All American Team

[ZootMurph]

3rd round, 79th overall, we pick up defensemen Nathan Staios. At this point we are trying to find players who can, long term, make our team.



4th round, 111th overall, C Tyler Tullio.



I think the rest of the players are, at best, mundane. So I will list them with no player card.

5th round, 143 overall is LW Andrei Bakanov (USA and Russian citizenship). He is 0.5/2.5.

6th round, 175 overall is Wyatt Schingoethe, a 0.5/2.5 Center.

7th round, 207 overall is RW Joonas Oden, who is 1.0/2.0. I almost took another RW only because he's from my hometown (love this game that they have guys from my home).

7th round, 219 overall is Center Landon Slaggert, who is 0.5/2.0 but has a 12 or 13 in almost every ability score. Couldn't pass him up.

[ZootMurph]

My philosophy for this team, after watching this first season, will be simple. I will try to build an offensive team with a good goalie. I will try to find a goalie in free agency. But this is why I picked most of the players I picked.

So, for Smilanic, he has good offensive skills, solid mental skills, good faceoff guy for a center, and has good speed. Hoping he'll develop into a solid top 6 center for us. Same for 2nd round pick Colangelo... good offense and speed. Hoping, again, he can be a top 6 guy. Would be even better if I could pair him and Smilanic together and they could get great chemistry going. Staios had 61 points in 62 games as a defenseman.... that's offensive enough for me He's also got some speed and good mental stuff... and again with our 4th round pick... good offensive abilities plus good speed.

Granted 14 is not great, but these guys should all develop, and I'm HOPING they'll develop those skills that are already good. I will try to invest in the best offensive coaches I can find.

To finish up my assessment of the draft... Bakanov has good offensive numbers, good speed, and some good defensive qualities like read, positioning, and checking. Schingoethe was the last 2.5 potential player left, so I grabbed him while he was still available. He's average all around. While Oden's upside is below par, his current is very good. He has 16 shooting accuracy, 15 in read and puckhandling, and 14 or 13 elsewhere. 14 speed and 16 acceleration as well. Lastly is Slaggert, who is not great anywhere but is 12 or 13 literally everywhere.

Next up free agency.

[ZootMurph]

I start out by signing my 20 year old draftees (I have 3, including Oden who was a 7th round pick this season). I also sign a 19 year old draftee whose rights run out in 2020.

Lots of coaches fired this offseason. I will keep Laviollette for one more season. Only one American Very Offensive Head Coach candidate and I didn't really like him.

Before July 1, we resigned Goalie Jon Gillies. Or, I should say, he accepted the offer I made during the season.

We signed RW Joonas Oden (1.0/2.0). RW Jesse Ylonen (1.5/3.0), 19 year old LD Zach Jones (1.0/3.5), and C Jack Drury (1.0/3.0). All rookies, all 20 except Jones.

[ZootMurph]

July 1... First thing to do is add the Missoula Mericans to the AHL, and they will be my AHL affiliate. Now I can build a proper roster!! I also took the US logo and copied it, then changed the name and pasted it (with FHM6 shut down, of course) to the proper folder... When I restarted, I had a new logo, but not the one I tried to use to overwrite the old logo. Oh, well, I tried...

While our goalie, Eric Comrie, played great (2.95 GAA with .914 save percentage in 64 games), I can't expect him to continue to play so well, so my first order of business is to try to upgrade at goalie in Free Agency. I also feel our top end talent isn't top end, and we also have a few overpaid players (RD Trouba making $8M a year for 6 years, C Hayes making $7.14M a year for 6 years are two of them) that we need to get rid of to make room for better highly paid talent. JVR is getting $7M a year at age 31, but he delivered last season and I'll keep him around.

Tory Krug is the best American free agent, asking for $6.6M a year at age 29. If I can trade Trouba and get Krug, it saves me about $1.4M a year and improves my team's strength, which is our defensemen. I'd rather work on goalie and some more offense, but there's nothing really out there that will improve my top end, so I have to find players to fit in the middle or improve my bottom part of the lineup. Unfortunately, I think a balanced lineup is one of our team's strengths, even if the overall is average...

