In chapter one, we entered another timeline, met our guardian and got to witness the wonders of Czech Cypriots. In chapter two, we got the first characters of our story coping with what luck and a program handed to them. And now, without further ado.

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CHAPTER 3 - EVERYTHING SUCKS




So. The first season of this SHL simulation had some things that didn't quite go up to plan.
You see, the thing with playing a game and simulating a game is that, unsurprisingly, simulations are much more likely to screw up. If you ever get pissed at the lads who work directly with inputting data into the FHM database, always remember this: Sims are hard as fuck to get right. I say this because this simulation of the SHL is actually my third attempt at it. Yes, Third. Some things remained the same: Crosby becoming an Outlaw happened in all three, Jaromir Jagr not being signed by any of the teams happened in two sims (he became a member of the San Francisco Pride in the first one) and Teemu Selänne somehow squeezes himself into the top six for two categories all the time. Anyhow, I should get to the proper point. I'm not doing this post in a narration process like the other two because I feel like this post deserves a proper "it's all a sim view". The first moment where stuff got all screwed up was a small thing that I don't think FHM 6 realized could be troublesome: the Initial Draft. The idea of the Initial Draft is that teams need to pick players from an available pool of players which, fair enough, is how the game distributes whatever fake players they have. You might've noticed the gentleman known as W. Bremer on the top right, yeah?



That's Wes Bremer. No, you're not supposed to know who this is, nor is he based after some sort of real-life person.
Wes Bremer was actually the fourth pick of the Initial Draft, five-star player, age 27, Center and Left Winger. Now, if this was a proper narration post like the ones I did in the past, I would've probably made up a story about how Wes Bremer was a talented Bantam player during his youth but grew disillusioned from the game as soon as he got his first taste of a system that treats players like replaceable bodies and whatnot but was convinced to join the league via being paid a fuckton of money for the next three years. Basically, you're writing stories over numbers that were randomly generated by a machine, a coincidental deal that so happened to feature a player named Wes Bremer that was picked by the Buffalo Stampede.
If you think that's an odd thing, keep in mind that what we do is actually similar. We write, talk, draw, paint, edit and discuss names that wouldn't be recognized by people away from our domains. The only difference is that both you (the reader) and I know who Ola Wagerstrom or Mike Izzy is, although your cousin from Moose Jaw (or Boise, Thun, Hoffenheim, St. Petersburg, Tampere, Singapore, whichever one you prefer) might not be aware of them. And suffice to say, if you ask someone who hasn't read this, they wouldn't know who is Wes Bremer.
This is why I've decided to do something recently, that might help make this series a bit more approachable.



Say hello to Mathias Seger. I figured that I should ask around for people to import into my sim since... well, it's not all that league-related without 'em, right? But instead of dropping them in as they are, I decided to throw them into the game as their younger selves. Also, note to whoever wants to add a player to a Draft Pool in FHM (and wants them to go to the juniors), add Junior Preference as Junior. That's how things screwed up in my first sim. See, there are actually a couple of reasons why I went with Seger as my screenshot player. For starters, Segi is a good friend, a really cool guy and I think people should shower him with praise every now and then. Second, I wanted to show something a bit... messy from the game. You might've heard (back when data was being transferred that language was a key factor to the sim), your team would struggle for a while if you have a multinational squad, which suffice to say, most teams of the league do. Now while that wouldn't be a problem to some nations (England, United States, all-areas of Canada that aren't Quebec and Great Britain comes to mind), others like Latvia, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Japan could be troublesome. Needless to say, the easy solution would be to make everyone an American player and then change their nationalities to where they usually are. Switzerland also joins that group somewhat in that, unsurprisingly, our boy Seger is fluent in German, like everyone else in the sim that comes from Switzerland. Now, I've never been to Switzerland but it's a place with a couple of languages and cultures: German is one but so apparently was French and Italian, not to mention the myriads of refugees that ended up there from all sorts of wars. From what I recall, they apparently study two languages at school or something, but to simplify matters, FHM gives a player from Switzerland one language and one language only. Which leads me to this:



Now, I didn't clone Seger. But, I did something a bit funny. See, when I was picking up players from real life, I actually recalled Segi mentioning how the namesake of his player actually was a real-life player and figured that maybe it'd be solid to put him up in a reveal down the line. A fun little hook a la Jon Bois, right? Well, the real-life Seger isn't a bad hand by any stretch: he got a tryout in Chicago before they ended up deciding against keeping him in the team. At last, he got signed for a minimum contract with the Washington Iron Eagles of the USHL but he has yet to play a game as the moment I decided to put him up in a team for the joke reveal, it was already the end of the regular season back at the minor leagues and the Iron Eagles, that league's affiliate for the Hamilton Steelhawks managed to be the hands-down worst team of their Conference. Also, while stuff like age, height and weight are something far different between the Segers, there's also one minor detail that caught me by surprise, for I thought every Swiss player would end up as a German-speaker by design.



