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[SHN] The BAP-PENING
#1
(This post was last modified: 01-26-2021, 01:02 PM by Nhamlet.)

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As the Challange Cup Finals come closer each day, the SHL typically saves much of its offseason activity for this time, hoping to get all of the house keeping done in order to ensure they have as much space and options for themselves as free agency and the draft swings around. More often than not, these trades quite often set the tone and pace for the rest of the offseason, and seemingly, if you don’t participate in making significant moves right off the bat, there has been a history of South Western division teams who need to pull the trigger before the start of the season, which seems to result in worse and worse returns in the last couple seasons. 


However, in particular so far there’s been one team that has been especially active in the trade market and it would be none other than the Platoon. Not a name that most people would put at the top of the list of wheelers and dealers but as grandfathered contracts continue to fade away, and the budget constraints grow tighter on every team in this league, they’ve come to make use of their rebuilding period and look to weaponize their cap space and try to start forming the base of their future core. Let’s see how they do. 

BAP/HAM/SEA
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Starting the trades off with a bit of a banger, this move sees Baltimore grab another top 5 pick to go along with their own 3rd OA selection in a very solid draft with all sorts of depth, especially on the defensive end of things. Hard to point out any particular piece of the trade as the standout besides the 4th OA being moved and all things being said, ends up being a solid deal for all involved. Baltimore sees their future contending group building around the S55 and beyond. In that particular class they have great earners with F Lord Raiden (13th in class), F Daniil Nikiforov (15th) and D Teddy Park (19th). In the S56 class they’ve also just already called up D Tanjiro Kamado (6th) and D Zebulon Leavitt (27th) while Lucas Johansson will spend one more season developing in Maine. Combined with a few young but already budding stars like S53 F Ethan Duncan (3rd) and D Valentin Kalashnikov (16th), the shape of this future team is really coming together. Add a couple more bluechip pieces and with potentially some of the current pieces on the roster continuing to develop and round things out, and you can see some light at the end of a dark tunnel. 

For Hamilton, they aren’t a team who’s too concerned with needing any “can’t miss” prospects, given their shrewdness in the trade market, picking up young top players for arguably nothing. Players like Rotticus Scott from Chicago (5th in S54), Bork Lazer from NOLA (10th in S54) and Guy O’Shea from Seattle (9th in S52) means that they not only have the next wave coming, but they’re already contributing to this contending team. The 1st in S61 from BAP is a gamble that Hamilton hopes BAP will have some troubles fighting out of the increasingly murky Atlantic division, getting a 2nd from Seattle in S58 helps to replenish a lack of a pick in the first two rounds and an extra 3rd in S59 for good measure. Likely that will be a decently high 3rd rounder which can still have value even in quieter drafts. 

Seattle is a bit of the 3rd wheel in this pairing, being the one to help make the deal more favorable for the main two teams. For them the price they paid was a 24 spot drop but also picking up Sabo Tage, a serviceable bottom pairing defenseman who is likely to be cost-controlled at the 3M tier for a while if things turn out well for them. Baltimore has 7 defensemen including both the current actives on the team as well as the new callups with Tage being pushed out in the near future. They’ll be a great fill in with no immediate concern for regression in replacing one of the 500 TPE IAs and letting their very young defensemen hopefully take another step forward. 


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Paid/Received Breakdown

ATL/BAP 
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Not as funky of a trade, but still an interesting one. Just earlier we were praising Baltimore on their young S55+ group, and they’ve gone and moved a relatively young S54 forward in Simon Takshak (25th). On one hand he’s a much slower earner, probably being the top of the 5th or 6th tier. Their locker room involvement is nothing to be scoffed at but in their quest to collect another locker room, it might be a player initiated trade rather than for a team. Still, BAP gets value in filling out and getting future picks which they’ve been dipping into already. 

Atlanta just gets that much hotter in all forms. There was two major holes to be filled, one with C.T. Carragher being a stopgap that was to be filled with the callup of Stan Q, as well as the eventual replacement of Rainbow Dash who will be seeing their 4th season of regression. A bit of short and long term cover is what they’ll get with Takshak’s player, assuming he’s not still eyeing some of the other LRs on his list. 

