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5ympathies · 11-22-2020, 07:53 PM

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2x Draft Media, WC: 2071 + research?

Apologies for the giant logo. I cannot be fucked to re-size that.

Wagwan crodies. To the shock of those close to me, I have chosen to rescind my media grader application and so I have to earn that $5mil they would have paid me some other way. In this case, we are back to the seasonal spam of everybody in the league regurgitating their take on draftees. Previously, I've touched upon Hamilton draftees, and then on New England draftees, because I spent 8 seasons with New England, and Hamilton never has enough picks to make it worthwhile to talk about them. I'm writing this before the draft, and so even I don't know who or what I'm going to end up saying. Also I hope that reid does not grade this because that boy is real stingy when it comes to giving people fake money in a simulated hockey league.

Well the draft is over and Hamilton has drafted two players, with one of them being Ben Waters so. New England has drafted 5 players this season but I'm not feeling the vibes this time around and so I'll just instead briefly touch upon the first 5 or 10 or 15 or so players drafted of which 1-3 of them are New England players anyways.

First things first, this years S57 SHL Entry Draft was located at Chuck E Cheese. The exact franchise location was undisclosed, but nonetheless I do love to see it.

First things first. New England traded S58/S60 first and S60 2nd to Tampa in exchange for S57 First overall. General chatter from those around me have given off the impression that although this was not a bad trade for New England, it was a much better trade for Tampa Bay. First overall, New England drafted Jonathan Granström. Consensus first overall pick, even I had him on my mock and I didn't even update it at 3:44 when the site was crashing. Granstrom, a centre (always an esteemed position in the NHL, in the SHL I have no idea what people look for so I can't actually say for certain if centres are more esteemed than wingers) played for and will continue to play for Detroit in the SMJHL (cause he'll be sent down 100%). Sources say he is very active in the Detroit locker room, a fact I'm sure that New England was aware of when they traded up for him, and he is also one of the top earns of his draft class so far. This is especially surprising as he is not a re-create. He already has over $11 million in the bank, which is fucking insane considering that I've been here years and only have $20 (20 mil, not 20 dollars). Stats wise, he played about 10 minutes a game, and most likely that will jump up next season once he maxes (maybe not, maybe Detroit is stacked, it's not like I'm going to look), and he finished with 8 goals and 7 assists. Points wise, I really have no expertise in speaking about this as I played juniors in the STHS era, so I really just do not know what constitutes a strong season FMH wise in the juniors. Regardless, and I know that everyone says this every single season about every single pick made, I believe he will be a strong prospect to add to the pool, and I think it was worth it for New England to trade up.

The second overall pick, was initially belonging to SFP. It was then traded to us (Hamilton) along with a S55 2nd, a S56 3rd, and Ian Venables, in the offseason before S55. We then traded it just recently, about a week or so ago, to Minnesota along with CaptainCrazy, in exchange for Han and MIN S58 1st and S61 2nd. With this pick, MIN selected Arsene Leclerc. Pretty sure, this pick was on my mock as well, so no surprises so far in the draft. (I feel like I've been writing for hours, how am I only 2 deep??) Going off TPE gain again, he looks to have slightly more TPE than the first overall pick. With New England seemingly having a full defensive prospect pipeline, it makes sense that they passed on Leclerc, and it makes sense than Minny took him without any reservations (of course, this is all conjecture, because I have not researched what New England's current d-men are like, and how am I to know that minny took him without any reservations, I'm not in the war room). Leclerc plays for the Anaheim Outlaws, averaging just over 21 minutes a game, which is not a lot for a d-man, but quite a but for a rookie season. He finished with 7 goals and 15 assists, which seems to me to be a decent amount in his first season, and I'm sure that we will see that number increase in the seasons to come. Leclerc is a re-create and currently his bank account is sitting at $50 million, which is a level of wealth that I can only hope to one day reach, and it is clear that he will have no problems purchasing training and equipment for quite a few seasons at the minimum.

