So I guess it's time for more media, because I'm poor and I want to be able to afford equipment next season. Allegedly a new media grader has been hired so hopefully this won't take very long to grade? But, I, along with everyone else am going to be talking about the upcoming draft class and who's going to be taken, and who's going to be selling fake iPhones. 

I'm totally writing this recently and the TPE numbers, definitely aren't going to be different by the time this is posted. Saying that, hopefully Emilia Bergman is still tied for first place. New England is supposed to be picking in the top three, and two of the top three, and even three of the top four draftees are d-ppl. One is a goalie but there is a 0% chance New England picks a goalie, not with Mike Hroch waiting to take over from Leitner in the next few seasons, and then Ace starting off his journey as a goaltender last season as well. So Goalie is not a position the Wolfpack will be looking for.

Two weeks later, now that I've started this third paragraph, the draft date has been announced for this Saturday so the TPE is locked in until the draft and now I can write things without worrying about them immediately changing. Also Benjamin Blue has taken over from Leitner after a blockbuster trade, but still, strongly doubt that we will draft a goalie, unless we draft and then immediately trade.

First up we have Mikkel Asmus Sondergard a defence-man with 318 TPE playing for the Maine Timber. He has to be the consensus first overall pick, given that he has over 10 more TPE than the second highest player. RabidSponge is also cash rich, his bank account currently at roughly $78 million. His advantage of being a recreate isn't as strong as it would have been under the previous STHS regime, now since everyone has been thrown into FHM, first gens and recreates both are at a similar experience level. 

He played the full 50 games this season, getting 6 goals and 8 assists for a total of 14 points. Surprisingly he has a plus/minus of -16, and personally as the resident +/- expert, I hope that he manages to turn that around next season. He shot just under 8% this season, so with even more TPE to spend and a little more luck, we can expect him to turn that around and get even more goals next season. He had a fair bit of ice time this season, at least a good amount for a rookie, on average just over 22 minutes a night, with an average of 2:45 of penalty kill and just over a minute and a half of power play time. We can expect, next season, his ice time at the very least to stay the same and with an increase in TPE we should see his point totals increase. Overall, he is known to be an active user, and whoever ends up drafting him (probably Texas) will be very lucky to have him.

Second in TPE totals, we have Dwight Knight (great name, love how it rhymes) playing for the Carolina Kraken. This guy is super active on the forums, he's hidden his total times but I see him in all the threads anyways so I just know he's on a lot. He also has like a third of the total posts I have, and I've been on this site 14 months longer than him, so you know he's a real power user. Currently he has just over 20 million in the bank which is very impressive considering he is a first generation player. 

I don't know whats good or not. Like how many points is a lot for a rookie. But in 50 games, he has managed to get 11 goals and 10 assists, which feels like a good amount to me? -8 which sucks, especially because I though Carolina was a good team (best goalie in the league for sure). Also he shot at 14.67% which we can totally expect to go down next season. He averaged just over 15 minutes a game, and we will definitely see this increase next season, especially with the new change to stamina. He only has two TPE more than the player in 3rd, so I can definitely see him dropping in the rankings, just based on positional need.

Third up, and alluding to positional need in the last paragraph, we have Daniel Laforest, a centre, playing for MY Kelowna Knights. He's only two TPE less than the previous guy (303 instead of 305). Another first generation player, this one has his online time available for us to view and currently after being on the site since the end of February, he has spent over 2 weeks online. This is especially disgusting to me, someone who has been on the site for 16ish months and has been online for just over 1 week. In addition to that, he has an even stronger bank than Dwight Knight (love the name) sitting at twice his amount with over $40 million.

In terms of his stats, it doesn't look like he actually played at centre this season, given that he has 0 faceoffs taken. But looking at his stats as a winger, they're not looking too hot either. In 50 games he's gotten 5 goals and 6 assists, and has a bad +/- of -9. I don't know if that's just the case with this league and it's normal to have a negative +/-, but wow is it discouraging to see. His shooting percentage was just under 8% so it's reasonable to assume that we'll see a slight increase in that next season. Hopefully in addition with the shooting percentage increasing, we also see his centre responsibilities increase as well. New England has the third overall pick and I don't see us taking him at third. Mainly because centre is a position we have secured pretty well. I'm not in the war room, so I don't know and I just talk a whole lot of nothing most of the time, but just based on our regressing players and our prospects, I see us most likely drafting a defence-man, which brings up to number 4. Matthew Sawful.

