A Reflection on Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen's Final Season

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

A Reflection on Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen's Final Season

 

All good things must come to an end. This can be applied to both Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen's career and also his time with the Moscow Menance. Going into this player, my goal (once again) was to create a Hall of Fame level player, as I had none before. My previous two attempts (Jeff and Shayne) failed for various reasons, but at the end of the day, neither really survived as a HoF prospect after their 2nd or 3rd season. Smitty was different. I was the top prospect in the draft (even though I was taken second - a second time one of my players was taken second and the player taken 1st had a inferior career) and most importantly, I still had the drive to earn TPE at a TPE whore level. I had fortunate playing circumstances while on Davos, but it was when I moved to Moscow that my individual career truly shined. However, at roughly the trade deadline of the previous season, I became aware of the idea that I may not have a spot team in the following season. This was then confirmed at the end of the season. After never having a player in free agency who was an impact player, I was then given a second opportunity to go to free agency.

 

The problem? Rosters were extremely tight. Expansion was not yet a thing, so there were very few rosters that weren't straight rebuilding that had room just for me, yet alone room for myself and for Gritty, who I preferred to play with. At the end of the day, there were three serious offers on the table - Vancouver, Prague, and Toronto.

 

Toronto - This was admittedly a bit of a long shot, but the GM was attempting to jump start out of a rebuild be signing ALL the free agents. I forget the specifics at this point, but it the team basically had room for 5-ish free agents to band together. I sort of considered the idea, but once some of the other free agents backed out, this opportunity never made sense for me.

 

Vancouver - Definitely the best team of the three offers. This team featured Borwinn and HHH, as well as other young and upcoming players whose names are escaping me right now. The Wolves had just enough cap room after some moves to have room for both Smitty and Gritty. Gritty had started his career in Vancouver, so it made a good story for him to go back there to finish his career. In the end, this is the team we ended up signing with.

 

Prague - So, we signed with Vancouver, but Prague was actually the move I was pushing for. They were not the better team, and honestly, I don't know if relative they would have been the better team in their conference relative to Vancouver if we were on the team, but my thought process was that Prague represented an easier path to the Continental Cup than Vancouver, since the EU Conference was much worse than the NA Conference. If Prague was able to secure a top third goalie, than I think this would have been the move we made, but it wasn't meant to be.

 

So we joined Vancouver and had a bit of a rough start. Then it extended to a rough quarter of the season, where we were still 4th or 5th in NA. It was roughly at that time that Beaviss decided to trade away Borwinn and basically give up on the rest of the season. After getting over my "WTF" stage, I was assured that I would be moved to a contender, and I was. I was moved to Calgary, which was the number 1 team in NA. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it done, and then Smitty retired. The End since I'm over 500 words.

[Victor 10,522]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who confuses Borwinn and Freeman.