Road to the S72 Founder's Cup, Pt. III: S71 Playoffs

[McWolf 3,115]

Part I: S71 Offseason

Part II: S71 Season

 

The Cinderella run never was. To be absolutely fair, I never thought we would win it all this season. That's why this series is called Road to the S72 Founder's Cup, not Road to the S71 Founder's Cup. But it was a nice preview of what the playoffs look like for our players that will be back next season. And we did steal two games from supposedly the second best team in the league, to which I wish good luck in the rest of their playoffs run. So now we look back at the future.

 

S71 Draftees TPE Progression

3.01 - C Cassius Gardner (89 TPE at the Draft, 127 TPE now)

3.06 - D Bobby Wyman (58 TPE at the Draft, 128 TPE now)

3.11 - RW Adam Frence (61 TPE at the Draft, 157 TPE now)

4.05 - D Erik Hjalmarsson (52 TPE at the Draft, 66 TPE now)

4.11 - LW Kazimir Komarov (109 TPE at the Draft, 184 TPE now)

5.03 - LW Gino Alkamino (80 TPE at the Draft, 116 TPE now)

 

Looking at that list, I wouldn't be surprised if we started next season with two players (Komarov and Frence) north of 200 TPE, and 3 possibly around 150 TPE (Wyman, Gardner, Alkamino). That gives us a great core, better than what I would have expected to build with 6 mid-round picks. Add to that a high TPE free agent, our three first-round picks and possibly up to three second-round picks (hopefully, hit me up fellow GMs) and we should have one of the best team in the VHLM from start to finish. All in all, I expect this team to have more than 8 players with more than 200 TPE by the playoffs (up to 11, if our 5 active returning players and our 6 top 2 round selections reach it, but 8 is more conservative and realistic) , which looks good compared to the better teams in the league this season (Ottawa has 7, Philadelphia has 7, Las Vegas has 7, Yukon has 6).

 

The biggest question mark at this moment is the goaltending situation, but with the literal fuckton of newer and veteran members that created goaltenders, it should be easy enough to get one in the draft that will reach a high enough TPE-level to help the team when it matters, without having to overpay in the draft like other teams had to do in the past. This is not making me too nervous for now. We are still on the right tracks for my initial objective, and we might not have to sacrifice the future of the franchise too much to achieve it. Keep it up, Wild!