
Record: 35-40-7 | 7th in Central, 13th in Western Conference, 27th in NHL
After barely playing NHL for the last two editions I decided to buy it after christmas. After playing around with some threes and HUT I decided to wander into franchise mode. Expansion team it was and I felt it was time for Houston to get their team. So let me introduce Houston Dragons, who will play in the Western Conference as a part of the Central Division forming a rivalry with the Dallas Stars. As AHL team we have the newly founded Alabama Rockets. I turned of Owner Mode for this one as it's my first one. Also, the first ever game for Houston Dragons ended with a 9-1 loss against Vegas as I decided to try out AlTito's sliders. Safe to say I was not used to them. Injuries, morale and assistant making line up changes was turned on while simming.
We did however score the first goal in the game and the historical first goal in franchise history will forever belong to Mark Letestu who tucked it past Malcolm Subban in the Vegas net. This was the only game I played the first season as my main priority was to get used to all the things off ice and try to maximize the return of our assets. We ended up with a 35-40-7 record which places us 7th in the division, only Nashville were worse, and 27th in the league. Not at all bad for the inagural season. After the draft lottery we ended up with the 2nd overall pick in the 2019 entry draft. The result from that draft will follow in the review of season number two. The first captain of the Dragons franchise was Mattias Ekholm with Rick Nash and Tyler Myers as assitant captains. Adam Henrique and Mark Letestu later replaced Nash and Myers. The reasons for that? Continue reading.
The Houston Dragons will play in three different jerseys with the primary color being maroon and gold. White and black will be the supporting colors in the team identity. A maroon home jersey, white away and black third as shown below.


After looking at the exposed players in the expansion draft I was sure of one thing. There were plenty of good defensemen out there and not much to write home about regarding at center. Therefore the strategi was to pick as many good defensmen as possible no matter the salary as we'd not be near the salarcy cap when it was all said and done. And all in on defensemen it was. Mark Giordano, Adam Larsson, Mattias Ekholm, Josh Manson and Houston native Tyler Myers was quickly picked with intention to swap atleast a couple of them before the inagural season was over. Alex Killorn, Jesper Fast and Mark Letestu was probably the "best" forward picks. In goal the thought was to have Jaro Halak with Dell backing up – but a big blooper from the front office happened as Halak somehow was let go to the free agency and there we stood with Dell and Linus Ullmark as our duo. Givet it was the inagural season we decided to run with Dell and Ullmark.
NHL Expansion Draft 2018 | |||||
Pick | Team | Player | Pos | Ht | Wt |
Anaheim | Josh Manson | D | |||
Arizona | Freddie Hamtilton | C | |||
Boston | Riley Nash | C | |||
Buffalo | Linus Ullmark | G | |||
Calgary | Mark Giordano | D | |||
Carolina | Trevor Carrick | D | |||
Chicago | Connor Murphy | D | |||
Colorado | Sven Andrighetto | RW | |||
Columbus | Mark Letestu | C | |||
Dallas | Gemel Smith | C | |||
Detroit | Matt Puempel | LW | |||
Edmonton | Adam Larsson | D | |||
Florida | Colton Sceviour | RW | |||
Los Angeles | Alec Martinez | D | |||
Minnesota | Gustav Olofsson | D | |||
Montreal | Kerby Rychel | LW | |||
Nashville | Mattias Ekholm | D | |||
New Jersey | Jimmy Hayes | RW | |||
NY Islanders | Jaroslav Halak | G | |||
NY Rangers | Jesper Fast | RW | |||
Ottawa | Tom Pyatt | C | |||
Philadelphia | Taylor Leier | LW | |||
Pittsburgh | Carl Hagelin | LW | |||
San Jose | Aaron Dell | G | |||
St. Louis | Oskar Sundqvist | LW | |||
Tampa Bay | Alex Killorn | LW | |||
Toronto | Brad Smith | C | |||
Vancouver | Reid Boucher | LW | |||
Washington | Alex Chiasson | RW | |||
Winnipeg | Tyler Myers | D |

The first entry draft the Houston Dragons participated in was the 2018 one. Seven picks, one in each round, was at the disposal of the new franchise. We picked 6th overall and while we missed out on Rasmus Dahlin we were more than thrilled to make Filip Zadina our first overall NHL Entry Draft pick. We then followed that up with picking Ty Dellandrea, Adam Ginning, the russian Markus Kozhevnikov, canadian Henman before rounding it all off with Arnason and then the finnish defenseman Tuukka Ruutu who has low Top 4 potential. Apart from Zadina, there may not be much to say hooray for – but I hope for the best. If it stinks, I´ll blame the rookie GM.
Houston Dragons 2018 Entry Draft | |||||
Pick | Team | Player | Pos | Ht | Wt |
5 | Houston | Filip Zadina | RW | ||
35 | Houston | Ty Dellandrea | C | ||
67 | Houston | Adam Ginning | D | ||
99 | Houston | Markus Kozhevnikov | RW | ||
131 | Houston | Luke Henman | C | ||
163 | Houston | Micheal Arnason | C | ||
195 | Houston | Tuukka Ruutu | D |

