Task 2
Nah, Johnny Shuffleboard does not need a stupid agent. All agents do is take a percentage of my hard earned cash. Pure stupidity, and I refuse to give up a penny to some stupid dude.
What Shuffleboard does have is a personal manager. He gets a regular paycheck. He is in charge of all non hockey related business. So this dude negotiates the new shiny contract with the Forge, and all the other endorsement stuff that Shuffleboard does.
Now what else would an agent do? Shuffleboard knows how to talk to team owners without any help. He is even capable of talking to GMs. Hey GM, don't you dare trade me okay? I'm going to be a great player one day.
Sadly, that one day isn't in the near future. Despite being one of the best offensive d-man in the Js, Shuffleboard has not produced on the offensive side at all in the bigs. Still he has thus far avoided being traded. Must be doing something right while talking to the owner and GM!
Right now I am my own agent. I like where I play, so contract negotiations are pretty easy. Basically I just sign on the dotted line for max pay and max length. Seems pretty easy right? Why would I pay part of my money so someone else can buy cards instead of me? I am sure that later in my career I will get one of those super agents dealing with 20 players so I can cup chase a bit, assuming I don't already have one. At that point I don't think I will want to be dealing with all the talks and pressures of who to sign with and for how long. I just want to play hard as long as my body will let me, for a team that has a chance at the cup. Plus, I will probably be getting paid less, so my agent will get a smaller cut.
So the other night I was not able to sleep at night and I think I heard something in the basement. Perhaps this house is haunted or something, but I decided to call my agent at 3AM in the morning. I just wanted to go over my past few seasons with Tampa Bay and what is up ahead for me. My peak is done and we have made a lot of progress here, but is this the place where I want to finish my career? Do I have a chance at winning a cup in Tampa Bay? The young core has been doing amazingly well and we are just that tiny bit of luck away from getting a playoff series win. We are also unfortunate to have a pretty strong division so every game is a tough one. I have faith in the management and perhaps we should just finish what we started here. It could end up being something great even if we don't win a cup.
Although Violet Stoica plays for the Swedish national team, she did spend a significant portion of her childhood in Romania (hence the last name). As you might anticipate from the lore surrounding certain regions of Romania, there is a lot of superstition and unusual lore emanating from the region regarding vampires and other fantastical creatures -- all of this essentially to say that the presence of ghosts actually doesn't bother Violet. As a matter of fact, she embraces the presence of ghosts and other creepy spooky-crawlies (spiders and snakes notwithstanding). As a matter of fact, she was kind of surprised there weren't MORE ghosts in Sweden as she'd just come to expect it. The oddest part about it all seems to be that the ghosts are specifically related to her field of work, hockey; ghosts don't typically choose where they haunt once they die, unless it's (of course) the place where they died to begin with. Violet lives in quite a new home and has been visited by hockey players from several different countries, so it does bother her that the ghosts aren't really associated with where they're haunting.
Oh well. Having a few new mysterious friends never hurt.
At first the nocturnal appearances by ghosts was frightening for Dunkler. Then they took on more of a mentor or advice giving role. Then it just got to be boring and annoying. Dunkler didn’t have time to sit up all night with Bobby Orr or Connor McDavid to talk about “what could have been’s” for his career or theirs! What’s even worse, lately the ghost have been exclusively goalies! Wayne Holloway, Dako Nanokov, and even Net Man himself had begun advising Dunkler on switching positions to goaltender from beyond the grave. Enough was enough. Dunkler picked up the phone and called his high school classmate who was the founder and owner of the highly successful Specter Detectors. They were the real deal, with a funky and jazzy theme song in all their commercials. They seemed pretty smart, since they demonstrated the math for how the costs are caught on a whiteboard in the commercial. However it also looked like they were kind of just drawing pictures of ghosts, instead of doing any math? I'm sure its above Dunkler’s head anyway.
Option 2
Sir Devoir does indeed have an agent, and it is a friend he met a while ago: a woman named Maria Johnson, who has been an agent of plenty of Hollywood stars before and wanted a new challenge with a sports star instead. He picked her because she seemed open and honest about everything they talked about on the initial meeting, and she has always kept up that honesty with him ever since. She is the one who mostly handles the sponsorship deals and the contract talks for him, with him always having the final say no matter what.
She is the one who set up his current goalie gear sponsorship, and got him a deal with Gatorade to sponsor their drink in commercials and occasionally in ads. She is his money handler as well, and got him in contact with personal trainers and the occasional therapist for when he needs to vent out his frustrations with the league or other things he is upset about. Basically, she is one of his most trusted business partners.
Pass Forfeit is haunted by his past and the ghosts of his home. This time around he called the Ghost Hunters TV show. When they pulled up to his place he noticed that they were just a bunch of teenagers in a Mystery Inc van suspiciously dressed up as the Scooby Doo crew. As if it wasn't already a joke, a great dane comes out of the trunk with what appears to be a Shaggy lookalike. After describing his predicament, the "Mystery Inc" crew went to work, however instead of actually doing anything, they just ran around screaming and knocking things over. Pass thought it was a joke and explained again that this was serious and that he would have to hire someone else if they couldn't get themselves together. Suddenly the teenagers started pointing fingers and accusing Pass of being the real ghost, attempting to pull his hair to get the mask to come off. The ghost remains...
