SHL WHAT IF ...?

I was GM of Winnipeg when we made the branding change from the Jets to the Aurora. That's probably the highlight of my GM stint with that franchise. After 9 years of underachieving despite having tons of great people on the team, I made the decision to step down, and Ace was hired on at the beginning of S61.

BUT

WHAT IF I had never stepped down as WPG GM after S60??????

Ace would not have quit as GM of Anaheim to take over WPG ... Talls wouldn't have taken over ANA and sold off all the pieces of a potential 4-Star Cup winning team ... Talls would then not have quit as GM so Fluw would not have taken over ... therefore Yukon Malamutes would not exist!

Ace's player Bjorn Viggoson would not have been autodrafted to WPG with him as GM. He probably wouldn't have retired and created Farquaads. He would not have been able to trade away all of WPG's players to load up on draft picks for the S62-64 Drafts and fill the team with all the great people who made great players who became the foundation of the Aurora legacy of dominant teams for the last decade, including a Cup win!

I would have been auto-drafted to WPG and the future core would have been Grogu, Gonzo, Beck and ... Merica! Would we have been any good, who knows! I didn't really figure out FHM until we moved to FHM8 but that was about when all those players would have been peaking. We did pretty good in CGY for those few season from S67 to S70 even though we never got past the second round of the playoffs. We could assume WPG would have been somewhat similar, good but not great. Or maybe nothing would change and WPG would continue to be the place where great people asked out in trades or got stolen in expansion, and the Aurora would continue to languish at the bottom of the standings. Probably that one is more likely.

For my SMJHL career I probably never would have got to play for the Great Falls Grizzlies in those first few seasons. As mentioned, the ANA team I was on was setting up to be a top team in those years before the fire sale, but I would have missed out on that expansion team fun and wouldn't have a cool Grizzlies jersey to wear!

Speaking of Calgary, I never would have then become draft-eligible and selected by the Dragons in the S61 Draft. I wouldn't have been there during the infamous Izzy incident, and certainly wouldn't have taken them over. I'd have probably been on the sidelines pointing and laughing at their demise and pitying the poor sucker who had to take the reigns. For the sake of imagination, I'm going to say someone would have taken them over and relocated them so the Dragons wouldn't exist any more either. Or at least not in their current state.

There would be an infinite number of myriad offshoots - changed draft orders, players going to all sorts of different teams than they are on now, different champions maybe.

But you can say for sure, that one decision to step down as WPG GM was definitely a nexus moment in which we'd be now living in a completely different timeline!