The two guys I hope to add to the main lineup are winger Jimmy Vesey and goalie Garret Sparks. Neither will set the world on fire, just add some decent depth. I also try to sign some young fellas to create more of a prospect pool. Defenseman Alec Rauhauser, C Tanner Laczynski, and winger Ara Nazarian are 3 young guys who I hope can develop into something... All of these guys received contract offers July 1. I also throw an offer at young centers Tyler Sheehy and Patrick Harper.

At the end of the day, I tried to shop Trouba. I got a lot of offers of a 4th round pick, and a few offers for a decent, not good, young player. If I could negotiate, I'd try to get a defenseman in return that can play 2nd or 3rd pairing plus a prospect or draft pick, as I think that would be fair value... but I can't, by my own rules, try to negotiate. And I can't take a 4th rounder or a so-so prospect for him just to dump salary. He'll be an American for a while, until someone comes to me with more desire to get him. So, no offer to Tory Krug.

Krug signs with LA for $6.6M for 4 years. I would probably have gotten him at $6.75M. I also reject all national team job offers. I just frankly don't care about the National teams and the world cup, Olympics, etc. I'd turn them off if I was able...

All my initial offers were accepted. I send everyone down that is under 1.5 stars. I'll look for more and trim the roster a little more as the free agency continues on. My goal is to have 40 contracts going into the season.

[ZootMurph]

Attachments messed up.

[ZootMurph]

I'm not usually one to go after RFAs, but center JP Dubois was available, a 4.5 star player... perfect complement to JVR... so I made him an almost $8 million a year offer, assuming that if the offer goes through, I'll trade away Trouba. Columbus immediately matched the offer, so no go there.

Up to my goal of 40 contracts, so I'm only looking to pick up a big time player at this point. I'll go through the rest of free agency watching to see if some big name goes on waivers or hits free agency. Probably no more deals will get done, though.



We did get the above shown trade offer... Kevin Hayes for a 2.0/4.5 20 year old center. Man, what an easy to make trade there. The only problem, he's not American. So sad that I can't accept that

[ZootMurph]

Into September now. Nothing new to report. Unless things change, here are our contracts, 40 in total, for this season:



And our unsigned draftees:



So nothing interesting. We run through preseason with 5 of our top players on the world stage instead of in training camp as they should be.... Here's how it went in preseason...

[ZootMurph]

Time for waivers... woohoo!



We claim RW Bryan Rust, LW Sonny Milano, and LD Caleb Jones... We got all 3. We send down defenseman Chad Krys, RW John Hayden, and LW CJ Smith.

Let's start the season!

During October I got three trade offers. In all 3 I was offered a player from Finland (3 different teams, 3 different players offered). Weird. Obviously I couldn't accept even though I wanted to at least once. Same issue with waivers after the long waiver list at the start of the season... some worthy players on waivers, but none were Americans.

I think the biggest problem with this team and the hardest thing to try to overcome is the team is so average. We'll draft in the middle of the round forever, so we'll never get top end talent to put us over the top, unless we get some lower round picks to boom to great players... On the other side, the bottom half of our lineup is as good if not better than most other teams.

Near the end of the month we lose Trocheck for up to 2 months with a torn hamstring. We call up LW Ara Nazarian, as he won't have to go through waivers when we have to send someone back.

We end up 6-9-0 for October, tied for 13th out of 16 teams in the Conference. 6 back to backs, so 12 of 15 of our games were part of a back to back... I wish there was a way to create better scheduling. You NEVER see 6 back to backs in one month in the NHL. It's hard on teams.

[ZootMurph]

Picked up RW Mason Appleton (2.0/2.5) off waivers. Sent Nazarian back down after getting Appleton.

Two or three small injuries, very few games missed... We finish the month at 12-13-3 (6-4-3) for the month. Five back to backs this month... giving us 11 in two months. Pretty ridiculous.. just getting worse. Just October through March is 182 days (183 on a leap year). Playing every other day, you'd use 164 days, which means you can literally have 18 times during the season where you can have 2 days off between games and not one single back to back. And this doesn't even consider days into April before the playoffs. Now, take out 5 days for Christmas and 5 days for All Star Weekend, and you still have 8 extra days AFTER running games every other day. Just look at this schedule, not one Saturday or Sunday game... this could easily have been set up so there were NO back to backs... Sorry for the rant, it's my pet peeve in this game... scheduling. In a few days I could come up with a full schedule for all 32 teams with 1 back to back a month, to add some flavor and strategy.

