From the bottom to ???

[Asher413]

Hey all, here is my career blog. In part I'm going to do this so I can track player attributes , but hopefully there's some entertainment.

Background: Default Database, started in 15.6.1b, no limitations (national team, trades, etc.), no addons or out of game tools. I do not coach the games.

Just to cycle some things through, I had a GM unemployed on vacation until 5/2/17. Took over "Kalajoki" (JHT I think) in Finland 3 (wanted the newly promoted team, but settled for the lowest surviving team so that I could be a part of free agency. My first set of goals was to become the king of Finland, eventually take their KHL team and then look toward the NHL. As with all the best laid plans...

Kalajoki 2017-18
Taking over a team that will (and was expected to) fight to avoid relegation in the relegation playoffs. In the last two seasons they finished 13th and 15th in Finnish League 3. Budget was tight (About 70,000 Euros), so I was going to anger the board by going over budget to have 25+ under contract. The big signing was Joonas Aijala, 21 year old goalie to help build the future from the back. Also got a young man in Rikhard Rahikainen with amazing potential on the wing for 5k.

Improved the team to 12th in the season, with 43 points (versus 27 points in '16/17). Saved relegation by winning the first playout series.

Kalajoki 2018-19
After a hard season, I was determined to bring in some talent, when your leading scorer basically has all 4- attributes except determination and wristshot, you know you need help. Some signings that I was REALLY happy and excited about were:

Miro-Pekka Elo (Center- on the Kouvola A-Jrs at the start). 21 years old, great potential, fast and has skills. Also solved my lack of ability up the middle. Also loyal enough that by Sept 2020, he listed Kalajoki as his favorite team.

Kari Elomo (Defenseman, Started with Vaasa S in the database). 24 years old, and was putting up decent numbers in Finland 1, so he should rock in Finland 3. Should give actual defense to the blueline.

Darrell Hafner (Center, graduate of Princeton). High hopes, turned out to be a nice 3rd liner.

Aelxander Urban (Center, Gradate of "East Lansing" or MSU, dfrafted round 6 in 2012 in the OHL by Kingston). Offensive guru. Excited to see him, Elo and Hafner give me real centers. A point a game in college should transfer well.

Kirk Spiller (Defense, Graduate of Bowling Green). Great offensive defenseman. An American flair was starting to take over the team.

The new group worked out well. Hafner didn't really get above bottom 6 consistently. Urban underperformed his ratings, but the Levonen (no skills but a 13 wristshot) and Elo became a deadly 1st line combo. Levonen had 19 goals in 36 games, and defensemen with terrible passing still managed 22 assists! We finished 4th in the regular season, spent most of the season fighting for the top 3 spots, so the slump was concerning.

Into the playoffs- struggled in round 1 and won it in 5 games (best of five) In round 2 we were embarssed in game 1... then the best goalie in Finland 3 by ANY measure was hurt in game 2... we won the next 3 games without their franchise goalie in net. The finals went to 5 games again, and in game 5 we pulled it off again. Last step was the best of 7 with the worst team from Finland 7, and we alternated wins until game 7, where we won promotion! the 2nd and 3rd periods were all us... going from a 2-2 tie to a 7-2 win.

After being promoted the budget barely increased to about 80k euros, and I realized it was time to really think about how far I can take a team with a 1500 capacity arena.

Kalajoki 2019-20

The challenge of promotion is simply staying there. Many of the guys that scouts thought were 1st liners were now 2nd or 3rd liners, and I didn't have the budget to get a whole lot more. So really no changes outside of signing a new center to see if Urban/Hafner could be pushed to be better or pushed out of the lineup. The goal I had was just to avoid being in the playout series. (10th of 10 is the playout spot). As with other seasons, started out nicer (hovering around 6th), but we stumbled down the stretch. Thankfully one team was having a dreadful season, and with 3 games left we avoided relegation playouts.

