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sulovilen · 06-19-2023, 02:15 PM

I played for San Francisco for the vast majority of my last player’s career. Let’s have a look at what they have been up to since I left.

THE BLOW-UP

Season 67 was the first season of Pride’s decline after multiple seasons of finishing in the top-5. That was when the team decided to flip the rebuild switch. Before S68 they did trade away some of their long-time star players, such as Rikard Bjerg, Miguel Hefeweizen, Petr Svoboda and Kev Kevens.

THE REBUILD

In terms of on-ice product, season 68 was what the first season of a rebuild often is - a dumpster fire. They finished second to last, only above Hamilton. Season 69 continued on the same track, with Pride finishing 18th in the league and last place in the Western Conference. Season 70 - same story. Only 42 points - tied for last in the Western Conference. Season 71 was finally a small step in the right direction. They finished 4th in the Pacific Division, which was absolutely dominated by the Edmonton Blizzard.

But: they were only two points behind Seattle. So maybe with a couple of lucky bounces here and the they could’ve been the 2nd place team in the conference. Is this the light at the end of the rebuild tunnel or just a false positive? Let’s find out.

WELL-USED FIRST ROUNDERS

In the S67 Pride did not have a 1st round pick, but they made a splash in the S68 draft, picking up Viktor Hargreeves, Ragnar Lothbrok and Ignacio Garza all in the first round, as well as Barefoot Sugars in the 2nd. All of these players are now rostered and look to be a part of their future core.

In the S69 draft they again had three 1st round picks, which they used to Oskar Scholz, Peter Tingle and Dusty Wilson, who are all looking very promising so far. S70 and S71 draft were nearly as impressive, as they were able to make another five first round picks - three of them being top five in the S71 draft (Levin Schattenaxt, Logan Webb and Dominik Winters).

SFP has also acquired Chuchichäschtli Zopf from Calgary, Walter Sobchak from Los Angeles and they’ve drafted players like Kyle Murray and Toasty in the later rounds. This means that their roster is now absolutely stacked with S67-S71 players.

HOW’S IT LOOKING THEN?

As we can see, they drafted tons of potential in the four last drafts, and right now it seems that that has set them up for success sooner or later. It’s just a matter of if they can keep developing the youngsters as they have, and if they can find a roster spot for all of them - and how they will manage their assets once all of them are demanding big bucks and ice time.

I have no idea if the pick tracker can be trusted, but it looks as if they still have all of their 1st rounders intact for the next drafts, which means that they can still either keep slowly adding to their prospect pool or use the picks to make some moves to accelerate the rebuild. All in all, the future is looking bright for them.

*CptSquall* · 06-22-2023, 02:12 PM

Approved, +5 TPE to @sulovilen

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