It's Been a Year

[Gustav 6,434]

...no, seriously, it's actually been a full calendar year since I was hired as GM of HC Davos. I only realized this yesterday, and today I hit "oh shit it's Monday and I need a PT", so there's no better way to talk about it than in a long article that will get me a couple weeks into the coming semester at school as well. I'm going to summarize what exactly has happened to get me (and Davos) to this point, as well as (hopefully) provide a fair evaluation of what went right and what went wrong. Let's get on with it.

 

 

S70: The Hiring

The league collectively realizing its mistake after I was allowed to make a few trades.

 

I've told my league origin story a few times, so I won't get into that beyond linking this for the uninformed (damn, did I write differently a year and a half ago...doesn't feel like it). I was originally hired as Hounds GM with the three-team expansion in S66, a season after joining the league, and ended up being generally respected down there...probably thanks in part to my own large ego when I wrote a couple articles about the Gustav Effect. This article isn't about me in the VHLM, though, so let's talk about the move up.

 

My hiring and the situation surrounding it was something controversial that I didn't want to step on and get people angry about when I started, so it wasn't something I spent much time talking about then...and by the time the waters had settled there not many people cared. But since it's been a year, I feel like I can offer my insight on things without raising drama over it.

 

Yes, Davos needed a fresh start. It was clear that by S70 things had gone downhill quite a bit. There was the whole missing drafts thing that probably pushed Shawn over the edge of unemployment, and by multiple accounts the culture had fallen apart--I know of at least one player who attributed an absence to a complete lack of support under former management, and the S70 draft saw (on top of the controversial move of Magnum and Hextall, among other things, to Toronto) some players requesting trades upon being drafted because of everything negative they'd heard about Davos--which I think is a bit of a bad look for the league community as a whole as well because newer players should be given every opportunity to enjoy their team, regardless of what others think. It's why I refused to give my opinions on VHL teams to my players as a VHLM GM despite the fact that I used to despise Calgary...and ironically enough, wasn't much of a Davos fan either. But yes, if you think Davos gets bad press now, turn the clock back six seasons and tell me what you see.

 

The situation surrounding my hiring itself is a bit murky, even to me, and even though I do affirm that a GM turnover was the right move (whether or not it involved me), I'm not convinced it was done correctly. If  what Shawn said about it was true timing-wise, he was given a "warning" around the same time I was first asked if I was interested (which I should hope means "informally given the job" because it would also be a bad move to hype someone up for something like that and pull it back). What that means is simple--assuming Shawn was telling the truth, the decision to fire him and hire me was made before he was given a warning. Which is bullshit. I haven't agreed with much Shawn has posted in the past year-plus (even though I've found him to be a nice person in DMs on a few occasions), but if things actually played out like that, I agree that the actual firing process was done wrong. A warning should have been thrown out before replacement was even considered, and even if it wasn't, just being up front with things and handing out a firing would have been more fair. We've also got the whole "you need to step down" thing rather than "you're being let go", which I guess makes sense if the GM actually cares about doing that to make things look better, but in the case where they don't, they certainly shouldn't be asked to make it look like it was their decision.

 

Anyway, here I was taking over a team that was absolutely gutted and I was fairly hyped for it. Did you VHLM GMs know that the portal puts a lot more buttons next to your players than just the "release" one? That didn't occur to me for some reason but perhaps I'm just stupid. I got a warm welcome to the team from @Ahma...

 

The very first message I was sent, by the way.

 

...and reactions to my being hired seemed generally positive. I'd made a new team server by the time I was officially hired because I was anticipating a bit of saltiness and wasn't sure exactly how I'd be received and figured building the team culture from the ground up would be the right move--which did end up working out well as I put together a server the way I wanted to and brought in a short list of people from around the league to help out with activity while things were still dead (I remember considering inviting literally every active member of the Hounds discord, but figured that might end up being unfair to the Hounds discord). Activity was at a minimum on the player end, in part due to a lack of active players--notable contributors were Ahma, of course, and @Brrbisbrr, whose goaler Samuel Ross was a former Davos first-rounder (and one of the nicest people I've ever met here) who fell off around the 300-TPE mark but came back right about when I was promoted.

