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Sean · 09-27-2020, 08:09 PM

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Ready to Grade - 3439 words

I really wanted to get a podcast out to talk about some things, but something keeps coming up/I don't seem to have the time to get an hour together to just do it so I'm going to try and write some of my thoughts into a stream of consciousness style article. Maybe in the future I'll get the chance to talk out some of my thoughts but right now doesn't seem to be the time. Although @Keygan I'm still down to start a regular podcast because I am unbelievable poor right now. I'm not going to be directly addressing the questions I was asked but hopefully I'm able to cover most things through this article.

Stepping down as Edmonton Co-Gm

This was a really hard choice for me. I truly enjoyed being a GM in Edmonton and I felt like the situation I was in with Keygan could not have been more perfect. Keygan is one of the most capable managers on the site in my opinion but he also let me take on as much responsibility as I wanted. Keygan was the first to say it's our team, not his team and my say was just as important as his. I really appreciated feeling like I had a genuine chance to help mold the Edmonton Blizzard rather than just sit back and do some of the busy work. If I were to have held the GM role myself without this experience, I'm not sure I would feel comfortable giving someone else as much power as I held but if I were ever to become a GM in the future, I truly believe in the management style Keygan has used and would do my absolute best to emulate it.

It really came down to real-life commitments taking priority and me needing to cut out some unnecessary responsibilities. I'm back at school full time after a few years hiatus but I'm still working a decent amount of hours. We were supposed to be getting a bit of down-time in the office through the fall but Covid bumped everything back. We purchased a group of condominium audits we were hoping to be finishing up as I started school but we're just getting started with them as I'm entering school. I'm fully preparing for some horrible times in the next few months, so I wanted to take a step back now rather than wait until it was too late.

I'm sure Keygan would have been fine with me taking a diminished role, but I felt like I had a personal responsibility to the team to do my best to help us win. I didn't want it to come to a point where I had work and school deadlines and feel the obligation to do testing for the playoffs. If I half-assed our testing and we lost I would feel an imense amount of guilt for not doing my best for the guys in our locker room. I love them and they deserve the best. Whether or not they would actually feel let down by me, I'm unsure. I just know that I would feel that way.

This led to the hard decision of me giving up my spot as the Co-GM of Edmonton. I regret it in the sense that I wish I was still doing my best to help out the team, but I felt like I needed to remove my responsibilities for my own sanity. I'm very confident in Keygan and the new hire in @hockeyfan. I'm excited to see what Edmonton can do with a fresh new face with some new ideas. I fully believe they can continue to improve Edmonton's legacy.

The Off-Season

Leading up to me stepping down, this was one of the craziest offseasons I've been a part of. We had multiple big pieces leave the team and I'm sure Keygan was absolutely thrilled with all the news he got this offseason.

First, there was Theo Morgan leaving in free agency. We knew this was going to happen for a while before the season even ended. We had 10 active expansion-eligible forwards we would have loved to keep in the organization but we only had 7 protections slots. We knew Theo wanted to test free agency but we also didn't want to risk leaving him unprotected if he ended up deciding to come back to Edmonton. If Seattle or Atlanta chose him, we wouldn't have been able to re-sign him anyway. We made the tough decision to let Morgan talk to other teams while he was still under contract.

The hope was that Morgan would get his chance to test FA and if he decided he wanted to come back to Edmonton, we would use one of our protection slots on him. If he decided to go somewhere else, we could protect one of our current active players. In the end, Morgan had some friends on Hamilton which I think was the largest deciding factor. He chose to go to Hamilton and as a result, we were able to protect another forward. I know a lot of people viewed this as a failure but it was really only a difference of a few 100 TPE with what we would have been losing instead. We also have 3 top-earning rookies that had to get called up sooner or later. If Morgan had decided to re-sign we would have been forced to make potentially even harder decisions down the road.

Kane was a similar situation. We knew he was going to sign in a place where he could get the most money and a chance to compete. I don't want to speak out of line, but his motivation did confuse me slightly. Kane really wanted to make money to earn more TPE. The only reason you earn more TPE is that you want your player to become more successful. I'm not sure why you'd want to test FA for more money when you just put up the 2nd most goals in the league and 69 points. If you look at some other players like Seger and Gibbles in Minnesota, they have 2000 TPE players but aren't able to crack 30 points. I'm sure he'll find success in Seattle but jumping from a career-high of mid-30s in points to 69 points is more due to the change in scenery than the small increase in TPE he saw from season-to-season. Good thing I'm not a GM anymore so I can say that kind of stuff Wink

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The hardest part of this offseason was probably losing @caltroit_red_flames and @ErM. Both of those guys were Edmonton staples when I entered the locker room in S53 and in the 12 seasons that followed I never had any reason to believe that they wouldn't retire as members of the Blizzard. It all seemed to happen so quickly that I didn't really have time to process it. Especially since I had let Keygan know I was stepping down very shortly before Cal informed him he would be leaving in free agency.