We started off with filling in some holes after the expansion draft with signing Rick Nash on a one year deal. JT Brown, Sean Kuraly and Mackenize Weeger was also signed as UFA to bolster the NHL roster. Scott Wedgewood, Matt Hackett, Fredrik Claesson, Corey Tropp, Emilie Poirer, Travis Morin, Brian Flynn, Miro Altonen and Jeff Schultz to go play on the farm.
The interesting stuff however was done in trades. A grand total of seven trades were made before the trade deadline passed. As we were not shooting for playoffs we had our mind set to maximize the value for our assets. As talked about earlier we hade picked as many good defensemen as possible, with purpose on shipping a couple or more out during the inagural season. The first one who got traded was Alec Martinez who went to St. Louis together with Carl Hagelin and a 2nd round pick in 2020 in exchange for Jordan Kyrou, a 1st round pick 2019 and a 2nd round pick in 2020.
Trade number two was with Florida who gave up Aleksi Heponiemi, Jamie McGinn and a 1st round pick (2019) in exchange for Mark Giordano. Adam Larsson were seconds later shown the door and flew to Anaheim with a 2nd round pick in 2023 for Adam Henrique. Henrique quickly became our 1st line center and top scorer, he also got the assistant captain duty when Rick Nash were traded to the Kings for Sean Durzi and a 2nd round picl in 2019. Henrique then signed a three year extension with an AAV of $5.4 million.
Houston native Tyler Myers were shipped to the Rangers with a draft pick and 50% retained salary for the last months of his contract. Houston Dragons instead got Pavel Buchnevich, a 3rd round pick and Marc Staal back. Buchnevich is a great prospect, but Staal was a throw in to even the salary out. We'll have to ship him out soon though as he's on the books until 2021.
After all the trades we hade secured three picks in the first round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, which is a great situation to be in. Hopefully I don't messed up the picks and scouting leading up to them.
Trade summary:

Houston Dragons Stats - 2019-20 | * Indicates player was acquired during season | |||||||||
Skaters | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | GW | PIM | SOG | SPCT |
Adam Henrique (A) | 82 | 21 | 35 | 56 | -1 | 0 | 12 | 188 | 11,2 |
Alex Killorn | 77 | 21 | 33 | 54 | -4 | 1 | 26 | 161 | 13,0 |
Jesper Fast | 81 | 19 | 31 | 50 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 185 | 10,3 |
Pavel Buchnevich* | 73 | 18 | 25 | 43 | -6 | 2 | 33 | 132 | 13,6 |
Riley Nash | 82 | 14 | 29 | 43 | -5 | 6 | 33 | 164 | 8,5 |
Mark Letestu (A) | 82 | 13 | 25 | 38 | -14 | 4 | 12 | 117 | 11,1 |
Alex Chiasson | 82 | 14 | 18 | 32 | -2 | 0 | 32 | 103 | 13,6 |
Sean Kuraly | 82 | 9 | 23 | 32 | -4 | 1 | 26 | 100 | 9,0 |
Colton Sceviour | 82 | 15 | 12 | 27 | 6 | 1 | 28 | 101 | 14,9 |
Jimmy Hayes | 82 | 12 | 15 | 27 | 6 | 1 | 19 | 87 | 13,8 |
Jamie McGinn* | 72 | 12 | 14 | 26 | -23 | 2 | 36 | 119 | 10,1 |
Josh Manson | 75 | 7 | 18 | 25 | -3 | 0 | 42 | 148 | 4,7 |
Connor Murphy | 73 | 6 | 16 | 22 | -24 | 2 | 36 | 119 | 5,0 |
Mattias Ekholm (C) | 69 | 3 | 16 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 20 | 125 | 2,4 |
Marc Staal* | 82 | 2 | 15 | 17 | -18 | 0 | 44 | 84 | 2,4 |
Mackenzie Weegar | 45 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 68 | 7,4 |
Sven Andrighetto | 47 | 6 | 5 | 11 | -4 | 0 | 8 | 60 | 10,0 |
Gustav Olofsson | 82 | 2 | 7 | 9 | -11 | 0 | 31 | 88 | 2,3 |
Goalies | GP | W | L | T | GAA | TOI | SV | SV% | SHO |
Aaron Dell | 62 | 29 | 26 | 6 | 2,94 | 3754 | 1697 | 90,2 | 1 |
Linus Ullmark | 21 | 6 | 14 | 1 | 3,76 | 1212 | 547 | 87,8 | 0 |
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