pajodcast would never play for the Vikings, being traded to the Seattle Bears after the draft; he would win a Continental Cup in one of the biggest finals upsets in S43, but that was pretty much the only highlight of his otherwise boring career. I took the VHL a lot less seriously in my short time of activity with Pajodcast, and it gave me a temporary renewed interest in the league; it wouldn’t last though, as shitposting can only get you so far. I would stay away from the league for around two real-life years, rejoining the league again in S53 with Rudolph Schmeckeldorf in Spring 2017, and stuck around a bit longer than I did with Pajodcast. I lasted for a little over half of Schmeckeldorf’s career, before being a VHLM Commish, VHLM GM, WJC Commish, the extra work of having a Project Player 2 (Boner), and real life led me to burn out again around in early October 2017. Hopefully this time I break the cycle of two-year gaps.

 

Trade Reputation

I would be remiss if I didn’t address my trading reputation in this article. Early on in my GM career I gained a reputation for hoarding late-round picks. This was valid, as I did usually request them in trades. At the time I was still semi-active in the SHL, and I did draft players who had joined from the SHL and went inactive, attempting to convince them to come back to the VHL. I didn’t really see anything wrong with this, as there was nothing stopping other VHL GMs from doing this. I would usually ask for late round picks as add-ins for trades, and most of the other GM’s usually didn’t care, and would throw the picks into the deals. Somewhere along the line me doing that somehow morphed into members thinking I would specifically tell SHL players to not update before the draft so other teams wouldn’t draft them, that I had handshake agreements with draftees who would only update for me, etc., none of which was true. I guess the reputation came from me actively recruiting a bunch of SHL players (as in, they would put me as their recruiter in their Create-A-Player thread) who would come to the VHL and usually stick around for a few weeks before deciding it wasn’t for them, and going inactive. I can see why some other members thought I was purposely telling the recruits to go inactive, but at the end of the day it just wasn’t true. In the latter half of my GM career I recall not even drafting anybody in the later rounds, often whoever was running the draft to give me the BPA, but nevertheless, the reputation persisted.

The other negative reputation I had in terms of trades was my willingness to trade 1st round picks. This criticism is also valid, but you have to understand the position I was in. I know it’s been awhile and my numbers could be off, but I can recall the number of people who actively wanted to play for Vasteras in the S30s on two hands. I doomed myself from the start with the CAL G/Baldwin trade; I think that made a lot of people think that I had no idea what I was doing, and that they would rather sit and watch the dumpster fire than try to help. And honestly, at the beginning, I really didn’t know what I was doing, I had to learn on the fly. I don’t remember a single big FA really giving us that much of a shot in free agency (outside of Muller in S32), but believe me, I tried. I went after Odin Tordahl (BOOM), Chico Salmon (@xDParK), Felix Zamora (@frescoelmo), and more, but the responses were all the same, “Thanks for the offer but…”. Also it certainly didn’t help that many of the older, more influential members of the league would just shit on Vasteras because it was “the cool thing to do”, letting that attitude rub off on younger members; I felt that because of Vasteras’ past reputation, as well as my own, my only real way to actually acquire a decent player was to overpay, and some GM’s knew this and would use it to their advantage. I could have easily sat back and kept all of my draft picks, but would doing that really have helped? I felt that we would have been in the same situation we were in from S28-S31, a perpetual rebuild that seemed like it was just spinning tires in the mud, and that just wasn’t the way I wanted Vasteras to be known. I could certainly write more here, but I think I'm done. I'm also not trying to call anybody out or anything, but I never felt that I was able to truly get my side of the story out.

 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Corco

[.sniffuM 1,741]

That was a better summation of my GM tenure then I could have ever written.

 

I was young at the time (I'm pretty sure I was like 16) and the VHL trade landscape was brutal at the time. I guess all I can say is by getting frustrated by my inability to find a decent deal I eventually settled for making any move on a lot of those deals. One day I hope to give it another go, hopefully I'll do much better after that rough first go.

 

Gonna have to give myself some time before I get to the parts that aren't about me, there's only so much Vasteras heartbreak I can take in one sitting.

[Advantage 2,892]

I did not realize the pick that was used on me was Vasty originally.  Interesting!  What if?!

[frescoelmo 1,276]

holy cannoli, Zamora was so long ago IRL

[solas 1,951]

2 hours ago, Corco said:

I don’t recall us ever talking about it much in depth, but I think he enjoyed being part of the franchise for the same reason I did, in that he wanted to be part of a team that would prove people wrong, having a soft spot for the eternal underdog. 

That's exactly why I enjoyed it.  Playing for Vasteras was some of the most fun I had in this league.  

Thanks for writing this  

Edited January 16, 2020 by solas

[Victor 10,954]

Holy Media Spot Batman!

 

You tried to fight the storm and lost, no shame in that. And GMing is about so much luck, which drafts you rebuild around, etc etc, I never thought you were one of the genuinely clueless ones. Just unlucky.

 

We were all younger then, I don't think I'd have pushed so hard to get rid of Vasteras today. But I also wouldn't be commish today so....

[diamond_ace 3,112]

2 hours ago, Victor said:

Holy Media Spot Batman!

 

You tried to fight the storm and lost, no shame in that. And GMing is about so much luck, which drafts you rebuild around, etc etc, I never thought you were one of the genuinely clueless ones. Just unlucky.

 

We were all younger then, I don't think I'd have pushed so hard to get rid of Vasteras today. But I also wouldn't be commish today so....

laughs in Zach Voss 

[Gustav 6,433]

On 1/15/2020 at 7:13 PM, Corco said:

With a draft class that included Volodymyr Rybak (Slobo), Alexander Labatte (@sterling), Ryan Sullivan (@Advantage), Miles Larsson (@sherifflobo), Theseus Athera (@DGFX.), Brody Hodgson (@Tylar) and more, surely Vasteras would connect on that pick right? Wrong. Walec decided to continue to push the rebuild back another season

Sound familiar?

[Kyle 667]

Fuck Vasteras

[Corco 1,242]

Claiming week 2/4

[Bushito 1,945]

Good article, reliving the glory days

[TheLastOlympian07 2,388]

#bringbackvasty

[Corco 1,242]

Claiming week 3/4

[Corco 1,242]

claiming week 4/4