As a newer player in his sophomore season within the SMJHL, Andrade La Sombra was not expecting to have to deal with ghosts this season. The ghosts of his past, sure, that much was to be expected after the devastating loss Colorado received in the finals of that season. But real, actual ghosts? Not something he was ready for.
So, in order to finally get some restful sleep, Andrade La Sombra did what he thought would be the best thing he could do; he went right to the middle of his living room, set up a seance circle, and challenged the ghosts to fight it out inside his father’s lucha libre wrestling promotion. The winner of the Ghost Extravaganza Tournament would face off against La Sombra in a hockey shootout. If La Sombra won, the ghosts would have to leave. If the ghosts won, La Sombra would move out and the house would be theirs.
The ghosts put on a valiant effort, fighting each other tooth and nail in order to fight for the most coveted prize in their lives; an all-expenses paid house to call their own. What the ghosts didn’t realize was that La Sombra was going to challenge them to that shootout directly after the matches were done. The ghosts of SHL’s past were tired after their long tournament, and La Sombra easily wiped the floor with the winner in the shootout.
When it was all said and done, Andrade La Sombra regained his house, his life, and his sleep, all in one fell swoop.
I would likely take inspiration for an all-time car screaming song, by the ever-invading-my-listening-time, making-me-seem-like-I-only-listen-to-sad-music, Phoebe Bridgers. Funnily enough this must have been written about the SHL and SMJHL playoffs, being titled "I Know the End", and as she was a big fan of SMJHL S75 Playoff Hits leader, Xavier Beausoleil, she titled the album "Punisher" in his honour. She would suggest that "either way", being with or without the spirits of hockey, "we're not alone", meaning hockey is within us all, whether it manifests itself physically or not. "I'll find a new place to be from", referencing that Phoebe herself changed her IIHF team during her playing career. "A haunted house with a picket fence", which happens to be the very house that Olivija Agate is living in, purchased from Bridgers herself. "To float around and ghost my friends", some may assume that this refers to a mindless state, incapable of forming the ability to engage in society, but she was actually symbolizing her great skating ability, as if she were floating around, and to emulate the teachings of the hockey spirits, to ghost, and she does so alongside her amazing teammates.
So what would I do? I would be like Phoebe, have a great career in this house, with my wonderful teammates. Not sure about the switching IIHF teams though, go Latvia!
karlssens Registered
S28, S45, S49 Challenge Cup Champion
Posts:4,037 Threads: 182 Joined: May 2015 Reputation:73
Discord: karl#3942
Pronouns: He/Him
Player: Oskar Scholz
Written Task: For most of the season your player has been struggling to have restful nights sleep as ghosts have been visiting their dreams. At this point there is no longer doubt about it, the home of your player must be haunted.
Is it time to call an exorcist or maybe a real estate agent and get rid of the house? Maybe just burn it all down and move as far as possible? Maybe your player is more business minded and they might instead take the opportunity to sets up real haunted house or start a company for ghost busting, something with cool name and a catchy theme song, as they cannot be only ones with this problem.
What does your player do and how it goes?
As the age old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In light of the number and frequency of ghosts in Oskar's house, especially since they are all famous hockey players, Oskar has decided to convert his house in to a interactive haunted hall of fame. For the low price of $100 you can spend the evening in Oskar's haunted house and perhaps have a chance encounter with a famous, albeit dead, hockey player! As for Oskar himself he needs his regular 8 hours of sleep so with his most recent contract salary he bought a nice penthouse apartment near the San Francisco training facility and spends most of his nights there. From time to time he'll go back to his old house and see how all the ghosties are doing, but for the most part he lets his business partners tackle that operation. It's been doing quite well and has had a recent surge since appearing on shark tank.
Louise St. Martin does not have a player agent. For starters, she's made it pretty clear that she only wants to leave a team through necessary trades, not through free agency, and she's stuck to it her whole career (being traded when Toronto entered a rebuild, then again when Edmonton decided to blow it up). Player agents exist to get a player the best deal on the open market and when a player doesn't want to hit the open market it makes them kind of irrelevant. In addition, this gives her more control over her own player destiny instead of a middle-man who might give you advice that actually hampers your career earnings (look at many of the Atlanta Braves extensions in baseball, so. many. guys. who are going to be underpaid until the end of time because their agent kinda fucked them). Having a degree of control is pretty important to Louise.
I think that Pinli fancies himself a little too smart for an agent. Plus he's heard all the stories about old guys like Burlok that had weirdo new age advisors that did nothing but steal from them, so Pinli is feeling pretty comfortable about the idea of self representation. He may not be able to maximize every dollar and every protection out of a contract he negotiates himself, but at the end of the day who cares about the difference between a $80 million dollar career and an $86 million dollar career? It's still more money than he'll ever need in his life, and at least he won't have the stress of worrying about an agent! That being said Pinli does have an excellent accountant. Not for tax avoidance or anything, just because taxes are scary and he never wants to have to think about them. But now that I think about it an accountant can probably skim money easier than an agent could. Ah shit. Back to the drawing board.