 

As far as transactions go, there wasn't a ton of anything significant. The first thing I ever agreed to was a two-part cap dump for Riga which I should have tried to win...but new me made a more or less neutral move as I shipped out basically my only sellable asset in Jagger Philliefan for Anthony Matthews and a pair of 4ths (the more exciting one of which became Jared Willis, who made the roster but eventually left in free agency and retired). 

 

There's one more trade left, and that's the second-worst decision I ever made...which ironically ended up being the best trade I ever made later on. I moved what was projected to be a lotto pick to Seattle for what was projected to be a late 1st, as well as a 2nd and defenseman Alex Bridges. Well, it turns out that I didn't fully understand the value of lotto picks, and ended up getting flamed hard for that trade. Some people legitimately wanted me gone over it, and I had multiple people hitting me up in private to tell me that I'd just been ripped off. Flash forward to the end of S70, and Toronto makes the playoffs and the pick I traded away drops down in the 1st (though I believe Seattle turned it into something nice anyway)...and flash forward to the end of S71 where New York has a season more disappointing than any single season I've ever been handed with Davos and takes a potential cup-winning roster to near last place and makes that a lotto pick--effectively paying me to move up. I'd still call this the best result to a trade I've ever had, and I stumbled upon it by sheer dumb luck. 

 

This was also the season where I hired Proto as my AGM. The circumstances under which he left the league were a bit sketchy, and I can't say I agreed with everything he did or how he'd go about making some suggestions or arguments on league matters...but there's still a lot to be said about the activity and enthusiasm he brought to Davos in our first couple seasons. With things being as empty as they were on the player side, Proto was an active contributor to team discussion, and one who had an actual place on the team and who truly cared--something that we desperately needed from more than just two or three of us.

 

Anyway, at this point I was just happy to be there. Davos finishes last, but the team environment is newly active, I'm getting great feedback from players on the state of our team community, and life is good.

 

 

S71: The Setup

I build up hype with the most Davos-ish decision possible by trading for Joel Ylonen for no reason.

 

I wasn't expecting much of anything after S70, and I made a couple new-guy moves again in 71. After the season ended, I traded a 2nd for a roster dump thinking it would help me (spoiler alert: it really didn't). I also traded Shawn to Seattle for a couple later picks (I don't remember what exactly my motivation was, but it had nothing to do with the member/GM situation for those wondering about that) and was immediately messaged by a few more people who told me I got ripped off again (Shawn included).

 

Weirdly enough, none of that happened when I traded a 2nd to New York in what I consider THE dumbest move of my GM career. I gave up a 2nd-round pick for a late-career Joel Ylonen, who the team was in absolutely no position to use, and took a cap dump with that as well. Why? I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. Maybe there was some thought at the back of my mind then that I'm forgetting now (maybe I thought I could turn a profit or something?), but I know I wasn't planning on competing and there's no reason for this I can think of at the moment. Now, I'm stupid, but I'm not that stupid, so I quickly realized my mistake and, after hitting up every team in existence  and panicking for a few hours straight, I finally found a team willing to pay up with a 2nd in Prague, effectively taking on a cap dump to move down in the S73 draft. We'll get to how this happened later, but the situation actually ended up working in my favor as Prague's pick in S73 ended up being, surprisingly enough, higher than my original one, thus technically putting me on the winning end of a brainless move two seasons in a row.

 

...maybe I should stop with "this should work ok but it doesn't" and start with "this is completely idiotic but it's somehow going to work out right". After all, it happened twice.

 

Another interesting (albeit somewhat meaningless) tidbit is that I ended up moving Matthews out for Pat Svoboda and Vancouver's third-round pick in S73...which I then used to draft Empty. Though the move really had no bearing on any part of my future one way or another, it meant that I traded for @StamkosFan twice in the same deal.