Cal told me that it had been something he had been thinking about for a while. There was an incident that happened in the locker room a day or two before Cal informed us he would be leaving in free agency. I'm unsure if that would have had anything to do with it or if it was just a timing issue. We were obviously upset we were losing a key member of the team but it was Cal's decision to make, he had every right to it and he had always been good to the Blizzard taking HTDs. I have no ill-will towards Cal for the decision he made. However, this was all happening around the time of the NOLA finals line controversy. Keygan was very adamant that NOLA should be punished for what happened in game 7 as most of the GMs thought we had a general don't be a dick rule after what happened at the beginning of the season.

-Sidebar-

I take full responsibility for our shenanigans at the beginning of the season. It was a complete dick move on my part to throw out the lines we did and I acted holier than thou when people didn't like it. It was a dumb position to take and I regret doing it. However, after that happened, it was my understanding everyone agreed to stop doing that kind of stuff so we didn't need to keep adding new rules and restrict our ability to build teams. I remember specifically saying, I don't want something like this to happen in a deciding game of a series.

-end of sidebar-

Cal was saying in the threads complaining about the issue that if NOLA were to be punished for what took place at the end of the season, Edmonton should retro-actively be punished for what happened at the beginning of the season. At that point, I said to Keygan we should remove him from the management part of our chats in the locker room. He had already informed us he'd be leaving and those comments annoyed me so I thought Cal shouldn't be in there anymore. Keygan agreed and removed him from our scouting channel and I went upon my merry way thinking that was the end of that.

I was pretty confused when I checked on the site later that night and saw the message Er had posted. I was out with friends, saw the title of the post and thought Er had retired. I was a little shocked by that but thought 1 more season would put him over 600 points with the Blizzard and maybe he thought it was a good place to call his career. Then I checked the locker room and saw he had left and quickly went back to the post and noticed it was him declaring he'd be leaving in free agency. I then actually read the content of his post and said an even bigger WTF? to myself. He was calling out management and how we used him, I was really shocked and felt like I had always had a good relationship with Er.

It turns out after Keygan kicked Cal from our scouting chat, he decided there were a lot of people in the chat who weren't really contributing. He decided to clean out the scouting chat. Er thought he was getting kicked out because of the LR incident I mentioned earlier. Er was offended by that and decided he was going to take his talents elsewhere. I really think this was a huge misunderstanding, I wish it could have been handled differently but it wasn't. I completely understand everyone's perspective and I don't blame anyone but it feels like one of those rom-com movies where everyone is misunderstanding each other so there can be some tension before the final scene. What's done is done and I'll miss having Er on the team, I hope he enjoys Buffalo!

This Upcoming Season and the Future

This season could be a bit of a crapshoot for us. If we're able to compete to the same level we were last season I'd be very surprised given we lost Theo Morgan, Bo Kane, Brady McIntyre and Tor Tuck. There are a lot of new pieces in LaForest, LeGrande and Hartmann joining us. They might not be quite up to the level of the players they're replacing, but they will be very good, very soon. I also don't worry about losing Morgan and Kane as much as some of our competitors think we should. Tokolosh and Blackwood had down years and I would not be surprised if it was because Morgan and Kane were stealing touches from them. I fully expect Tokolosh to get back to his S54 form and be a contender for the goal-scoring leader and I expect improvements from Blackwood, Boivin, and Forty-one to help ease the departure of Kane. James Truong should also get some more ice-time and touches so it'll be neat to see if he can have a breakout season.

Defense it's a little more rough, I know we have @Mazatt for the future and there's always the chance that a forward moves back to D in future seasons to fill the holes we have back there. We have Sutton and McMahon due up next season so we'll need to make some room for them anyhow. With the way the cap is going to be changing in the next few seasons, I think we're set up very well to continue to stay competitive for a long time.

AS for Pepperoni's future, I want to ride him out for as long as he'll go. I know for sure I want to hit 1000 games and I'm hoping to drag myself up to the point per game level by then end of this season (I need 55 point in 50 games, fingers crossed). With how successful we've seen some 1200-1500 players like Flacko Lagerfield, Robert Phelps, and Bo Kane I'm keeping my hopes high that Pepperoni can continue to be productive for many more seasons. The realistic goal I have to become the all-time leading scorer for the Edmonton Blizzard. Right now, Theo Kane holds the record at 735 points. I'm 190 point behind him with hopefully at least 450 more games to play as a Blizzard. I'd be pretty dissapointed to not hit that mark. My dream goal is to pass Esa for #1 on the all-time points list. If I can continue to put up 60-70 points for a few more seasons and get a good amount above a point per game, I might have a shot at scoring 1064 points. That's also assuming someone isn't able to bump up the record before I get there. If I do get it, I wouldn't expect to hold it very long. There are a lot of great up and coming players that will get to play their whole careers in FHM. FHM is the only reason I'll even get a chance to break the record.

