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trella · 04-04-2021, 06:44 PM

Hey guys trella here. I'm not usually in the mood to write but I am right now so might as well take advantage of it. I should probably be doing school work or whatever but fuck it it's Easter Sunday yknow I'm chillin today. This offseason was in reality pretty quick but for me it was so slow. We had (and still have) some decisions on our hands and the decisions suck no matter what the solutions are. So it felt like forever but the draft came up quick as always.

I remember my first time being drafted the few days before the draft went by so slowly I was so pumped haha. Now they just kinda creep up on me and I'm like crap there's a draft in a week. I guess the pace has just sped up since I joined in general. I know somebody has that data somewhere. Probably some nerd like @luketd (if u do have them plz send them when u can im interested no rush though happy easter :3).

Alright now back to the draft so I can label this x2 media; heading into the draft, we had just one first round pick and a bunch of seconds. Interesting fact: I've drafted 5 times now with Tampa and I've made 11 picks in the first round, while trading down multiple times and out entirely in one draft. All thanks to @MCP_ 's work before me and some quick draft negotiations. That's why I love the draft, there's always so much going on. I love the constant trade talks. The few days before the draft and especially the few hours before and during the draft I'm in constant trade talks. It satisfies my brain in the right way I guess.

Our original first round pick was at 5, thanks to us free-falling at the end of the season. That really sucked, I would have been stoked to make the playoffs, but in reality it might be good that we didn't make it after last night. We traded pick 5 to Seattle for pick 10 and two future 2nds. We probably could have gotten better value but I was doin my boy @notorioustig a solid and holding onto the pick for him while other negotiations went on on his end. Two future 2nds is still great value to move down just 5 spots. We had to make a mental sacrifice as we thought that the guy we really had our eyes on would have been gone before pick 10. But there were a lot of really great options in this draft and I'm never scared to move down. I've done a lot of it, probably most of my trades have been trading down or out of the draft. Then, talks with the Blizzard started right up as they wanted to move up to pick 10 to jump over my divisional rivals New England and Manhattan, all three of which were looking to draft defensemen. At this point, I was looking for a forward. The guy at the top of our board was already supposed to be gone by pick 10, so when we were able to move down to 13 and get a reddit 1st for 10 and sadly KOBO, we had to take it. It really sucked to lose @ddrector as he was loyal and awesome through and through with us and is an ideal player to have on your team. We are just so full right now. We had so many picks, we expected more of them to go inactive haha. KOBO had a lot of value to us but we were going to lose him to free agency/waivers if we didn't trade him. Reddit 1st was the best I could get for him and I only move down 3 spots.

As pick 13 rolls around, we were absolutely dumbfounded. We realized that our guy, who was supposed to go at 8 or 9 to Winnipeg, was still on the board at 13! We have no idea how that happened but we will not complain. @fever95 fell right into our laps. He has 3 hall of fame players and one very good player who didn't have the team success. Most importantly, he's a really awesome guy who was worth a top 5 pick in my opinion. I'm sure the other teams are happy with who they drafted, and there were a ton of great players, but boy was I stoked to be able to draft fever at freaking 13th overall. DollaBill be talking about favoritism towards recreates and a vet like fever with 3 HoF players slides to 13. Chill out bozo.

The rest of the draft was pretty standard for us. We had picks 23, 31, and 36. We drafted two players that I am very confident in in @gaby who I was very happy to bring back to the franchise and another center in @Dagumpa who we hope can continue to develop nicely and integrate into the locker room. We ended up trading pick 36 (the last pick in the 2nd) to Calgary for a future Calgary 2nd. We can only lose value on that if Calgary wins the cup after we expand. Not saying that it won't happen, I got faith in my man @~~Mike Izzy~~. But I think it was a good deal for us.

In the third round we pick Podan Podanovich, a goalie @podzilla . He is a friend of Zoltan's so a friend of Zoltan's is a friend of ours. @W19eaver is our main man in the net but it can never hut to have a second guy.

The night finished off pretty quickly after the draft with just a few more things to figure out in the coming week. Overall, I think the night went super well. We ended up coming out with:

Ethan Bouchard - D
Bob Duncan - C
Marco Barengurb - C
Podan Podanovich - G
Reddit 1st
3 future 2nds

Of course, time will tell, but I'm feeling very confident about this draft night.

I'll take questions if you guys have any, thanks.

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