 

The actual big news was the arrival of Roque Davis, who we got 2nd overall and who won both the Stolzschweiger and the Valiq. This was our first move for a player who we hoped to be at the core of the team's next generation, and so far it was working out well.

 

Apart from that, S71 was fairly insignificant. Davos finished last for a record third time in a row, and I was impatiently waiting for the S72 draft.

 

 

S72: The Gustavening

I make a ton of trades, notably going from getting one person mad at me to another.

 

This was the draft where I had two lotto picks when I started...and ended up with another one when that S70 trade with Seattle went well for me. I ended up having three picks in the top four, and when all was said and done after the lotto was run, I ended up with 1, 2, and 4. Now, I knew exactly what I wanted--I'd talked with both @Sonnet and @McWolf, two of my best sim league friends, about all that was Davos since I was hired, and with their players being #1 and #2 in TPE among people not named Vaakanainen, the situation was perfect for them to be my picks at 1 and 2. I wasn't quite sure what to do with 4, and I had Beav breathing on me for a long time about getting one of my picks, so I traded down to 9 with a bit of an unorthodox asking price of David Oquinn for a 2nd--which I'm actually somewhat proud of (especially since Beav then went and drafted Penny at 4). I didn't really care about 9 either (I think I meant to buy someone with it), so I moved it to Moscow for a 1st in S73 (among other things) when nobody was selling. This doesn't mean anything on my end, but Moscow used that pick to draft twists, meaning that I were less educated on matters I'd point to what happened at both 4 and 9 and scream about how I made some big brain moves.

 

The draft came with a couple busts as well, notably Joe Exotic (remember the week when everyone was watching Tiger King? Yeah, that was back in S71), a max earner who fell to 19th...and apparently decided to disappear off the face of the earth right before the draft. Jer Lefebvre seemed like a nice pick at 23, but fell off the wagon after a while as well...and a good amount of 4th-round mining got me one player who made it up in Willis, mentioned earlier.

 

But it wasn't just the draft that made the offseason a big deal. By this point I was tired of being bad, tired of coming in last, and wanted to get out of the hole I was in as fast as I could. I gave up way too much for a rights deal to get Acyd Burn (who thankfully signed) and right after that knocked on Malmo's door for my own player, Jerry Garcia, and switched him to winger when Bridges offered to switch to defense. That wasn't all, though--another trade with Vancouver for Jerry Wang gave us some more forward depth (as well as putting the only two players in VHL history named Jerry on the same team), something we expanded upon while adding some more star power at forward when we got Jet Jaguar and Killy Foilen from Moscow in this trade. And oh, by the way, ACL TEAR signed with us in free agency. I remember reading this article where twists spent 500 words trashing me as a GM and acting like goalies grew on trees (nobody had a goalie for sale--yes, I asked--and apparently that was my fault), and that's probably the one thing that's pissed me off the most as GM here even though I didn't really react to it.

 

I had a bit of a learning experience after the Jaguar trade as this season was the first where I had to deal with a competitive roster. Long story short, and private things private as much as possible, I had two players who were top-tier in TPA and who I had on two different lines as they were the ones with the highest FO ratings. I'd never had to take into account the fact that players aiming for success would want to always be in a position where success was most achievable (i.e. first line) and that this would especially be the case for players who deserved it. Some talks with some people later, and I was moving Burn out to New York in a three-way deal that led to me getting HHH from Vancouver in return. The way I did the lines after that point didn't make the issue disappear (you know what they say about insanity), and led to some more private drama for me which almost jeopardized our S73 roster in a way which shall remain without specific explanation. TL;DR: people want things and that's okay.

 

Although some of these moves were spectacular and arguably did a ton to get Davos set up for the future (on paper), things didn't work out as well as we wanted and we ended up losing in the wild-card round. I was still brought up for the Knight that season, and for reasons unknown to me now I wrote this article which may or may not have led to me not winning it. I came out of S72 feeling happy overall with what I'd done and ready for the next go at it.

