2029/30 Regular Season
I mentioned earlier that there had been a recent patch for the game, the part of the patch notes that I should have taken notice of is this:
- slightly increased frequency of team harmony-affecting incidents
It says slightly but for Anchorage greatly might be closer to the truth, we had had two off-ice incidents causing team harmony problems in the first 5 seasons, then had 5 off-ice incidents before Christmas this season, Team Harmony was at "Open Hostility" for the first half of the season. The team captain Jordan Gavin would try to calm things down and everybody would react "who does this ass think he is talking to us like that?!" and they'd add Gavin to the list of people they hated.
So the team had lots of problems, and not just team harmony. Last game of preseason ended with Lucas Karmiris injured and out for the first 2 months of the season. Then the defense looked terrible, heavily conceding in every game. Even when Anchorage won it wasn't thanks to the defense, a 7-6 and a 6-4 win in the first couple of weeks. A change of goalie, Mads Sogaard out and Topias Leinonen in and some shuffling of the defensive lines and things steadied for a while, Anchorage got up to 16-12-3 and second place in the division, but that was as good as it got. An injury to the star defenseman Henry Mews was followed by a long losing streak and the team harmony falling apart and Anchorage were out of the playoff running by the end of December.
One good thing about the team self destruction was that I read through the boards to see what caused the dressing room falling apart. Apparently if you read a players scout report the players most likely to be clique ringleaders or cause off-ice issues will have warning hints in the Personality section. Sure enough the troublemakers all had a warning in their scout report (Alex Weiermair "If he's on your roster, controversy will follow", Carter Murphy "Murphy is prone to controversy", rookie Jaxon Pirie "If Pirie is on your roster, controversy is sure to follow", Hunter McKenzie "over-confident - prone to controversy"). I'd never bothered looking at that part of the scouting report, hence I collected a group of trouble makers. They're all cleared now, all traded away or UFAs not renewed, and from now on nobody with the word controversy in their scout report is getting on my team.
Goalie Topias Leinonen was also a victim of the purge that followed me going through the scout reports for every player. "Tendency to crumble in important games" sounds like a bad trait, particularly for a goalie, so he's out.
Anchorage finished the season 7th in Pacific Division, a record of 35-39-8 for 78 points, 16 points less than last year and 14 points out of the wildcard positions. Harmony, injuries, bad defense, those three are getting the blame for the bad year.
Good news for next year is all the big names will be back, Karmiris, Gavin, Mews, Mattila, Holloway, Vuollet, Podkolzin, Hemming all under contract so we have a core to build around. We also have a good collection of picks for the upcoming draft thanks to the mid-season clear out, 3 picks in the 1st round (all of them lottery) and 2 more in the 2nd round. Bad news is we don't have a goalie, and the defense is poor so the roster needs some rebuilding. Goalie Mads Sogaard was mediocre, lost his starting spot, had a save percentage below .900 and goals saved above average of -18, but he still wanted over $9mil per year to re-sign. So he'll be free to explore other opportunities in the summer.
It'll be another season of Anchorage having a different starting goalie every year, six years in and nobody has been the starter with most starts two years in a row.
(p.s. If they're still patching things, they need to look at FAs too. I checked mid-season and there was a top goalie sitting unclaimed, Ilya Sorokin had been released mid-season and nobody had picked him up. Vezina trophy finalist last season, released and a free agent this. Last year it was the Vezina trophy winner who sat out most of the year.)