Quote:
Originally Posted by Young Drachma
Bummer about the playoff run.
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As long as the team keeps on getting it's annual ticket to the playoff lottery, that's ok with me. We've just not had the luck, plus there have been a few times recently where I looked at the other team's roster and thought "yeah, they're better than Anchorage".
I'm starting to think we may survive the retirement of Mews and Gavin too. I guess I'll carry on for about a month or two until the Tour de France starts and I have my annual attempt of ProCycling Manager, so got a few seasons to go.
2039/40 Regular Season
Not a lot of changes to the lineup this year. The original plan to replace UFA Peter Hrovatin with Devan Vandenberg didn't work out, he started the season on the Anchorage 4th line but didn't look ready, 1 goal and 0 assists in 12 games. He was a 19 year old rookie so he was sent back to the Juniors for a year, he did ok there, 35 goals, 47 assists in 39 games. Maybe currently too good for juniors but not ready for NHL.
Other than that, the defensemen are starting to look old, Henry Mews is down to 2.5. And Jordan Gavin's overall rating is down to 4.5 from 5.0 too. The years are catching up.
Incidentally the overall ratings don't seem to be scaled the same for Forwards and Defensemen, a serviceable forward seems to have to have a higher rating than a serviceable defensemen.
Forwards
Jeff Martin(4.0)/Jordan Gavin(4.5)/Borje Svensson(4.5)
David Prudek(3.5)/Enzo Landrey(3.5)/August Pettersson(4.0)
Magnus Larsen(3.5)/Michael Jackson(4.0)/Anssi Ridanpaa(4.0)
Alexander Broda(3.5)/Jeff Smith(3.0)/Jonas Lambert(3.0)
depth - LW Marek Novak(2.5), RW Juraj Hajdon (2.0) (really only there because he's violent. An agitator, good to rile up opponents), C Aleksandr Unichenko (3.0)
Defense
Matt Leader(3.0)/Henry Mews(2.5)
Johan Dahlberg(3.0)/Reece Gault(2.0)
Mark Dollack(3.0)/Joni-Jukka Timonen(2.0)
depth - John Fireman(2.5), Martin Pospisil(2.5), Hunter Aura(2.0)
Goaltenders
Lucas Wall(5.0) and Chwalislaw Janiszewski(2.5)
This season Anchorage raced away with the division, for a long time they had a commanding lead for the President's Trophy too.. We reached the midway point with a record of 33-6-2 and a 13 point lead in the division. It all slowed down a little in the second half though, top 6 forward David Prudek missed the second half of the season, we had our first real goalie injury when Wall went down for a few weeks ill (although Janiszewski stepped in and played well), Jordan Gavin missed 12 games with a suspension for an illegal hit to the head (his scouting report used to say he was considered a sporting player, now it says he's a "fairly clean player"), Mews missed the last month, and is still out. So injuries and not being as good as the first half made them seem caught up.
The division lead got whittled away, at one point we were 13 points ahead of San Jose and Edmonton but by the end of the season we needed to finish with a winning run to hold on and win the division by 2 points.
Anchorage ended the year with a record of 58-21-3 for 119 points, a new Anchorage record breaking last year's 117 record. We had by far the best defense in the league, 178 goals conceded (also an Anchorage record) and scored 298. The defense isn't anything special, so I'm assuming a chunk of the low goals allowed is down to goalies Lucas Wall and Chwalislaw Janiszewski having great years. Plus they do play with a lot of defensive forwards, we're not playing exciting attacking hockey.
Top scorer was Borje Svensson with 32 goals, he got off to a fast start, half his 32 goals scored in the first 20 games before slowing down to his average pace.
Old favorite Henry Mews has really fallen away, he was rated 4.0 a few years back, now he's 2.5 and falling. At one point he was rated 18/20 for his role (Quarterback defenseman), now he's 10/20. He still gets better than average game ratings, and he's our guy so he'll be playing til he drops or retires anyway.
For the Pacific Division, Anchorage won with 119 points, 2nd were Edmonton with 117, 3rd San Jose with 106 (their first playoffs for a few years), 4th Vancouver with 104 and 5th Calgary with 95. In the Central division it's Nashville (108 points), St Louis(101 points) and Dallas (98 points, their first playoffs after 8 seasons out). Calgary had a better record than 4th in the Central (Minnesota), so it's two wild card teams from the Pacific in the playoffs again this year.
Which means another meeting with Calgary in the playoffs for Anchorage.