[Critch]

2034/35 Lines
Forwards
1st Line - LW Lucas Karmiris (4.0), C Jordan Gavin (5.0), RW Peter Hrovatin (3.0) - Going by the ratings Hrovatin isnt as good as Hemming, but he's the future. Worryingly Karmiris is 28 but has gone from 4.5 to 4.0 and his injury tendencies list him as vulnerable to leg injury. My little gang of rookies is getting old.
2nd Line - LW Urho Mattila (4.0), C Oskar Vuollet (4.0), RW Jeff Martin (3.5) - Mattila is back but unfit, this will be where he fits in when he gets back in shape, right alongside Vuollet where he belongs. Jeff Martin gets RW on the second line, although he's going to bounce around to cover Left Wing injuries because we don't really have a backup on that side and he's the only versatile right winger we have .
3rd Line - LW David Prudek (3.0), C Kaden Pitre (3.5), RW Jorgen Palm (2.5) - Pridek and Pitre have signed new contracts so will be around three more years, Palm has returned from injury, so the Three P's line is back together, even if one of the P's has changed.
4th Line - LW Vasili Podkolzin (2.5), C Enzo Landrey or Nicholas Mouldenhauer (2.5), RW August Pettersson (3.0) or Borje Svensson (3.0) - Players playing for their place, and proving they deserve to be higher, and the desiccated husk of what used to be Vasili Podkolzin earning 6.5mil for 2 more years.

Defense
1st Pair - LD Jiri Mendl (3.5) RD Henry Mews (4.0) - Weston Knox is gone, he's signed for Nashville on a low salary 1 year deal, so Mendl steps in to take his place. He's top line now, not so much as a 1st pick bust.
2nd Pair - LD Easten Turko (3.5), RD Jackson Gillespie (2.5) - Turko is starting to become a top defenseman, which is a pity because we'll be struggling to pay what he wants next year. Gillespie doesn't have great ratings but he always churns out the stats. Both are FA in the summer (Turko a RFA I think).
3rd Pair - LD Matt Leader (2.5), RD Mark Dollack (2.5) - A pair of 20 year olds, they'll get a chance but with other youngsters ready to take their place. Johan Dahlberg and John Fireman. Alfred Hansson was supposed to be in the mix but he whines about being on a new team and lonely all the time so he gets sent home to Sweden for a year.

Netminders
Lucas Wall (4.5), Thomas Kiesewetter (2.5) - After messing around with a goalie tandem for a while we're back to a starter and a backup. Wall is here for 4 more years on a team friendly contract, so hopefully he stays healthy.

2034/35 Preseason
Preseason ends with a 4-3 record again. I did a lot more messing around with the lines ups than usual, trying out young defensemen and switching the 4th line. Small sample size. Other than that the season will be quicker. I normally have "interrupt when interesting players are waived" but we're right at the salary limit so no point, I cant afford to pick them up anyway. So no constant checking waived players. Zoom zoom.

2034/35 Regular Season
It was a good, but in the end a slightly disappointing season. Anchorage raced out at record breaking pace, they were 10-1-0, then 16-3-0, then 19-5-0 and running away with the division. By the midway point it was 30-10-1, on pace for 120+ points. They were 14 points clear in the division and 5 points clear in the President's Trophy, even injuries didn't slow us down. The midpoint was where it switched, we lost the next 7 in a row. Not sure what happened, nothing obvious, no injuries, no harmony problems, just couldn't buy a win. Over the few weeks after midpoint we'd go from 30-10-1 to 33-20-1, gone from 14 points clear in the division to tied with Calgary (who must've been on a run themselves to catch up) and dropped out of President's trophy contention. We also went from 20+ points ahead of 9th place to 12 points clear. Yeah, missing the playoffs never really got too close.

During the bad run I decided it was down to having too many young defensemen, with injuries we were regularly starting with 3 rookie defensemen, so I came up with a masterplan. Rookie C Enzo Landrey had made 4th center his own, so Nicholas Mouldenhauer became expendable. If I traded him away I could then watch the waivers and pick up a cheap experienced defenseman with the salary saved and fit him in with the rookies. That plan didn't work out though, the moment I traded Mouldenhauer away (to the Flyers), top Center Jordan Gavin got injured and we'd just traded away our backup center. So my waiver watching became for a center instead, we had to roll with the young guys in defense. In came C Ralph McKeamish on waivers from Detroit, he could play all three forward positions so the perfect adaptable backup. He lasted 1 game before getting injured too. For most of the run in we were short of centers, we ended the season with Defenseman Henry Mews playing center since we had more backup rookie defensemen than you could shake a stick at.

We ended on 107 points (53-28-1), just short of our 109 record. 61 points in the first half of the season, 46 in the second. Outside the 3-10 period, even the second half was good. We won the Pacific Division, 3 points ahead of Calgary on 104 points, Anaheim on 98, Seattle on 91 and Vancouver on 88 (which was enough for the second wildcard spot). Central Division was Atlanta on 115 (President's Trophy winners), Chicago on 103 and St Louis on 101.

Atlanta are top seeds, we're second so we get the first Wild Card team, so it's Seattle again.

We were division winners and in the playoffs, but we should have been record breakers.

Stand out player stats were Urho Mattila who got the most points (71 in 79 games) despite being unfit for the first month after returning from his sabbatical. Oskar Vuollet led the team in goals, 31 in 81 games, the highest total in Anchorage's history by a player not named Jordan Gavin. Jordan Gavin had 25 goals and 35 assists, but he missed 15 games with injury. Lucas Wall had a sv% of.917 and a GAA of 2.61. Goals Saved Above Average of nearly 18 is good though. And the final record breaking stat is Jeff Martin had 113 penalty minutes, destroying Brenden Dillon's Anchorage record of 85. He also had a record breaking 13 fights. Two last year to 13 this year, boy's gone crazy.