Kalajoki 2020-21

Another frusterating start- no more money was pumped in, in fact my budget SHRUNK desipte making 100k Euros to the bottom line, and being with 20 fans of capacity on AVERAGE. I started looking around for other jobs with a bit more of an eye to improve. I had to let pretty much all of the North Americans go, as they seem to have twice the salary demands as the Scandanvians, and only one or two were performing well enough for that. Allowed me to bring in more Scandanvians that I really didn't get to know...

Angelholm 2020-21

On June 30th, Angelholm (Rogle BK, Sweden 2) fired their GM, and I applied and received the job. I simply knew I had hit the short term ceiling with Kalajoki, and without the money to spend (the shrinking budget angered me), or the arena size to make money, it just wasn't going to work out. I would have loved for another Finland job to pop open, but none did in the end of year firings (as a side note- the AI should really fire GMs right after their teams last games, not two months later when the game cycles over the seasons. So... onward.

An interesting fact was when I changed jobs, the "realistic" targets are more Finnish than Swedish, so clearly my top 12 reputation in Finland is still there.

All of my preseason/early season signings were about rebuilding my youth program, we only had about 3 players under 22 on contract, and I couldn't really get interest this late in the cycle for any top 2 line type guys. So, this is where I'm at today, and here is my roster at the start of the season (expected to finish 9th.)

[Asher413]

End of 2020-21 Regular season

The regular season is over, and we managed to finish 5th in Sweden division 2. For the sake of knowledge- the top 3 seem to skip this first round of the playoffs, and I'm playing a double round robin with the teams that finished 4th-7th. 4th place starts with 3 points, 5th with 2 and 6th 1. I'm not sure yet what the next stage is, but I'll post it when we get there.

Transactions: After the last post, we did complete a few signings in September and October to fill out the roster and beef up our youth program. Those of note:
Frank Gilman, 22 year old American Center, just finished college at Maine. Originally inteded for him to be depth, ended up playing 40 games as some of my centers didn't pan out.
Anders Linander Henriksen, 18 year old Danish Center, paid 5k for him. All my scouts think he has 1st line potential, and after the world U20's a couple of NHL teams had shortlisted him. Not ranked for the draft though. He moved up quickly from my U18s to U20s and filled in a couple of games with the big team. Hopefully he stays great, but not great enough for the NHL to come calling.
Carlo Leinonen and Karl Elomo Two holdovers from my Kalajoki team (still trying to pry one away who's too loyal).
Leinonen is 20 and has 1st line potential, but the jump up cut his shooting percentage in half. Hopefully he finds his legs. Elomo became my best defensemen, at 26 he should give me 4 or 5 good years at this level.

Stats: (I'll find a better way to post the .txt files in the future)
No Name GP G A P +-- PIM SOG Pct Av R
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
15 Bibic, Joacim 49 14 21 35 13 32 88 15.9 7.04
25 Persson, Philip 47 17 18 35 3 18 90 18.9 7.15
14 Fredriksson, Christopher 51 16 18 34 0 24 79 20.3 6.65
23 Ferm, Carl-Johan 50 12 17 29 -2 52 82 14.6 6.76
30 Back, Torsten 50 16 13 29 10 26 55 29.1 6.96
64 Pennerborn, Mats 42 15 13 28 -3 26 74 20.3 6.88
21 Pramle, Bjorn 41 6 11 17 -9 24 60 10.0 6.56
5 Hagglund, Pontus 47 4 13 17 0 4 79 5.1 6.53
7 Oduya, Jan 46 11 5 16 -10 12 66 16.7 6.41
11 Gilman, Frank 40 4 11 15 4 60 37 10.8 6.35
27 Fantenberg, Roger 46 4 11 15 5 2 94 4.3 6.54
2 Backman, Fabian 52 6 9 15 6 15 63 9.5 6.65
40 Arnstrom, Mattias 49 5 10 15 5 38 67 7.5 6.84
8 Elomo, Kari 37 2 12 14 5 16 57 3.5 6.54
6 Magnusson, Herman 49 4 10 14 -15 22 65 6.2 6.71
77 Bjork, Charlie 38 1 12 13 -6 8 43 2.3 6.34
29 Backman, Jonatan 52 2 11 13 -3 21 93 2.2 6.60
26 Leinonen, Carlo 42 5 7 12 -3 20 48 10.4 6.57
24 Sjodin, Karel 45 0 6 6 -7 12 31 0.0 6.53
3 Dahlen, Felix 52 0 8 8 -2 12 41 0.0 6.50
44 Noren, Samuel 31 0 4 4 0 2 26 0.0 6.39
19 Persson, Patric 14 3 0 3 -2 10 14 21.4 6.57
36 Wikstrom, Calle 44 0 1 1 0 0 0 - 7.30
9 Almqvist, Albin 23 1 1 2 -2 10 23 4.3 6.48
4 Dahlen, Dennis 15 0 1 1 -1 6 11 0.0 6.40
18 Olkinuora, Mika-Matti 4 0 0 0 -1 2 2 0.0 6.00
32 Linander Henriksen, Ander2 0 0 0 -4 2 0 - 5.50
38 Lagerstrom, David 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 6.58

