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*Katth* · 01-24-2020, 09:21 AM

(1677 words, ready for grading)

[Image: SMJHL-Knights2.png]

As most of you probably know I recently got the job was General Manager for the Kelowna Knights. With this article I want to give you an insight what it’s like to be a GM for a juniors team come draft time, a Reddit draft even.

The season just ended and we lost the Four Star Cup Final in game 7 against the Anchorage Armada. We did well and I think we even overperformed a little by getting to the finals in the first place. Though when you get this close you want to win it all. That same evening it’s time to look at our roster. Who’s is going to be called up and who’s definitely staying down another season. We are losing Josef Novotny for sure, as he is retiring, but who else? Ryan Shepard? He’s ready for the SHL, but does Chicago need him already? Same goes for Andrey Barbashev II, Kalevolaripaavo Käspertommevisnapuu and Gylfi Eriksson. At first sight we think we would lose 3, maybe 4 players due to call ups. Back to the drawing board, because we are losing quite a few players from our top 6 players.

Details about the draft are emerging. Reddit post is going up on Monday and draft is on Wednesday at 8PM EST. Some GM’s including me are outing some concerns towards head office. Two days is not enough time to do proper scouting, specially for a Reddit draft class. For me personally a weekday at 8PM EST is a no go as that’s 2AM in my local time. I drop the option of doing it on Saturday and for that I get quite a bit of support. Eventually we decide on a Saturday noon EST draft. For GM’s on the West coast that’s quite early, but everyone seems to be in agreement and it gives us plenty of time to do scouting. The only downside is that we might see a decrease in activity from first generation players that find the wait too long until the draft. We also decide to hold a prospect tournament.

On the day after we get some responses from SHL GM’s. There will be no call ups of any of our players for the next season. That means that we only lose Josef Novotny and we are keeping quite a few players who are going to be in their 4th season with our organisation. That’s a lucky break. So what do we need to fill our roster with active players so we can drop a bunch of inactives. I guess our first priority would be a center. We also need a winger and maybe another defenseman. In the following days we build up our scouting sheet with every possible information we have about this draft class. We talk to them on Discord or in private messages on the site and note down who would be a good fit for our team. I want to give a shout out to my front office as they did an amazing job helping me prepare for the draft. Without them the job wouldn’t have been so much harder. We start with a quite small short list and throughout the week it’s getting bigger and bigger. We have the 9th overall pick and wouldn’t pick again until 23rd overall. In the week leading up the draft we traded away our 16th overall pick for a season 53 first round pick. Quite a risky trade, but with a pretty great and active draft class we thought it couldn’t hurt, but I’ll get back to that later. The short list is getting bigger and bigger. We have to prepare ourselves for the fact that some, maybe even most players, won’t be available when we get to pick. I think our preparations were good and we are ready for the draft.

On the day of the draft we first visit my girlfriend's grandmother in her nursing home, but she’s not really feeling well, so we leave quite early. We have lunch and decide to take a nice walk at a nearby manor and it’s estate to relax a little bit. It was a very nice day for a walk and it was around 8 degrees Celsius. Here’s a picture of the manor.

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After I got back home it was back to business. I get a few more replies from newly created players and started updating our scouting sheet and short list. Close before the draft my front office and me went over our strategy one more time. I think we were ready for the draft. As the draft was starting at 6PM local time for me, I told my girlfriend we’d have dinner after the draft was done. I grabbed a beer and was ready. I jumped onto Discord voice with my very experienced advisor and former GM @Zoone16.

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The draft was going to be livestreamed on YouTube for the rookies to follow, which has become a very cool tradition. After the draft there was going to be a couple of interviews, which were very good as well. The first picks were coming in. Chris Cerullo, Magnus Liljeström and Hiroshi Ohira went top 3. I guess everyone had them pretty high on their list. We saw one of our top targets disappear on the horizon, but no problem, we have more people on our short list. At number 6 my fellow Austrian Jimmy Wagner was picked by the Carolina Kraken. I would have loved to have him on our team, but he wasn’t a high priority pick for us. We needed a center mostly. So when the time came to make our pick, we picked Rocco Berni. I had good talks with him and felt very confident that he could follow in Ryan Shepard’s footsteps in Season 53. After making the pick, I had to post it on the forums. I had a nice format all worked out beforehand, but the forum wouldn’t let me tag @Blues. Thanks for the shoutout on the stream that you had to kick me later @Inf1d3l.

