After considering the Calgary Flames, the Florida Panthers, the Nashville Predators and the Winnipeg Jets, I settled on the Buffalo Sabres for my franchise this year, as they looked like a team I could keep pretty much the entire core intact, only adding a few secondary pieces, through trades, draft and free agency, to build my dynasty.
Which is pretty much what I did.
O'Reilly, Okposo, Kane, Eichel, Reinhart, Nylander, Girgensons, Ristolainen, Bogosian, Franson and Lehner are still the leaders of the team, and I just parted ways with Kulikov, who I had to let go as a free agent, after year 3.
Four separate trades ultimately allowed me to transform the Buffalo Sabres into back-to-back Stanley Cup champions.
Now, I have a few house rules regarding trades...but even those couldn't prevent me from acquiring elite talent. First one being "I can only initiate a trade for a player listed as available by their team, and can only offer things the other team is interested in". However, I can also place players on the trading block...if a team contacts me, showing interest in that player, then I'm free to ask for whatever I want in return. In this last case however, I can only "submit" the offer once. If the other team refuses, I have to wait for them to contact me again to submit another offer (forcing me to pay a little bit more than I would have, if I want to make sure the deal goes through the first time).
I have another rule for the offseason, but it doesn't apply to the following four trades.
- Traded Eric Cornel, Nicolas Deslauriers, Jake McCabe and Devante Stephens to COL in return of John Mitchell, Mikko Rantanen, Nikita Zadorov and a 4th round pick (2017).
- Traded Tyler Ennis, Vojtech Budik and Anders Nilsson to NYR for Jimmy Vesey and Antti Raanta.
- Traded Marcus Foligno and Minnesota's 2nd round pick (2017) to ANA for Jacob Larsson.
- During the draft, traded Matt Moulson, Cliff Pu and my 1st round pick (2017) to Long Island in return of their 1st round pick (traded up 5-6 spots) to claim Nico Hischier, who fell down at #9 in first year draft.
After year 1, Vesey jumped to an 86, and is now an established 2nd liner on my team. A bit disapointed by Rantanen's growth, who never went higher than an 83 so far. But the fact that he's still considered a 3rd line scoring forward is ideal for me right now. After spending season 1 in the juniors, Nylander came back as an 82 3rd line socring forward as well, which was also perfect. He grew to an 85 this year though, so I'll have to be careful with his playing time.
Zadorov exploded after I acquired him, and went up to an 88. Larsson didn't do as well, as he seems stuck at 82 right now. Him and Guhle are taking an eternity to develop, which forced me to sign Jake Gardiner to replace Kulikov on in my top-4.
Right now, line-up looks like this:
Kane (86) - Eichel (93) - Okposo (88)
Vesey (86) - O'Reilly (88) - Reinhart (91)
Rantanen (82) - Girgensons (84) - Nylander (85)
Carrier (82) - Faksa (81) - Baptiste (81)
Zadorov (88) - Ristolainen (91)
Gardiner (85) - Bogosian (85)
Larsson (82) - Franson (82)
Lehner (88) - Raanta (82)
Extras: Galiardi (82), Larsson (80), T.Van Riemsdyk (79)
Hischier (also taking his sweet time) is almost ready for the big leagues, so hopefully he'll be a mid-season call-up, so I can finally place him down the middle, between Rantanen and Nylander, and trade Gigensons in his last year of contract at the deadline. Bogosian might be in his final year with the team as well, as his contract is becoming pretty heavy to carry. I don't have any good right-handed D prospect though, so it might be a challenge to fill his spot.
...and that's pretty much where I'm at right now.