[Critch]

2035/36 Regular Season

Well we might have not much depth in defense left, not enough for three good lines anyway, but the in-game pre-season preview says Vegas are favorites for the Stanley Cup with Atlanta and Anchorage the main challengers. It's the first time we've been mentioned as a challenger, last year was our first mention in the preview as among the darkhorses, the first time we'd been mentioned at all. Even when we won the Stanley Cup, the preview didnt mention us as a possible challenger the next year.

The regular season started badly, the first month's schedule was brutal, 15 games in 26 days and 5 sets of back-to-backs. Slow start followed by a rally and Anchorge were top of the table at 8-5-1, nobody else had come out of the gates flying either. A run of 2-8-0 and we were back at the bottom of the table, 9th by the end of November. Trying to get by with two good defensemen (Mews and Mendl), a cheap journeyman (Adair) and a rotation of youngsters (Leader, Dollack, Dahlberg, Fireman) wasnt really working out especially when injuries kicked in. We were near the top for goals for, but near the bottom for goals allowed. The two goalies (Wall and Kiesewetter) were having terrible seasons too, both sub .900 save percentage. I'm not sure how much of that comes from having a poor defense in front of them.

A strong December, January and February and we were clear at the top despite the poor defense, lots of highscoring games. 5-4 or 6-5, come see the Huskies for the thrills. There was a game where I accidentally put two attacking defensemen on the top line and conceded nine too. A 9-6 scoreline, but otherwise things had calmed down and we were heading for the playoffs.

Just before the trade deadline, things went wrong. Jiri Mendl was one of our two good defensemen but he was also "Outspoken". Not sure what he did, but suddenly half the team hated him and the team harmony went from "harmonious" to "open conflict" in a couple of weeks. Results suffered too and suddenly we were back in a pack at the top instead of clear at the top. Mendl's contract was up at the end of the season, he wasn't going to re-sign, so I decided to trade him away at the trade deadline, a playoff chaser would like to have a 4.0 defenseman and would hopefully overpay for him. Washington Capitals sent their first and they had a new defenseman to help them in their ultimately unsuccessful playoff push.

We hobbled along with a weakened defense, thanks to the free agency issues former Husky defenseman Matthew Paranych was available so we spent all our money on bringing him back. He'd been sitting by the phone for a year and a half from when we let him go to UFA. He asked for what he wanted, I said I couldn't afford it and made our best offer, he came back with a demand that was less than the offer he was turning down, I said ok and he'd successfully negotiated down his salary. As I said AI and free agency is screwy at best. Turned out he wasn't much good anyway, 18 months on a sofa hadn't helped his game. But at least he was popular.

The season end came down to a nail-biter, with 1 game to go we were in 1st with 101 points, then LA Kings, Calgary Flames and Seattle Kraken all had 100 points. Fourth place in our division wasn't guaranteed a wildcard place, the Central division had two wildcard teams on 100+ points too. So the last game if we won we'd win the division, if we lost it was mathematically possible that we'd miss the playoffs depending on what the other teams did.

We won 4-2 against Atlanta and won the division. A happy ending. In the end both the wild card teams came from the Central Division, so for a change it wont be Seattle this year. This year it'll be Winnipeg Jets.

edit - I also spent the season cursing the game for being unresponsive to my mouse clicks, I'd have to click every button two or three times to get it to work. I now realize that my mouse is broken and the game is blameless for this particular issue.