Looking forward to a good playoff run, and upgrading the "adequate" practice facilities.

[Asher413]

End of playoffs 2020-21

The double round robin awaited: The winner advanced to a 6 team double round robin with the lowest two teams from division 1.

It started out slow with an OT loss to Uppsala, and a 4-2 loss to Oskarshamm. At this point I was ready to say "well, good season boys". Then, we caught fire. Won the next three games, including revenge on Uppsala and Oskarshamm. Going into the final matches, we needed any win (Regulation, OT or shootout) to advance... and pulled it off in the shotout! It was on to the Division 1 playouts!

5 forwards stepped up in those games, with at least 5 points in the 6 games, and Wikstrom was by far the best goalie. In an interesting AI call, Oskarshamm only played the backup once... against us. Their starter won all 5 games he played.

The playouts would be a tougher matter, I'd be against two division 1 teams and the top 3 division 2 teams. I was hoping our four game winning streak would at lesat get us close to one of the top two spots! We started with two solid wins (6-1, 1-0) and promotion appeared to be on the horizon! These would be 2 of my last 3 wins on the season. We started showing more and more signs of being outclassed, there was one game where over half my players had 5's. My players went to very average, my best scorers had a point every other game, and that was that.

We will be back in division 2, but hopefully with a lot more firepower in free agency. Almost everyone is resigned except Lagerstrom (below average backup goalie) and Pennerborn (simply won't resign. Hasn't picked up his player option with 17 days left on his deal, so I'm not confident he will return. That's what you get for a guy finally making the national team when in division 2 I guess. I pretty much resigned all of the guys 19 and under (they all want around 4k, which isn't much). Once they are hitting 20 it's time to decide, and only 2 or 3 will be asked to come back. Hopefully I won't be stuck here for long (or if I am we're strong in div 1.), but I really want to start generating at least one real legit top three lines prospect a season, even if I have to buy them young and develop them myself.

We'll see shortly what sort of free agency we'll have- if the budget stays the same I'll have around 100k to spend, which should be enough for one 'great' player, or two top 6 type guys hopefully. I'll probably focus on defense, but I've found VERY few legit defensemen in free agency in Scandinavia, so I may have to pay to get one. I could also use a better goalie, but I'm not realistic on one floating around. I'm also hoping for some better staff available, as the group I inherited is not optimal.

[Asher413]

Summer of 2021

So many changes, I'm going to have to break it down position by position. Finally was able to get the kind of free agents I wanted (though a lot still said no.), so hopefully I have a much more solid team going forward.

