[Critch]

2037/38 Rookie Draft
There's normally not much left by the Anchorage first pick at the bottom of the first round, but this year is particularly bad. First Round, pick 38, LW Marc-Etienne Cyr. He's an 18 year old Canadian and he's not very good, but he's 6'4''. He'll be in the juniors for years. From then on it's whoever the scouts select as their best "high risk" pick, probably nobody who'll ever see the bright lights of Anchorage.

The Anchorage prospect list is still pretty much bare, low picks every year have caught up, there's really nobody on their way to Anchorage. In the system prospect ranking list Anchorage are listed 32 out of the 40 teams, it's surprising that there are 8 teams worse off.

2037/38 Free Agency
A year of change for Anchorage, a lot of old guys pricing themselves out of a new contract. That was the plan anyway, it didnt work out that way though because Free Agency in the game doesnt really work so all that happened was they left and nobody signed them. Five Anchorage players went to free agency (Henry Mews, Lukas Karmiris, Urho Mattila, Kaden Pitre and Robin Hansson), it's now the day before pre-season and only two of them have been signed. So good news for Henry Mews and Lukas Karmiris, they're back at Anchorage while the other three sit at home. Henry Mews left saying he wanted 14mil for a single year extension, six days of nobody calling him and he was back at Anchorage, 2 years at 6.2mil per year. Lucas Karmiris had a sudden realization of his lack of irreplaceability and cut his demands too. A few weeks later I'm already regretting giving Karmiris a 3 year contract, that's 3.5mil per year we're not getting value for after year one.

With the money saved from letting Mattila, Pitre and Hansson walk, we added some depth. A handful of rookies on two way deals, pick of the bunch C Aleksandr Unichenko. He was Anchorage's third round pick last year and since then he's had a year of over a point per game in the KHL as a 19 year old so he must be good. As well as all the rookie children we signed one grown up player, defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka. He was a Seattle player for years but has been over in Russia for a few seasons. It's been a week since I played the game and I cant remember why I signed him, last week Critch really messed that one up. He's old, not very good, costs 3mil per year and he's not even over 6 foot tall.

So going into the season the lines look like this:

Forwards
First Line - Jeff Martin (3.5)/Jordan Gavin (5.0)/Borje Svensson (4.0) - As long as Jordan Gavin is at his peak, we'll be a contender. Jeff Martin will be first line, but he'll spend half the season injured or suspended, he's vulnerable to injury everywhere and a bit violent, so TBD.
Second Line - David Prudek (3.5)/Enzo Landrey (3.5)/August Pettersson (3.5) - Enzo Landrey is more offensive than Vuollet so he's into the top 6, Prudek will probably end up on the top line when Martin gets injured/suspended, Pettersson will probably end up on the 4th line when he under-performs again.
Third Line - Magnus Larsen (3.5)/Oskar Vuollet (3.5)/Peter Hrovatin (3.0) - Larsen was a 4th round pick and not much of a prospect but seems to improve every time I check on him. He has the dreaded "if he's on your roster controversy will follow" so he's risky. Every year you get bonus points for your stats, I've been pumping all those points into "man management" and "discipline" so I dont think we're as susceptible to harmony and discipline problems now, Magnus will test that theory.
Fourth Line - Jonas Lambert (3.0)/Emil Kjellberg (3.0)/Lucas Karmiris (3.0) - Even the 4th line are all 3.0 star rated, think this is the deepest set of forwards we've had.
Depth forwards - C Spencer Ecclestone (2.5), C Aleksandr Unichenko (2.5) RW Anssi Ridanpaa (2.5) - this is what remains of the Anchorage prospect list, they'll all get a chance this year to see if they can show a Magnus Larsen like improvement.

Defensemen
First Pair - Matt Leader (3.0)/Henry Mews (3.5) - standard top pairing for a couple of years, Mews back for 2 more years.
Second Pair - Johan Dahlberg (3.0)/Mark Dollack (3.0) - Dahlberg and Dollack are 2 of the 3 successes from our "draft lots of really big defensemen" drive from a couple of years ago (Matt Leader is the other). They're not fancy skill players, just big lads. Dahberg is 6'6'' and 250lbs even without skates.
Third Pair - Axel Sandin Pellikka (2.5)/Alexander Filippov (2.5) - A pair of NHL retreads who had been reclaimed from the KHL. Both old, both fairly expensive, Pellikka isnt even tall.
Depth defensemen - John Fireman (2.5) Joni-Jukka Timonen (2.5) - more big young lads. One of them is Finnish, can you guess which one?

Goaltenders
Lucas Wall (5.0) and Neil Pintaric (2.5) - Lucas Wall is the star, but he's a free agent after this season and he wants a $10mil per year salary increase to extend after this season. Eeek!

It's been four years since the Anchorage Stanley Cup win and only six players remain (Gavin, Vuollet, Mews, Karmiris, Prudek, Martin). That's more turnover than I expected.

2037-38 Pre-season
Each year the game generates a season preview email, this year it makes Vegas favorites, Toronto and Hartford challengers and Anchorage a dark horse. Dark horse sounds fair, pretty sure we'll make the playoffs but not top level talent. No mention of Atlanta on the list of favorites, they've hit the point where they had too many talented players looking for $12+ million per year and have started losing free agents, star defender Louis-Joseph Boutin has moved onto Vancouver for $14mil per year. Not sure why but the big money signings always seem to go to Vancouver.

We also get our first mention on the "league's best" email, Lucas Wall rated as the league's best goaltender. He's on the last year of a $1.5mil per year contract and he wants to be seriously paid to stay, his negotiations start at 3 years at $13.6mil so this will probably be his last year as a Husky as Jordan Gavin is on a contract year too.

We go 3-3 in pre-season. Strengthening Lucas Wall's contract negotiations is we go 3-0 in his three games and 0-3 in games we gave a backup a start.