Keys to Success in Edmonton

I think someone wanted to know why Edmonton has been so good for so long, and everyone wants to toot their own horn a bit so let's get into it. First, a good team needs a good foundation. Karl built up an amazing structure to build around which is one of the reasons Edmonton has been so good for so long. Second, you need to draft well. I'm very proud of the amount of data we're able to collect on all the prospects going into a draft. It's our knowledge of prospects that allow us to pick guys like Kyle Sutton and Bryce McMahon with a 47th and 49th overall pick. We have 29th overall, 16th overall and 9th overall picks debuting this season in Hartmann, LeGrande and LaForest, who all are performing at a much higher level than their pick #. It's how we got our captain Jean-Paul Boivin at 23rd overall. We had to give up Carlos Brown in the expansion draft, but he's another guy who has performed well above his draft expectations. We've found ways to consistently bring in top-level talent without having top-level picks. Finally, we've been fortunate enough to make some favourable moves. We managed to pick up Jon forty-one for cents on the dollar and we got our starting goalie in free agency.

Thoughts on Management Around the League

Generally speaking, I don't have many issues with how teams are run across the league. There are some teams that I think are run extremely well. Buffalo always seems to know when to move a guy for the best price and when to trade for someone at their lowest price. Some things they've gotten down right lucky with like the 3 1sts for McZ trade but you need to be good to be lucky. I wouldn't trust anyone to run a team who thinks Finn and Tomen are doing a poor job. I've gotta respect Calgary for their ability to be consistently good. Since I've been in the league we've been able to match them (and maybe outperform them a bit) but I've got to give credit where credit is due. Calgary has been good for so long that they deserve to be considered one of the best groups in the league. Manhattan is a team that everyone and their grandmother seems to want to play for. I in no way mean this as a slight, but they've done an amazing job of creating the image of being one of the best-run and best performing teams in the league even if they've not had the championship pedigree of a Hamilton or Buffalo recently. I feel like we in Edmonton aren't as highly regarded as them despite consistently performing better (I hope this riles Luke up Biggrin

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I've had my concerns about Minnesota, they seemed directionless for a while. I think they should have committed harder to a re-build. I know Segi is a close friend of Gibbles but I don't understand how you let that player waste away on Minnesota without getting something for him. Minnesota is also just in a horrid spot because of previous management so I'm really not going to blame Gibbles for anything and I think he's generally a good GM. I've also though some of Winnipeg's trades have been suspect from time to time. I understand the justification for those moves in the past and others have said enough things about Winnipeg management that I'd just be jumping on.

I'm excited to see how the expansion GMs do. I know Tig was a very successful SMJHL GM but I feel like there's a big difference between the SMJHL and the SHL. I'm excited to see how well he does in that transition. I think Hotdog is going to be a great GM. I thoroughly enjoyed having him in the GM chat back when I was in there and I think he has the personality to be a very good leader.

Some other bullet point thoughts on teams around the league (let's make some enemies):

CHI: I think they've built a great team, I haven't looked into it much but their underperformance in previous seasons leads me to believe they might be a little behind in terms of FHM strategies. Let's see if they can turn it around.

BAP: I love JR but some of his moves of late have been suspect to me. He seems to be getting further and further away from the GM that brought 3 cups to West Kendall in the 40s

HAM: I think they've got the best FHM minds in the business

NEW: Is Ace secretly running the team? hahaha Kenvald and bbjym are going to need some time to make that team their own

TBB: I love Trella but I think he might have gotten his first taste of "having a personality" and being a GM don't always mix well together. I think some Nevada players weren't too happy with his comments earlier in last season and I wonder if any of them held that against him when he came knocking for draft interviews. Memeing is fun but there are a lot of different personalities on the site.

TOR: As a home-grown Toronto boy in real life, I hope ML can lead them to the promised land and out of the re-build. If for some reason ML were to step-down in the future and I'm out of this busy time, that's one of the few jobs I'd consider leaving Edmonton for. I'm sure they've got a slew of internal candidates that would get it before me though.

LAP: I've like the moves they've made so far. I think getting a BAP first for Wasty is going to look very favourable on them in the future.

NOLA: They've been good forever, they're looking the most vulnerable since they entered the league. I'm interested to see how they respond to their current situation

SFP: Oof, good luck guys

TEX: Everyone is saying Puoli is an FHM god, Texas is starting to get close to having a roster where he's going to need to live up to that name. Let's see if he can do it.

I think I've rambled on for long enough. I think there's some juicy content in there for you to find, if it was a waste of time to read, I apologize. Maybe I'll look to write more off the cuff articles like this in the future if anyone liked it. Thanks for taking the time to read!