Goaltending
Calle Wikstrom: Resigned, may not last the season. At 34 his skills are eroding. Lost 1 in most categories, lost 3 in agility and 2 in reflexes. I thought I had another year of him being the starter, but he'll be a high-priced backup that I will listen to any and all transfer offers for.
David Lagerstrom: Non-renewed. Had 12 games as the backup, most of his stats are around 8's with a few exceptions. At 32, I knew I could do better than his big $25k contract as a backup.
Stefan Forsberg: Signed from Vaxjo. At 37, I see him as a short term patch. Reflexes and Agility have gone pretty low, but has a nice set of skills. He will be the starter for the season, but may only hold that spot for a season.
Ville-Pekka Kiriranta: Signed from Helsinki H A-Jrs. 20 years old, still young enough to play U20, and a world of potential. My staff already has him as the #2, and will get the starting job should Forsberg get hurt. *If* I can keep him (promotion would help), this guy could be the entire reason I get a better job.



Defense

Sold Kari Elomo, for $95k. Really needed more budget space, and I thought at the time (and I was wrong) that I would get at least one of the targets that were better than he was.
Cut Fabian Backman- an offensive guy with potential (20), but terrible defensive ratings (3-checking, 4 agility, 2 hitting, 3- pokecheck). Was good enough for 52 games and 15 points last season. Hopefully I've replaced him.
Signed Eetu Weisbrod- 21 year old American, defensive stud minus strength, acceleration and anticipation. Should be a solid defensive guy.
Signed Niko Nissiene- 25 year old Finnish, another with nice defensive ratings, just don't ask him to shoot. A bit worried about the jump from Finland 4 to Sweden 2.
Signed Colin Jones- 21 year old American. Anyone who played in Huntsville, AL deserves a bump in your opinion . Another defensive guy.
Signed Fabian Fors (Anton Cederholm)- 26 year old Sweede. Looks like Vancouver gave up on him, not even an RFA. He returns to where it all started.
Signed Brian Larson- 21 year old American. Looks to be my PP QB, and not a slouch on D.

I'm hoping that full set of guys are ready to make the jump, and it will be a pretty open competition for the first few games to see who has what it takes. Haglund was drafted in the 7th round by the Jets.

On the youth front most excited about Rasmus Schultz Leth Nielsen (yes, that's one player) and Hans Nielsen. But... neither shape up to be the next Lidstrom.





Forwards

On the left side, very incoming changes. My board decided Oduya needed to go, so he was sold. Brought in Taylor BUllock (21 year old American from Boton U) as a guy who doesn't understand the word backcheck, but can do magic with the puck. Mats Pennerborn refused to resign and left, so Leinonen will get more time to see if he can be the man at this level too.
On the right side, I let some big contributers go. Sold Philip Persson for $70k. Cut Herman Magnusson. Persson's 35 points were great, but with the amount of talent I brought in on that side, someone had to clear space (I already have 6 or 7 trying to play in 4 spots.) In came Scott O'Connor (21 American), Sonny Carlsson (21 Swedish from the Q), Arturas Jaksys (19 Lituanian with great potential, 7th round pick of the Coyotes), Ari Milran (21 year old American). This will be a tough group to sort out, especially with returning 35 and 29 point scorers as well.
Down the middle was hard. My focus was to get two GREAT centers in free agency... well I got two centers. Fredriksson will probably still be on the first line, Brock Jankowski (21 American) and Eppu Hietala (27 year old Finnish) will fight for 2nd line center. Kyle Howe (21 year old signing, guess what, American) and Mattias Arnstrom will fit the defensive roles. In the wings will be young prospect Henriksen (Point per game in U20) and Frank Gillman.




I may explore lines by language early in the year (almost all my Finnish and American players haven't learned the language in the one month in country, and not all my Swedish players speak basic Finnish or English. I've created a challenge of too many players in too little space, hopefully that allows for some flexibility in loan deals or even transfers. My goal of a great signing or two didn't really pan out, but ended up removing the bottom end talent I was reliant on last season, so we should be more solid 1 through 21 on gamedays. We are predicted to finish 7th of 14.