LAP drafted third overall, trading S59 and S61 1sts with Buffalo exactly 7 days ago. They selected Sean Gatez a D-man playing for Maine Timber. (Was Maine Montreal, Lethbridge, or St. Louis? I asked nour and gabe but they weren't listening and so i guess I'll never know. Maybe they were just a regular expansion team. Who knows) Gatez is a new comer to the site sitting around the 10th TPE ranking mark, which is a decent mark. Perhaps a little reach, as other higher earning defence-men were available, but I guess LAP saw something they liked during the interviews. Also the difference in TPE between him and higher ranked d-men is less than 10, so essentially negligible. Sitting at just under $3mil, his bank account is looking a little light, and will have to make sure to put in the effort in order to pump those numbers up so that he can afford equipment. His rookie season was a bit of a mixed bag. He had plenty of ice time and managed to get 65 shots on goal, but finished with only 3 goals and 6 assists, and a plus minus of - 18. Not ideal, but I hope it gets better in the seasons to come.

Alright new day, fresh mind, back to grinding out that word count.

Fourth overall was another first gen player, Vlastislav Malik of the Kelowna Knights. About 7th currently in TPE rankings, only 3 behind 5th (a very tight race) and considering two of the higher TPE earning players above him are goalies (which NOLA wasn't looking to draft) it was about expected that he would be taken this high. According to my extensive research he played 3rd line for Kelowna, on a line consisting entirely of rookies and averaged roughly 14 minutes of ice time a game. Word on the street is that this was a really bad Kelowna team and so I think it's reasonable to expect his ice time to increase to at least 17 minutes a game next season. He finished with 4 goals and 8 assists which is somewhat lacklustre but 90 hits, even with that limited amount of ice time. There is no doubt that he will exceed over 100 hits next season once he is playing more. Unfortunately his plus minus was -17, which is terrible, but I guess that explains why people are saying the whole team was terrible, so we won't fault him for that. In the bank he is sitting at just about $3 mil (and I know that send-down contracts are bigger now) but he will have to work on some media in order to be able to purchase equipment.

Fifth (and potentially the last player I will write about because I remember how much this turns my brain to mush, lol me thinking yesterday that I would be able to write about 10 or 15 players, what a clown I was) is Dwayne Gretzky drafted by the Winnipeg Jets. Before I delve deep into his stats and gen history and money and points and all that. I just want to say. Pretty good name, better than average imo. Not great, but pretty good. Gretzky played in the juniors for Newfoundland, another team that I don't know were relocated or if they were just a regular expansion team (but I seem to recall that they were Lethbridge?). The team must have been pretty good because he's in the top 10 TPE wise of this draft and was only playing 8 minutes a game for them. With his limited ice time though, he still managed to finish with 4 goals and 8 assists as a left winger. He had over 30 shots but finished with a plus minus of -6. Assuming some of the top guys of Newfoundland age up this season and move on to their respective SHL teams, we'll be able to see how Gretzky can perform with the added ice time he's bound to receive. 15 points would be the absolute minimum I could see him getting if he was only playing 11 minutes a night. With even more ice time, we will see even more points.

And there it is. I'm only 400 words away from 2k so I guess I'll have to do a little recap or something to really draw out this article and make sure that I get properly compensated for my work and effort. This rambling section at the end is still draft related tho (looking at you reid) so if you're a grader and assessing this I still expect to be given 2x the payout for all of these words. Overall, considering I had no idea the draft was yesterday until like 4 hours before, and considering the minimal amount of research I did, I believe it to be a pretty average draft, if not slightly higher than average. I feel like it was just a few seasons ago where there was this huge outcry that the league was dying and nobody was being recruited and the drafts were all pretty small, and while this one is incomparable to S46 that had huge talent even in the later rounds (I was picked 37th overall), it had two and a half rounds of players with 18 picks per round instead of 16 (so that's basically three full rounds in the old standards). The more I talk about this the less convinced I am about what I was just saying. This draft was fine, not great, not slightly above average like I just said it was. It was fine.

The next draft will be much larger I presume because of the recruiting that happened last week on a few subreddits. Team Canada saw about 6 or 7 new members join in the past few days, and that's only new members that joined as Canadians, I'm sure plenty of other nations saw their numbers increase as well. Overall, I believe the league to be in a healthy place currently, and am excited like tons of others to see what the merch store has for us next week. 50 words away, so just a few more sentences. Team Canada just won gold, so that is my second IIHF Gold medal, excited for the $2mil I'm going to get from that, and that money has pretty much rendered my time spent on this article as wasted, because had I remembered that we get money from that I never would have wrote this.

Anyway, that's the 2k mark so we are all done here. I will see you all next draft for hopefully a similar sized article that doesn't make me want to blow my brains out. Just kidding, you all know I hate myself and I love to write these.