Login

goldenglutes · 03-26-2025, 12:26 PM

hello everyone gather around for me to tell this story of the atlanta inferno dynasty that never was as it was prevented by corrupt HO (for grading purposes this is a joke) from happening. so let me take you all back to season 56, back to the expansion draft where atlanta and seattle officially became teams in the simulation hockey league. actually i have to take us even further back to the season 46 expansion draft with new orleans and chicago, coincidentally my first draft in the shl with my first player guy zheng (this is a coincidence but i just wanted to point it out). in that expansion draft, teams were allowed to contact pending UFA players 48 hours prior to the expansion draft. keep that in mind! in the season 56 expansion draft, teams were required to ask permission from GMs in order to contact any player that was draft eligible, even if they were pending UFAs! :thinking_emoji:. that one wasn't such a big deal as i believe atlanta was only denied permission to talk to one player and they ended up taking that player and they became a happy part of the locker room (i forgor who it was sorry). however what WAS a big deal was the inability to use hometown discounts which meant atlanta was at a cap space disadvantage to all other non expansion teams for SEVEN SEASONS!!! since atlanta was able to build a competitive roster rather quickly, this actually ended up mattering and resulted in some tough cap decisions, which was not very fun and limited our ability to compete! this rule also ended up changing for the next expansion draft with philly and montreal, and since seattle's roster wasn't yet competitive by the end of that seven season mark, atlanta was the only team that ended up affected by this very strange rule!!! now let's also talk about the contract auto updating change. previously, teams were allowed to sign players to long term contract at locked in cap hits. for example, if a player were to sign a 3 season contract at sub 1300 TPE, they could carry a $4M cap hit for 3 seasons even if they kept earning and crossed the 1600 TPE mark and would usually count towards the $6M cap hit tier. however, the season after atlanta won the cup (s66) when it looked like the atlanta dynasty was just beginning and the team had just started their window, they changed this rule so that contracts auto updated to keep up with current player TPE numbers! this meant atlanta had to overhaul their roster right after winning one cup just to keep cap compliant, as we had done a bunch of cap gymnastics to try to optimize our cap usage! in the words of @hotdog, we had to get rid of key players! sad! we really needed any help with the cap that we could get, but it only came four seasons later when HO added a new rule about goalie cap hits where active backups only counted for half of their cap hit! this would have been massively helpful if it had been implemented the same season as the auto updating contracts! it would have meant less roster turnover by at least one max earning player! by the time that rule was implemented, it was already too late for atlanta as some of our most elite players were already past their peak. that season of roster overhauling spelled the end of the atlanta inferno dynasty that never was, as we had to make some tough decisions and had to essentially ride with a good but not elite roster for the next many seasons. i would say atlanta was also one of the most effective test simming teams and while the banning of test simming definitely needed to happen, it was implemented right after our s66 cup win and i think it hurt two teams in particular (hamilton and atlanta) more than the rest of the league. just another example of HO being out to get atlanta! and now that atlanta is starting to peak again, HO decides to do a 4 team expansion! coincidence? maybe! @micool132 @Jepox @charlieconway @Gordon Bombay @Briedaqueduc @5ympathies @luke @honkerrs please correct me if there are any historical inaccuracies in this deep dive!