[Asher413]

Angelholm 2021-22 season

This was a rollercoaster season. As expected, we struggled the first 10 or so games (between so many new players and language, I hoped it wouldn't happen, but I'm not surprised.) This season was a real struggle, guys that I thought had more talent simply didn't perform, so it was a constant shuffling of lineups. My goalies also didn't want to take control of the starting job, and they ended up switching quite often. We were near the top of the league in every defensive categories (our goalies rocked the league). Offensively we were mid-pack. One thing my teams have always struggled with (and this was no exception) is drawing penalties.

Here are the stats:



Between national duty, injuries and form issues, no one played all 52 games. I'm really happy with 20 year old Jaksys, he not only played as many games as he could, was the 2nd leading scorer, and will join Lithuania for the World Championships. More impressive for me is his only being -1 with no defensive awareness at all. Another big plus was Bjork- I had written him off as a spare body after his 6.32 Avr last season, -7 +/- and my staff has him as my 9th D-man, but no matter how hard I tried to keep him down, he led the team in +/-.

The big disappointments for me were Kyle Howe (my staff has him as the 2nd Center, he looks to be the best offensively down the middle, and he couldn't make the lineup half the year. Niko Nissinen was supposed to be my top D-man according to my staff, and was basically average.

We finished 3rd on the last day of the regular season, which gave us a pass to the Swedish 1st league relegation group. (Reminder, that's a double round robin with 6 teams, top two are in division 1.) It started slow, and after about four games I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel and let the youngsters get experience. Then, we got hot, and with one game left, it was a three way tie for the last promotion spot! We pulled even early in the 2nd period, then Jonkoping capitalized on the power play. Sadly, with 27 more minutes to try, we couldn't convert, and lost 2-1, and lost promotion. I was bummed about the result, but talent-wise we looked to be the weakest in the relegation playout, so we are playing about of abilities.

At the time of writing (15 days to the end of contracts) it looks like Frank Gilman will be the only loss due to contracts. I will probably try and sell Carl-Johan Ferm (35 years old, my highest paid player and was 23 points in 47 games- not bad, but not worth almost 10% of my budget). One of my goalies will go, I'm not sure which (between Forsberg and Wikstrom) Forsberg was slightly better, but is older. I can't afford two 55k/60k contracts when I really think the youngster Kiviranta will be dressing every game. I will also need to prune some of my young prospects, my scouts are only high on two or three,
and 19 guys add up. It will probably of the '05 kids, 12 is just too many. Hopefully I can sell them for even 1k just to make me feel better. My board dislikes Fors, but I really don't want to let him go. We'll see what I choose on that.

As far as signings, if I can get rid of about $150k in salary, I'll really 1st hope to chase a severe stud (maybe someone from the AHL, an NHL RFA, or even a guy from the 1st league). I have a lot of depth, so I don't need to sign an army, just hoping for one or two impact players.

Thanks for reading, the next update will be the offseason update, hopefully with good news in transfers.

[Asher413]

Offseason 2022

I'm going to break these into two parts, looking at development, then actual transfers.

Development

Kirviranta (G) did not develop. At 21 he appears to be done
Lindqvist (G) about 1-2 per major attributes. He's 17 and now projects to be a poor mans Wikistrom.
Andersell (G) about 1-2 per attribute. At 18 if we get two or three more seasons of good development can be a backup for a long time.
Teneby (G) +2 in agility, +1 in all the other. He's not going to make it past the U20 team, hopefully someone tries to buy him so at least there's a profit.

Cruseman (D-17) minimal development, trying to sell him or cut him.
Blom (D-17) 1 per category, but his starting point is too low, for sale
Hellstrom (D-17) only developed physically. Has an outside chance of being a defense only blueliner.
Nielsen (D-18) Devleoping nicely. 1's in most, 2's in some (Stamina, hitting, checking, positioning). He will make it in a couple of years as a nice PK defensman.
Leth Nielsen (D-18) Went down I'm not sure if it was too high a level, a lack of coaching or what (I was playing in with the U-20s a lot of the season). The coaches say he needs a more important role for his development, so I guess he'll have to play with the big boys. I may have ruined my best prospect.