BAP/WPG/SEA
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Yet another three-way, SHL GMs are feeling a little frisky and creative in trying to get these deals done. Arguably this is a much bigger one given the magnitude of the player being moved compared to the 4th OA which is still yet to be seen who is selected and how they develop. 

Baltimore instead is the oddball voyeur of this trade this time. Their price of admission was nothing other than the acquisition of the inactive Freyja Hellstrom, and at worst, walking away with a 3rd next draft. Instead they find that they came away with a little more, with the former S57 5th overall pick coming back to life and immediately earning again. They’ve fallen hard from 12th before their draft to now 32nd in their class but if Baltimore can encourage this pace over a long term period, this might just be equivalent to finding a perfectly working CRT that your friend asked you to throw out for them, but you wanted one anyways to practice as a Falco main on Melee. 

Seattle comes away the big winner in all of this, giving up an early 2nd for next season and increasingly looking like a middling 3rd all for an S53 top earner in Reid Sutherland. Tig finds his Detroit roots in convincing the 7th in class, former 14th OA selection to be part of his process. Sutherland will find himself immediately slotted as the #2 C with clear access to top minutes as well as reuniting with other former S53 Falcons in Jack Kanoff and Fred Wanesley. Wonder if this is how the Argonauts will find themselves winning the cup in the future if they can somehow reunite all of those former Falcon players under the same GM?...

Winnipeg comes out looking quite beat up in all this. On one hand, Sutherland looked like they were expected to go to the free market and test in a matter of days so getting anything, in this case a high 2nd for next draft, is still something, plus they were able to clear a bit of cap space with an inactive player on their team signed to 2 more seasons, giving them some more cap flexibility in keeping their current top earners and continuing to draft more. 
On the other? Losing one of the most coveted players that could possibly be available has to hurt. Young, top earner, developed enough that their projection as a top player in this league with well known activity and interaction with the site hurts. On top of that, moving on from your  most recent top 5 pick only for them to spring back to life and there’s just extra salt in the wound at that point. Suddenly that 2nd seems woefully inadequate to have to go through what just happened. 

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Paid/Received Breakdown

BAP/LAP
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One of two cap deals where Baltimore flexes their cap space as an asset, the take on the fairly inactive Linus Grimstad who has at least uncapped to 600+ TPE was a much needed swap out for the Panthers if they were to continue any aspiration of Western Conference domination. Los Angeles also picks up a 4th in the S60 draft as well as 3M in cap relief. For this contract, Baltimore were treated to two S61 reddit 4ths, one of which that belonged to them in the first placed. It might not be entirely fair to say that the Platoon took on a 3M caphit, as they released Grimstad resulting only in a 1.5M caphit fine, something that LA could have done as well.

BAP/TEX
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The Baltimore trading fiesta continues. This ends up being a bit of an interesting on as a stand alone. Texas who has been happily building a roster full of active and high earning young players now has to face the reality that comes with realizing its potential: the salary cap. Next season they were poised to be 2M over the budget without the backup goalie relief with their current roster all signed to next season. This doesn’t include top prospect Theo Kondos who is expected to make the jump to the SHL after finishing their 4th season in the juniors. In order to make space, Maximus becomes the cap and numbers casualty. Partly due to their inactivity and relative age, the downgrade from Maximus to Kondos won’t be a huge one as the former is down to being  20th in their class while the latter is 3rd and still with many more seasons of earning ahead. 

While this ends up being theoretically the same 2nd from Atlanta, the conditions are the opposite where Atlanta is sending a non-Reddit 2nd versus Texas receiving a reddit 2nd yet being based around the same Atlanta S60 2nd. Assuming that S60 is a non-reddit draft, then both conditions can still be fulfilled. If S60 ends up being a Reddit draft, well, somehow Baltimore is supposed to trade a pick that they won’t be getting. 