Here's the schedule for November, Standings, and team's stats.

[ZootMurph]

On December 5, we pick up 24 year old, 1.5/2.0 center, Shane Gersich from waivers. Just a little added depth and a young guy who we had D level scouting on. Hoping to find out he's better than that Then we immediately send him down to Missoula.

LW Frankie Vatrano (34GP, 6G, 7A) goes down for a couple of weeks with shoulder soreness. Put him on the IR, and wait for Trocheck to be ready to come off IR. No other roster moves.

Trocheck comes back to the roster on the 19th.

When Vatrano comes back, I send down Jimmy Vesey, who has 5 points (2G, 3A) in 35 games.

We end up 17-23-3 at the end of the month (5-10 for the month of December). Only 3 back to backs this month, for a total of 14 in the first 3 months of the season.

[ZootMurph]

Again, we come back to January, where I'll be renewing contracts for players in the last year of their contract. On January 2, we sign:

24yo LW Sonny Milano (2.0/2.5), 2 years, $1.05M per year.
24yo LW Ara Nazarian (2.0/2.5), 2 years, $825k per year.
25yo G Eric Comrie (2.0/2.5), 2 years, $955k per year.
25yo C Tyler Sheehy (2.0/2.5), 2 years, $815k per year.
26yo LW Nicolas Kerdiles (1.5/2.0), 2 years, $765k per year.
26yo LW Stefan Matteau (2.0/2.0), 2 years, $940k per year.

We still want to sign 4 players on the Americans... Not sure I'll be able to considering what they are asking. So I'll have to make decisions and maybe shop a player or two around. Especially considering we are in last place in our division right now.

On the 3rd, we sign 23yo RD John Marino (2.0/3.0) for 2 years at $2.16M per year.

I put C Nick Bjugstad on the trade block. He's basically a 3rd line center for us, and he wants over $5M a year. I can't give him that much to play on the 3rd line. I also have Palmieri and Dzingel to sign. Two RW at 29 and 28 years old respectively to sign. Palmieri is our 1st line RW and Dzingel 2nd line. I'm going to sign them with the idea that I will probably try to trade one of them at the trade deadline.

On the 5th, we sign 29 year old RW Kyle Palmieri to a 3 year, $5.05M per year contract.

On the 10th, we sign 28 year old RW Ryan Dzingel to a 5 year, $4.7M per year contract. That ends our resignings.

Still, we really need top end talent at Goalie and forward to allow us to be a playoff team.

LW Alex Galchenyuk has a 6 week strained posterior cruiciate ligament. We move up Ara Nazarian.

We end the month at 22-29-3 (5-6-0 in January 2021). We were in last near the end of 2020, but a few wins got us out of the cellar.

[ZootMurph]

By the way, one more back to back with only 11 games this month. That's 15 back to backs thus far with 2 more months to go.

[ZootMurph]

On February 6, got a trade offer from Chicago Blackhawks which I HAD to accept. They got 28 year old G Kevin Boyle (1.5/1.5), who is in the last year of his contract and was not going to be renewed. We got 20 year old RD Alec Regula (1.0/2.5), who has a 4 year contract.

On February 11, got a trade offer from Vegas. We got 21yo C Paul Cotter (1.5/2.5) for 30yo RD Zach Trotman (1.5/1.5). Trotman is another guy in the last year of a contract that wasn't getting renewed. Cotter has 3 years left on his deal.

On February 21, I put 26 yo RD Jacob Trouba (2.5/3.0) on the trade block. Got a ton of offers for a 4th round pick. Detroit is currently worst in the league, so I took their offer of a 4th for Trouba. Trouba was playing 2nd/3rd pair minutes, just under 19 minutes a game and playing 55 of our 63 games... missing several games with minor, nagging type injuries. He was also making $8M a year getting 19 minutes a game. Next year our cap gets very tight and we needed to get rid of a highly paid player to make some room. I can't trade Kevin Hayes (who is having a good year this year) because of his no movement clause... so it's Trouba. Not really great value for the pick, but looking at Trouba's playing time and statistics, he just is not worth $8M a year for 5 more years.

After the Trouba trade, we bring up LD Chad Krys.

