Probably the biggest area of concern on the team when I took over was in net.
26-year old
David Mencl, ostensibly our starting Goalie, looked like a useful backup at best, while our backup at that point, 29-year old
Roman Badel appeared to be an AHL-level Goalkeeper at best (though he did end up playing 24 games for the Boston Bruins in the '21-22' season, and with not disastrous results).
My first thought was to look around the league to see if there were teams in the league with an excess at this position who we might be able to swing a trade with, likely giving up one of our Left Defenceman (trading from a strength). And there were a few teams that fit this description, though not many, and several teams looked to be in possibly even worse shape than us in this area.
I decided to rely on my strong Defencemen to protect the goalie well and not take on the contract of an aging Goalie. Instead I looked at the available free agents and found a young (24)
Terry Ross who also profiled as a decent back-up if not really a legit starter. (Spoiler alert- this probably has been my best move yet though Ross does look like he has the potential to be very injury-prone.)
Feeling that I needed to strengthen the forward lines a bit I also signed Latvian free agent Center
Nikolay Ivanov, an offensive forward with strong playmaking skills and great physical attributes. (As it turns out, he is also a big-game player.)
I also added 31-year old Right Winger (also a decent Left Winger)
Antoine Poliquin, who has been a bit of a disappointment.
With the team basically in place, it was on to the first regular season for the Avs under my leadership. (This should have been stated way earlier in this thread- but I am serving as GM only. Jared Bednar remains the Head Coach.)
I won't go in to detail here about that first season, partly because I don't remember all of the details.
But the gist of it is that we were okay early, struggled a bit heading towards the 1st of the year, then gradually got stronger as the regular season wound down, ending up with the 3rd highest point total in the conference (104), finishing 2nd in the Central behind the Minnesota Wild (107 pts). The Avs record was 49-27-6.
Our leading goal scorer was
Brian Hughes with 32 (league leader was Florida's Left Winger Michael Orr with 45), our leading assist man and total point leader was
Aleksandr Dugin (29 goals, 58 assists, for 87 points). The NHL's leading assist man was veteran Minnesota Center Maksim Savastyanov with 74 and the points leader was Tristan Savoie, veteran Left Winger for the Carolina Hurricanes. (Savoie ended up winning both the Art Ross Trophy and the Mark Messier Leadership Award.)
Aleksandr Dugin was our one post-season award winner as he earned the Calder Trophy.
In net both
Ross and
Mencl performed better than expected, with
Ross earning the primary starting role prior to mid-season only to struggle a bit down the stretch when
Mencl took back that role and carried it into the playoffs. (In hindsight, this may have been an error by our coaching staff.)
The team, having finished the season strong in spite of being without the services of our best goal scorer
Brian Hughes, (I don't remember the exact details, but he went down on the last day of 2020 and never returned to the active roster), fizzled in the first round of the playoffs, losing in 6 games to the Winnipeg Jets (who would then lose to the L.A. Kings in 6 games in the next round).
In the Eastern Conference the New York Islanders knocked off the top-seeded Boston Bruins in the conference finals while over in the Western Conference the surprising Edmonton Oilers (4th in the Pacific Division with 98 points) swept the even more surprising Los Angeles Kings (5th place in the Pacific, 94 points) to move on to the Stanley Cup Finals.
And then those under-dog Oilers capped off a great playoff run by sweeping the Islanders, who had finished the season in 2nd place in the Metropolitan Division with 99 points. Overall, the Oilers finished the post-season with a 16-3 record.