BAP/CHI
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And finally, the last one of the day at least. Will it be Baltimore’s last move of the offseason? Considering how many active players they’re starting to amass on the roster, it’s hard to imagine much more but we’ll touch on that later. This ends up being another cap situation for Baltimore to come in as a nice guy and help a fellow SHL team out for a fee. Vitek Vitecek, another former Carolina alum, is putting Chicago in the same boat with 3M expected next season. For the same effective price of 1.5M caphit after releasing Vitecek, Baltimore receives an upgrade in a reddit class from 4th to 3rd. Hard to predict how teams will do that far out, but barring any major changes, it’s likely to be at least a 10+ spot jump in a reddit draft. On top of that, they get a potential future backup with Vertigo having history with Baltimore. 
This signals that Mat Smith is the goalie of the future for Chicago after both were selected in the same S56 draft. Along with ensuring that any cap penalties from Vitecek is gone when they’re desperately in need of all the space they can get during their contending window, they also avoid having to carry a backup goalie that costs more than 500K meaning up to a total of 3M was saved with this move. 



The Aftermath 
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In and out trade summarized

Off the bat, the S60 2nd going in both directions are a big unknown given the conditions yet to be fulfilled as well as a contradictory possibility that means it’ll have to be adjusted in case of that scenario happening. For now we’ll call it a wash. 

In shipping out a future 1st, a couple 3rds, couple 4ths, Takshak and Tage (6M combined caphit for at least next season), the Platoon brought back a 4th OA in this upcoming draft, a couple future mid round reddit picks, two prospects with varying levels of promise, a 2nd/3rd line player and 3M in dead cap for one season. 
In the end, the difference paid was moving from a future 1st to the immediate draft’s 4th OA, losing an S60 4th, getting back a reddit 3rd and 4th. They moved on from lower but still useable players in Takshak and Tage, upgrading on the former by 600 TPE all while getting two prospects and some dead capspace. With the big picture of things, arguing that Baltimore didn't come out ahead of where they were before all of these deals transpired would be incredibly difficult. They have more to show for it and find themselves having a much more cohesive group planned around the S53-S58 classes. The worst case scenario of still being a lottery pick in S61 doesn’t significantly hurt given that they’re picking top 4 now and that has inherent value in its immediacy. Should either prospect not pan out, and Maximus becomes minute fodder, it still ends up being a slight net positive over what they sent out. 

The biggest question is whether Baltimore might have left more value on the tablet in some of those deals. The cap dump deals looked to be relatively minor pieces for capspace that other teams are going to be addicted to spending more for, being in a rare position of power could there be more that Baltimore could have wrestled out of these desperate teams? The caphits were quite effectively very minor so it the Platoon might not have had all the leverage despite how the budget sheet might show teams in desperate need of help.
Arguably one could question the need for Maximus where his effectiveness will begin to dip in two seasons from now and not be part of a contending group. That being said, there is some intrinsic value to having some minute soakers during this rebuild period, potentially elevating your team’s play from “doormat” to “poses some troubles” while keeping everybody engaged and looking towards the future. As part of a success plan, Maximus fading away/being moved for assets in the future making way for new prospects like a Lucas Johansson or Rob Wright makes for a clear succession plan. The rest remains on how well their future and current picks continue to pan out and if they can realize their high potential, given some of the high draft spot selections.

Quote:2400 WC

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#2

good shit ham, this is really dope

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Thanks to @karey and @JSS for the sigs!


Former USA Fed Head, Carolina Kraken Co-GM, Tampa Bay Barracuda GM
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#3

reported for trolling

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#4

Great article Nhamlet. Baltimore gets a lot of shit thrown it's way but JR and Zoone have a plan and the activity of the locker room continues to grow and expand. The close-knit feeling has been unique to my time in the SHL. I couldn't imagine being part of another LR at this point. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and while we will likely struggle a few more seasons, there will be a time when Baltimore will be contending. There are just too many committed players on this squad to be a basement dweller.

I am very pleased with the moves and the plan that my GMs have put in place. Baltimore is a desirable team to play for and more people will start to see that as the seasons pass.

The BAP-PENING is underway.

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#5

Ilike

Excellent write up!

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#6

Good to see Baltimore turning it around by having more cap space and expanding the Goalie core

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