Sawful, like the others is very close in terms of TPE. He is fourth at 299, only 6 away from second, so the race is still very tight. He's also a first generation player and I don't know what it is with this group but in about 2 months on the site, he's accumulated over 4 days of online time. His bank is also the largest out of the first generations so far, coming in at just a little over $12 million. I'm fairly certain when I was drafted I had 2 million max in the bank. I still don't even have $12 million lol. 

He is a right shooting, right defence-man playing for the Anchorage Armada. (If anyone can get me into that discord I would greatly appreciate it.) With this new FHM change, changing the way player profiles are listed, I'm not too sure what kind of d-man he is, but I'm sure it's some kind of offensive one given that he has 6 goals and 15 points. His point totals are tied with Dwight Knight out of everyone I've written about so far, and that is notable given that one in a left winger and one a d-man. Sawfuls signature also highlights the fact that he has 13 stamina, so I'll also highlight it as well. He has 13 stamina, which is impressive considering everyone in the SMJHL has terrible stamina. His shooting percentage this season was just under 8% which is low, but for a d-man, it's reasonable to assume his shooting percentage will stay around the same level next season. 27 takeaways is also a very impressive statistic for such a young player. Lastly, he averaged about 22 minutes a game, including special teams, which is fairly impressive for someone in their first season. As he continues to progress, his average TOI will only increase and we'll see him getting even more points moving forward.

The penultimate player that I will discuss at this time is another d-man (d-woman?) Emilia Bergman. She's tied for 5th overall in TPE for this upcoming draft class at 297, just two behind Sawful. She, just like every other user in this draft apparently, is super wealthy with her bank currently sitting at over $30 million. Enough to pay for training and equipment for multiple seasons, I could really learn from people like these. In terms of time spent online on the site, it's much more reasonable, this metric at only a little under 3 days total. Another first generation user, another player who is giving StamkosFan more TPE.

Bergman, the Swedish native, seems to be a defensively focused d-man, just based on my rudimentary look through her build. Maybe I'm wrong though, because playing she season she has 23 points. A potential reason for this, however, is after including both power play and penalty kill, she is playing over 30 minutes a night. Considering that she is +10 even after all that time on the ice, I feel like she definitely can handle the challenge of playing all that time, and it is not hampering her play as much as we would assume. Her shooting percentage is under 3% which is just abysmal, so I hope to see her increase her scoring up from 2 goals this season, hopefully up to around 9 or 10 goals next season.

Last but not least, Cale Amundsen, a goalie playing for the Newfoundland Berserkers, also currently at 297 TPE (currently meaning as of last Sunday). Amundsen is another power user, this one coming back seemingly from a short hiatus. He has had two goalie careers previously, one spanning many seasons with him winning all sorts of awards throughout many years. The second being a brief stint in the league but still managing to win a challenge cup. I'm sure teams are hoping that after this hiatus we will see a career more in line with that of his first goalie, being the difference maker, what a team can build a strong foundation on top of. He also has more money than me in the bank, just a little over $10 million, and his time on the site is private, but as someone who has been a member since 2016, we can assume it is quite a large number.

As a player, Amundsen saw himself as a net-minder in the majority of his teams game: 43. He had an interesting record this season, and it seemed as though he was a better player than those in front of him. His save percentage was 0.919, which was good enough to be 5th in the league. He also had the second most shots against him in the league, followed by the second most saves. One point of concern is his goals against average, which was 2.68, placing him in the highest subset of the group. His record this season wasn't great, 21 wins, 17 losses, and 4 OT losses, but he managed to get 5 shutouts, which tied for first place in the league. Overall he is among the better goalies in the SMJHL and it will be interesting to see how his career develops.

I spoke about 6 people and now I'm going to pretend like I know how a draft works and guess where they end up.

1.    - Mikkel Asmus Sondergard
2.   - Daniel Laforest
3.   - Matthew Sawful
4.   - Cale Amundsen
5.   - Dwight Knight
6.   - Emilia Bergman

Let's see how I do.