After our first pick we had plenty of time to think what our next move would be. We traded away our second round pick and we watched other teams make theirs. The defensemen that were highest on our list were gone, but we focussed on a winger. We had our eye on two possible wingers at that moment. One of them was picked just before it was our turn, but the other one was still available, which we could hardly believe. We selected Jaska Seppala with our 23rd overall pick. I’m really not sure why @Zombiewolf fell to the 3rd round, but we were happy about that. We got a steal in the 3rd round. Made me feel a lot better about trading away our 16th overall pick. At this time we got two experienced players, while other teams seemed to focus on first generations. I don’t blame them, plenty of first gens made a very good impression on all of us. The quality of this draft class is yet to be seen, but it promised a lot of good things.

Our next pick was the 26th overall pick which we didn’t have much time for to discuss. We had our center and our winger, so a defenseman was our next highest priority. We picked Michael Preeb. Apart from his awesome username on the site (@Slackbabbath88) I also liked talking to him and he made a very good impression. Seemed eager to learn and looked like a good fit for our locker room. So far we did really well in this draft, but we realized that the draft pool was thinning out fast. We tried to discuss our options, but decided to hold on to our picks and get the best players available when it was our turn. At 36th overall we picked Annti Antinen (@Jeremy Icecreams). Another winger, to give us more depth on that position. Some picks were delayed, a lot of trade talks were happening. Head office was getting annoyed by the delay and they weren’t the only ones. Remember I told my girlfriend we’d have dinner after the draft? Well she bugging me every 5 minutes when I would be done. She wanted to eat.

At 46th overall we selected Ethan Duncan (@mastersheep) a center to give us also more depth in that position. After that pick we again discussed what we would do next. With these five picks we would have a full roster and a quite active one too. We decided to put our 66th and 76th pick on the block and try to squeeze into the 6th round. We traded away that pick in an earlier trade a season ago. No team was biting, because plenty of other teams were looking to trade their picks as the draft pool was really started to thin out. At our 66th pick we had nobody to trade with and we decided to be the first team to step out of the draft. We had reviewed what we drafted and concluded that we did an excellent job. In the meantime our newest draftees entered our locker room and got a nice warm welcome from the rest of the team.

This was my first draft and my first as a GM. It was a quite hectic but really fun experience, but I couldn’t have done this without my front office team. I am confident that we a very strong team for season 52 and hope we can make the finals once more and now actually win the damn thing. It’s been too long for our organisation.

Go Knights!

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S50 Challenge Cup Finals Game 7
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***Inf1d3l*** · 01-24-2020, 11:02 AM

01-24-2020, 09:21 AMKatth Wrote: Thanks for the shoutout on the stream that you had to kick me later @Inf1d3l.

To be fair I meant a physical kick not removal from a server. Smile

Zombiewolf · 01-24-2020, 11:05 AM

Let’s go Knights!

Knights

Thank you Brandon, Fish, GeckoeyGecko, Karey, Kit, takethehorizon, and Ragnar for the sigs!
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*takethehorizon* · 01-24-2020, 03:56 PM

Awesome read, it's got me ready to run through a wall to start S53 already! Go Knights Go! Knights

*Zoone16* · 01-24-2020, 04:15 PM

01-24-2020, 03:56 PMtakethehorizon Wrote: Awesome read, it's got me ready to run through a wall to start S53 already! Go Knights Go!

Don't run through a wall... You ARE the wall. Wink

*takethehorizon* · 01-24-2020, 04:28 PM

01-24-2020, 04:15 PMZoone16 Wrote:
01-24-2020, 03:56 PMtakethehorizon Wrote: Awesome read, it's got me ready to run through a wall to start S53 already! Go Knights Go!

Don't run through a wall... You ARE the wall.

*Katth* · 01-24-2020, 05:46 PM

01-24-2020, 04:28 PMtakethehorizon Wrote:
01-24-2020, 04:15 PMZoone16 Wrote: Don't run through a wall... You ARE the wall.

Haha, should put that as your signature.

S50 Challenge Cup Finals Game 7
[Image: gNFVjT6.png]

Slackbabbath88 · 01-24-2020, 06:06 PM

That was a good read! Thanks for the username shout-out. You have good taste.

DeletedAtUserRequest · 01-26-2020, 11:22 PM

good luck Kelowna!
Knights

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Steelhead77 · 01-27-2020, 08:13 PM

Nice write up. Kelowna is in good hands!

Knights

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