 

 

S73: The Last Stand

I don't know if I realized what would happen after my S66 players left.

 

I guess S72 was my first time running a team with a competitive roster, and being hyped to not finish last as I was led me to pretty much only be hyped. Garcia and Jaguar were both S66 and retiring, and to make matters a bit weirder I traded for Charlie Paddywagon (a former Davos first-gen who was selected a pick before Garcia in S66, by the way). S73 would be the last go-round for all of them, and still-inexperienced-with-good-teams me not fully understanding the significance of this probably contributed to what came later on.

 

Apart from the Paddywagon move, we had a couple other bits of news. Ross was moved out to Helsinki while we let S71 2nd-rounder (and current player) Joakim Bruden take over as starter, and I got rid of our 1st-rounder in this draft for Soren Jensen, a move which ended up working reasonably well as Jensen ended up re-signing and sticking with us for a while. Apart from that, though, I'd basically set us up for a big step back on paper in S74.

 

We'll get to that later, though. We were hyped yet again and ready to go--and we wanted some of that sweet taste of success. I liked how Bruden was developing, and of course Hornet, Winter, and Davis were coming along great. Our young players were doing pretty well for themselves, which I guess may have contributed to my thinking that having three high-profile members of the S66 class wouldn't be an issue come S74. The draft was relatively uneventful as I didn't pick until the 3rd round, but Vlad Imir proved to be a steal at 42nd overall when he made it up (and is in fact a current member of the team).

 

But alas, Simon did what Simon did and things went the way of S72, with us finishing toward the middle and being knocked out in the wild-card round. The frustration mounted enough that we almost lost Davis in free agency that offseason after his rookie contract was up. Almost...

 

 

S74: The Fisting

Have a meme, because this was the first season where nobody ripped on Davos in a trade thread.

 

It's possible I was being a bit dramatic about all those retirements, but they certainly didn't help us out. On the bright side, we still had Hornet/Winter/Davis/Bruden, all developing, and I felt good about picking Shawty Nananana, with a member I'd known from my first days on the site in @Grape in the draft (something which seems to have paid off reasonably well). 

 

Josh was going to be a free agent, actually...but then I managed to talk playoff wizard Rayz Funk into signing with us, so we got another season of Davis--something I remember Dil making fun of me for for some reason. I felt a bit weird doing this, because, in addition to relegating Bruden to the backup role (which felt unfair as he'd just been the starter in S73), I also had to trade away John Poremba, someone I'd just gotten in a trade from Calgary, for roster space. This was the first time I actually felt a bit guilty about a move I'd made, and thankfully everyone was cool with it--though I could understand if that weren't the case. There were no blockbuster trades this offseason, though I did end up trading for Joe Proto after Proto had left altogether after an argument for reasons that remain somewhat unclear to me--so it did feel a bit strange having his player's washed-up corpse on my team.

 

As the season progressed, it became clear that we needed a forward more than anything else--though no elites were for sale so I went to New York for someone in step-below territory in Owen Nolan (who actually had a great S74, though that was largely due to number inflation on NY). We went into a massive skid just after the halfway point, and found ourselves a good way out of the playoffs with only 15 games to go or something like that--and then went on a gigantic tear and almost crawled our way back into the playoffs with a big win streak. The last sim of the season was the first in about a week that didn't go our way, and we found ourselves tied with Prague in points for the last spot...with the exact same record...with the tie being broken by ROW.

 

...of which Prague had two more.

 

 

We'd been shut out from the playoffs by the narrowest of margins. I was angry, the players were angry, it wasn't fun to watch things go down the way they did especially given that last week of false hope. I hit up Josh and found out that (as I expected given our awful luck) he was going elsewhere in the offseason. We'd just lost our fourth super-high-TPA player for (what I thought would be) nothing in two seasons, something which threw a monkey wrench in the "git gud" plan.

 

 

S75: The New Light (Maybe)

Town of Salem players will recognize this GIF.