Lund (RW-16) +1 per most attributes, +2 in most physical. On the Swedish U-20 team to start this season. He may end up with the U-20's or even on loan by the end of this season for better development.
Henriksen (C-20) +1 in most. Getting close to ready to go.

Most of the rest I cut off on the tracking sheet... whoops.

Transactions

Players out:
Holmberg (no hope prospects)
Gillman (Had the attributes, never the performance. Still unemployed on the 31st of August)
Davidsson (Very long shot prospect, sold for 6k.)
Juhlin, Friberg (Long shot, both sold for 3k)
Arturas Jaksys- Arizona drafted him in 2020, finally decided to give him the call. Really bummed, but not surprised. He could've been a swedish star, instead I think he'll be in the AHL for a few years.
Forsberg (G- was going to be sold, decided to hang it up- and refused to sign a deal as a coach.)
Felix Dahlen- (a product of a full blueline.)
Broberg (won't make it with us, too old for U-20)
Karel Sjodin (33 now, and 3rd highest wage for average performance)
Nordin (Sold for 2k, coaches and scouts don't think he'll develop).

Players in: This didn't work out. Many great guys picked other teams, so I'm going into the regular season with almost 200k (about 15% of my budget) still to spend, but no worthy players to sign.

Johan Arnesson (D, 12k transfer fee.) A defensive d-man, very strong in division 3, hoping he's ready for the next level.
Filip Vuroinen (RW, free). A very good defensive winger, with a little scoring ability. Hopefully my goalies won't have to do as much work with him around.
Andreas Palsola (D, free). Nashville gave him a cup of tea then didn't resign him (4 games). Scouts don't believe in him, coaches have him a 2nd pair in talent, so hopefully he'll be a nice addition.
Landry Charton (RW, 3.5k) French winger, 18 years old and my scouts give him the best potential that I have (only one actually projected to be a first liner). He's actually close already with his attributes. Ranked in the 70's for the draft so will probably jump ship in 3-5 seasons.

Potential changes: Hagglund's NHL rights expire at the end of the season. Was a 7th rounder, so I hope the Jets don't think he's worthy. Lund was drafted in the import draft by Saskatoon. Right now they only have one foreign player.

The media thinks we're the favorites for promotion, so hopefully we don't let them down!

Start of season screenshots coming soon.

[Asher413]

Sorry for the delay, life, family, and the Sharks challenge slowed me down. Also, I'm still not sure the best way to format these ratings- if someone has a preference please message me.

Goalies:



Defensemen:

http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a63 ... vtkzh6.png

Forwards:

http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a63 ... 9vudwc.png

[Asher413]

Angelholm 2022-23

Quite the group was placed together, and we were supposed to finish at the top, but it never really clicked. Scoring was poor on an individual level (after 40 games the big scoreres were 24 points and 3 19's). Highlights at 40 games: Bibic and Arnstrom were complete players at +11 each, 19 and 16 points. Kirviranta had a GREAT rookie start. 1.86 GAA, .921 saves, 7.85 AvR, pretty much the #3 guy stat-wise in the league, and +2 and +3 in only 40 games this season in most key attributes .

Was sturgggling around 40 games in, flowing from 3rd to 6th, and things weren't looking too good. Budget issues meant I was struggling to sign the up and coming stars, and the transfer market was bleak. I started looking around for another job, thinking I may have hit the ceiling outside of a miracle signing or six. Malmo needed a new GM while fighting to avoid the relegation league, and it was time to take another step up the hockey ladder.

Malmo 2023 (Midseason report)

8 points out with 16 games from avoiding relegation and making the playoffs. 1.8 million of free salary under budget (no wonder that guy was fired...), which is about 35% of the budget. Hopefully I can turn this group into winners.

I won't post players yet because I have 19 days before the transfer deadline and I really have no idea what the team will look like then.