He speaks French. Only French. In spite of this, I'll just call him Classic Seger and our Seger becomes Modern Seger. Call it Seger Generations, if you want. Together with Seger, of course, the sim also now has a couple of other folks from the league, like a couple of my teammates from the Platoon and yours truly also made the cut. I'll make sure to show how they go in their first season in this new world as soon as we get to that point.



Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, the first thing that didn't go to plan in this save was that none of the real-life players were drafted. A lack of a draft option means they were just set to become Free Agents, which isn't a bad thing by any stretch but messed up my plans somewhat. To which I thought "well, no problem" - it's not like the teams will avoid signing the stars I managed to pluck up (or, if the narrative is to be followed, the league manage to wrestle out of the dirty hands of Bettman and the NHL), right? Now, marvel at the shock I had that most of the NHL guys got picked up in piecemeal fashion. Now here's my second tip to those who want to import players and they end up not featured in the Draft: release everyone before the season starts.
I didn't do that, which led to our first season being one where nobody had the brilliant idea of poaching Martin St. Louis. Although this screenshot here is from the last month of the sim so far, as I write this, which puts things before the SHL Playoffs even begin... that's actually a fairly accurate description of what happened during the season. The first NHL player to join a team was Jarome Iginla. Really good player according to FHM 6's rating system and obtained by a rather cheap price ($925,000). He was then followed by Teemu Selänne. FHM 6, of course, had Selänne as a Faroese (!) man from some random city in England (!?), which I then justified as him being stuck with a Dane in a hotel room for a couple of months. In spite of being "Isolated", because the only person who happens to speak Danish in the roster is created player Emil Pedersen (currently at the USHL's Florida Arwings) while the team happens to have a Finnish guy (wonderfully named Eerik Pöllänen, who also suffers from Isolation) in their main roster. With a lack of holes in their roster, teams only went after players that were "worth the trouble" (so, good in hockey, middle of the road age, able to speak English or team up with a fellow compatriot). So, in the few times that you had people getting signed, they were few and far. I'll comment on who ended up where if you're really interested.

Oh, and there's one "positive" bit of news.



For some reason, the Steelhawks (who weren't terrible but not amazing) decided to blow their load on St. Louis. So he just signed for the most expensive contract of the entirety of the league, beating even Selänne. They also did it at the end of the season, ensuring he'd play fourteen games. But hey, after all that, finally we're only down two major players (Jagr and Brodeur)... and who knows, they might be signed by the start of the next season, surely?
Anyway, time to get the playoffs on the road!


...Well, OK, I got to say I didn't expect that as our final results but here we go. First seeds of the East, the New England Wolfpack squared off against the Chicago Syndicate. Due to my setting the rules, every match-up was a best-of-three: the Wolfpack ended up reaching the Conference finals by sweeping the Syndicate, something that also happened on the other side of the bracket as Buffalo beat up the West Kendall Platoon. Incidentally, this was their final couple of games in West Kendall as, in that reality, they too chose to move to Baltimore for some less troubling reasons than in our reality, which I'll talk in a proper narrative tone next chapter. New England failed to win their first game against Buffalo but managed to grab their win back the game after and then took their spot in the final. On the other side, the Renegades surprised the Specters and reached the Conference finals by turning the tables on them after starting out losing to the first seed of the West. Calgary too failed to win their first game against the Jets but even after beating the Jets in the second match of their duel, Winnipeg was able to stamp them out. The Jets then went on to pull a similar stunt against the Renegades. Which led to this: Winnipeg getting swept to New England.
Mental note #1 - Changing the Best-of-3s into Best-of-7s.
But hey, Draft time. Surely this will be the moment where we'll see some good names showing up, right?

...



Nobody I added showed up.
Mental Note #2 - Unleash the Special Draft.
Mental Note #3 - ...Fuck's sake, FHM.
Mental Note #4 - We're going to Mexico, get ready.

Next chapter - 2005.