 

TARO. That is all.

 

Not really, but that's what I'm hyped about. I entered the offseason here thinking about how I could possibly turn a profit off of Davis. From the start, I threw up big notices that his rights were available, and had a few teams interested. It was looking like I could get at least a 2nd out of it, and I got three teams to commit to that if I'm remembering correctly. So, I messaged all three to see what they'd be able to do to push themselves into #1 territory in the Davis rights sweepstakes. One dropped out, but I had two still highly interested and willing to go farther. I think I got the offers up to a 2nd and a 3rd from Calgary, at which point Victor steps in and asks how I'd feel about doing a sign-and-trade for a couple seasons. I think this is great, obviously, and Josh graciously agrees, so what could have been super cheap and super devastating ended up getting me a 1st and a 3rd.

 

Now, this meant I was down a defenseman, and when a bit of news broke out of Malmo, I was happy to hear it. Tyler Walker wanted out. There was interest from one other team (that being London), who offered about the same as I got for Davis, so I threw in another 3rd to the deal and that was enough to make the trade happen. Effectively, I'd just traded someone who I was going to lose anyway for an active and committed player who I had ties with in @Advantage. I don't know about you, but I think that worked about as well as it could have. Our defense was made marginally better (or, at least, a contribution was made to the locker room) when newly-inactive Chance Rust, a 4th-round steal of mine in S72, was dumped off to Riga when the opportunity to sign a similar-caliber player in Bobby Wyman (@Lefty_S) arose. 

 

Then there was the draft. I had my own player, of course, and this was the last season us GMs got to abuse the player pick rule--so yeah, of course I'm going to pick Taro, and of course I'm going to pick him late. Missing the playoffs gave us the third overall pick, but I didn't want to trade down from there as I really wanted to draft Kunibuni UnGuri at that point to satisfy our need for a long-term, high-caliber goaler. So I hit up a few teams about the possibility of exchanging 1sts...which DC accepted, putting Taro at 9 and letting me hold onto 3 for UnGuri. All in all, quite the productive offseason, even if our roster still didn't really stack up to what we had in 72 or 73.

 

S75 was also the most aggravating season yet for sim results. We sucked so hard at the beginning that Hedge wrote an article about how bad we sucked. Weirdly enough, things turned around right after that article went up--and over the next 30 games or so, we were the best team in the EU (that's not even an exaggeration; we had the most points in the conference between the posting of the article and whenever it was that I checked on this). We'd found our way back into a playoff spot, and things were looking good.

 

Then one day, immediately, STHS decides that we have to suck again. I didn't touch the lines. The lines I was running were the same ones I'd run for the last 40% of the season when we were straight-up dominant. But between one sim and the next, they apparently just...stopped working. We dropped something like 6 or 8 in a row and sucked again for the rest of the season. If it weren't for Taro, UnGuri, and Walker being on the younger side, I would have thrown in the towel and rebuilt this offseason.

 

 

S76: The Handoff

We catch some sass upon trading for Dawson.

 

So things are coming along reasonably well in the course of Taro, UnGuri, and Walker developing. We have a younger core already, which is what makes it a bit strange when figuring out where to go next. There's a bit of an issue, though--we have three players retiring after this season.

 

Jensen is S69, Jokinen is S69, and I had no idea that Lewis Dawson was planning to retire when I traded for him in the offseason (in all fairness, Hedge gave up about what I gave up, so I'm not sure anyone knew until the Davos deal was done). What this means, though, is interesting--when Jokinen leaves, I will have lost the last player who was on the roster when I took over in S70. Every player I've got will be different, and the state of the team, for better or for worse, will be pretty much entirely my doing. There can be no more "yeah but Shawn did x" from anybody, because that's no longer a valid statement. It remains to be seen how we handle this round of retirements, and it should be interesting to find out how the sims treat us between now and the trade deadline. What happens in that stretch will likely dictate what happens this season and will likely have some sort of influence on our future.

