2030/31 Preseason and stuff
After the stunning revelation that the reigning Stanley Cup Champion Minnesota Wild were really not all that good, I went into hardcore FHM9-learning mode. Basically I watched a few youtube videos, and then looked at my team to see what I was doing wrong. We were going to be more like Minnesota.
Huskies go Wild
The first obvious difference was that, despite defensemen and forwards being fairly comparable with Anchorage, Wild had a top class netminder. Jesper Wallstedt, 4.0 current rating, he'd been pretty ordinary in the regular season but he really turned up in the playoffs. Sure one of the forwards won the Playoff MVP (Matt Boldy, 26 points in 27 playoff games), but Wallstedt with a .930 save percentage helped carry an ok-ish team to the championship. A goalie at the top of his game can cover up for a lot of other problems. So Anchorage would get a good goalie too. We'd planned on going the cheap option, 24 year old Evan Maillet (no NHL experience but did well in AHL), but there was a top guy just sitting in Free Agency. 5-star rated Sebastian Cossa, he'd missed most of last season with a broken shoulder bone, he wouldnt be fit til pre-season but he'd been great for a few seasons at Detroit before that. It looked like his injury was putting everybody else off, he started free agency looking for 9.8mil per year but when I decided "Anchorage need a top class goalie" he was getting a bit more desperate and signed up for a measly $6.6mil per year for three years.
Another issue was that Anchorage Huskies were soft. There's a screen that shows "Toughness" for each line and both the 3rd and 4th line were 1-star toughness. The two lines that should be defending and throwing themselves into hits weren't. I pruned out the softer players and signed a FA RW Benjamin Coupal, he hadn't played in the NHL but the scouts liked him, he had high ratings for hitting, checking and fighting, and he'd been suspended 8 times in 3 AHL seasons so he sounded perfect. He's into the 4th line as "agitator" to shake things up. We also added a big AHL defensive forward for a bit of depth, Brandon Svoboda. Having a cool name made him stand out from the crowd.
Next up were the tactics. I'd not really paid much attention to the tactics and I don't really understand what some of them mean or how they should all hang together, so I just cycled through all the options til I found ones that didn't list anybody as a "terrible fit". If an important player liked an option, that was a bonus. So we are going "through center" and Neutral zone Funnel because Jordan Gavin likes those options, and Behind the Net in the offensive zone because Oskar Voullet and a couple of others like that. We'll see if that all works.
And the final change was the staff. I'd left staffing and staff contracts to the AI and it hadnt done well so a few firings, a few new hires and we were set for the season. You'd think the AI would at least make sure your assistant coach for offense could at least coach offense.
If this doesnt help at least a bit, I'm stumped. Maybe I should stick to Football Manager.
| Name | pos | Age | Nationality | Current | Potential | Years | Salary |
|---|
| Goalies | | | | | | | |
| Sebastian Cossa | G | 27 | CAN | 5.0 | 5.0 | 3 | 6,680 |
| Evan Maillet | G | 24 | CAN | 2.5 | 4.0 | 1 | 750 |
| Ryan Grout | G | 21 | CAN | 2.0 | 3.0 | 1 | 750 |
| Lucas Wall | G | 18 | CAN | 1.5 | 4.0 | 3 | 750 |
| | | | | | | |
| Defensemen | | | | | | | |
| Weston Knox | LD | 25 | USA | 3.0 | 3.0 | 1 | 950 |
| Easten Turko | LD | 21 | CAN | 2.5 | 3.5 | 2 | 750 |
| Yan Kuznetsov | LD | 28 | RUS | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2 | 1,290 |
| Vaclav Johanovsky | LD | 22 | CZE | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2 | 750 |
| Carter Bylycia | LD | 21 | CAN | 2.0 | 2.5 | 2 | 750 |
| | | | | | | |
| Henry Mews | RD | 24 | CAN | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2 | 4,704 |
| Tomas Lavoie | RD | 24 | CAN | 3.0 | 3.5 | 3 | 5,492 |
| Conor Walton | RD | 24 | CAN | 2.5 | 3.5 | 1 | 910 |
| Thomas Harley | RD | 28 | CAN | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3 | 750 |
| | | | | | | |
| Forwards | | | | | | | |
| Jordan Gavin | C | 23 | CAN | 4.5 | 5.0 | 1 | 5,459 |
| Oskar Vuollet | C | 24 | SWE | 3.5 | 3.5 | 5 | 4,997 |
| Dylan Holloway | C | 28 | CAN | 3.5 | 3.5 | 2 | 4,413 |
| Kaden Pitre | C | 24 | CAN | 2.5 | 3.5 | 1 | 1,295 |
| Prokhor Poltapov | C | 26 | RUS | 3.0 | 3.0 | 1 | 1,520 |
| | | | | | | |
| Lucas Karmiris | LW | 23 | CAN | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4 | 4,873 |
| Urho Mattila | LW | 23 | FIN | 3.5 | 3.5 | 4 | 3,368 |
| Cole Eiserman | LW | 23 | USA | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3 | 1,440 |
| Anton Nilsson | LW | 22 | SWE | 3.0 | 5.0 | 2 | 865 |
| Teddy Stiga | LW | 24 | USA | 2.5 | 3.0 | 1 | 815 |
| | | | | | | |
| Vasili Podkolzin | RW | 29 | RUS | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3 | 6,770 |
| Emil Hemming | RW | 24 | FIN | 3.5 | 4.0 | 2 | 5,049 |
| Chris Thibodeau | RW | 24 | USA | 3.0 | 3.0 | 1 | 2,621 |
| Benjamin Coupal | RW | 23 | CAN | 3.0 | 3.5 | 2 | 750 |
| Brandon Svoboda | RW | 25 | USA | 2.5 | 2.5 | 1 | 750 |