 

Our prospect pool is looking decent--aside from the younger players already on our roster, we have S75 draftees Thomas King (@Duddy) and Vladimir Mlinski (@Brrbisbrr) ready to make the jump next season, as well as promising S76 prospect Brian Moreau (@weekz). S74 draftee Jim Allen (@jimmyallen93) could finally make it up as well, and we may have our future backup goaler in Jurgis Kalvelis Blazevicius (@efiug), an active member with ties to my old Hounds teams who slid way too deep in this past draft. We actually own our next couple 1st-round picks (shocker!) and going forward I hope to have a better sense of the future.

 

 

It's been a hell of a year. I've gone through a lot of good, a whole lot of bad, learned quite a bit, met some good people, and love every minute of it. Here's to more success in the future--I'll try to be less shit, I promise.

 

4,687 words | see you in a month

[DoktorFunk 810]

David

[Banackock 8,068]

4 minutes ago, DoktorFunk said:

David

[Bobo 514]

Da-video

[solas 1,951]

Great article!  I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Davos since my return based on their reputation so hopefully you can get some better sim luck soon.

[Brrbisbrr 207]

Thanks for the shout out! David forever!

[Ahma 1,431]

Interesting read and nice insight into things.

 

Hah, I complete forgot I sent you that, but trust me when I say it was filled with a lot of love for the franchise (and with fear for rebrand/location). I'm somewhat paranoid about Davos rebrand/location when there's a leadership change. Had no idea what you're about when you took over Davos. Looking back at it, Gustav has been an extremely solid GM, despite all of our horrible, traumatic sim luck.

 

#BleedPurple

 

edit.

It's been a year? o_O Time sure flies by.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Ahma

[Beaviss 4,957]

@GustavMattias Do me next!

[hedgehog337 3,483]

36 minutes ago, Beaviss said:

@GustavMattias Do me next!

 

S59-66: you suck 

S67: lucky

S68-73: you suck

S74: lucky

S75-till you step down: you suck 

 

end of the article.

[Beaviss 4,957]

Just now, hedgehog337 said:

 

S59-66: you suck 

S67: lucky

S68-73: you suck

S74: lucky

S75-till you step down: you suck 

 

end of the article.

 

 

[Victor 10,967]

At least now we know the cause of your ills is using dark mode on the forums.

 

And Ahma of course. Sounds like he won't be on the team next season so I'm putting all my life savings on a Davos championship.

[BOOM 8,768]

Excellent read Gustav. I hope you actually get the results you deserve (better ones to be clear). 

[Doomsday 4,130]

David

[Lefty_S 91]

David

[Gustav 6,434]

7 hours ago, Victor said:

At least now we know the cause of your ills is using dark mode on the forums.

 

smh light mode boomers

 

Dark mode looked bad/weird to me at first but I do NOT miss the eye strain writing this article would have given me staring into a white screen given that I did a large chunk of it at like 2 AM.

[Ahma 1,431]

10 hours ago, Victor said:

And Ahma of course. Sounds like he won't be on the team next season so I'm putting all my life savings on a Davos championship.

I'm a betting man and I'd put money on it too!

[efiug 320]

big brain move to tag me at the very end of the article to get me to read it all to see where i was mentioned.

[Gustav 6,434]

54 minutes ago, efiug said:

big brain move to tag me at the very end of the article to get me to read it all to see where i was mentioned.

 

The name of the game is player  engagement 

[a_Ferk 766]

Very good read Gustav. The fact that you ending up coming out on top in 2 "dumb" trades at the time is pretty hilarious. It was also interesting to see that the picks you traded in S72, 4 and 9, turned out to be penny and twists. Bullet dodged there. As always your punctuation, grammar, story-telling and humor are top tier. I especially liked the memes at the end. 10/10 article my boi

[a_Ferk 766]

David

[Gustav 6,434]

WEEK

NUMBER

TWO

[Gustav 6,434]

This was interrupted by theme week, but now that we're back--week 3.

[Gustav 6,434]

Week 4 and we are out of this thread