At the deadline, we get offers for all 3 players on the trading block, C Kevin Hayes, C Nick Bjugstad, and C Andy Miele. I couldn't accept the Miele trade because it was for a 22 yo Canadian (Miele is 32 and on the last year of his contract). Same with the Kevin Hayes offer... for a 24 year old Kazakhstani. But the Bjugstad offer I could, and did accept.

28 yo C Nick Bjugstad (2.5/2.5) for 19 yo LD Thomas Harkey (2.5/3.5). Bjugstad was a 3rd line center making over $4M and wanted over $5M, so he wasn't getting renewed. Great deal for us, especially after giving up Trouba.

After the trade deadline, I send defenseman Krys back down to Missoula and bring Galchenyuk off injury list, although he's not quite ready to play. He's still day to day, so it may be another week or so until he is ready.

After the back to back to end the month, we get two DTD injuries to top line players JVR (sore back) and Kyle Palmieri.(minor neck laceration).

So we end up 29-35-3 after February.(7-6-0 for February)... looks like we aren't going to get that top 5 pick after all

As you can see, FIVE more back to backs, for a total of 20 for the season, with one more month to go. 20 is way too many in a season, and the season isn't even over yet.

[ZootMurph]

3 more back to backs in March, bringing the total to 23, more than half of the games we've played are part of a back to back. We have been told the average is 15 per season... 23 is quite high comparatively. Plus, there will be 2 more back to backs in April, bringing the total to 25 back to backs for the season.

Not much to talk about in March and April. We end the season 35-44-3.(6-9-0 in March and April). Not a very good season, and hard to try to get better.

[ZootMurph]

I'm not resigning any of the staff, hoping there are better candidates available. A lot of good picks available, but not many Americans.

Pick 7: 17yo C Jeremy Wilmer (2.0/4.0)
Pick 38: 18yo RW Dylan Duke (0.5/3.0)
Pick 70: 18yo C Tyler Boucher (0.5/3.0)
Pick 97: 18yo LD Joe Palodichuk (0.5/2.5)
Pick 102: 17yo LW Justin Janicke (0.5/2.5)
Pick 134: 18yo C Caden Brown (1.0/2.5)
Pick 166: 18yo LD Jason Marsella (0.5/2.5)
PIck 198: 20yo RW Hunter Campbell (0.5/2.0)

After the draft, I sign 4 draftees.

19yo LW Arthur Kaliyev (3.0/5.0). He was drafted in 2019, 2nd round, 33rd pick by the Kings. We picked him up in the Expansion draft. He is the only player I HAD to sign.

I also had three 20 year old draftees. It's usual for me to sign any 20 year olds.

47th pick in the 2019 draft (Colorado) RD Drew Helleson (1.0/3.5). Picked up in the Expansion Draft
79th pick in the 2020 draft LD Nathan Staios (1.0/2.5)
198th pick in the current draft (2021) RW Hunter Campbell (0.5/2.0)

I'll pick up tomorrow with the start of free agency.

[ZootMurph]

We let our Goalie Coach go and fire Skill Coach Chris Chelios (my advisor, Ron Hextall, didn't like him).

Anyway, we hire two new assistant coaches and 4 new scouts.

44 yo Jared Boynton is the new Goalie Coach. 15 training Goalies and 17 training Prospects. Now all I need is a goalie prospect.

47 yo Tom Carbaugh is the new Skill Coach. 15 training Prospects and 17 training Physical skills. Hopefully he will help our guys get a little faster so we can forecheck better

To make it easy, we signed two scouts with Great Evaluate Ability and two scouts with Great Evaluate Potential. Most of our guys are Very Good or worse, so we improved our scouting a little, even though the guys are late 50s early 60s guys. I like to get guys who will be around a longer time.

Now on to free agency. My best player right now is Shane Gostisbehere, who is 3.5/3.5. I have 3 other 3.5 star potential players, ALL defensemen. I have one 5 star potential in Kaliyev, who is 3.0/5.0 and a rookie this season. I have 3 players who are unsigned draftees that are 4 stars or higher potential, so there is some future for us. Right now, I need a top tier goalie and maybe a top tier C or RW, if I can find them. My financial page says I have $33M available to sign free agents, so that will help. Of course, I have 47 players currently under contract so not much space unless I start dropping players. Let's see if anyone is available to pick up.

Three 4 star guys available, none American. Led by Ovi and Dougie Hamilton. Two 3 star American players available, both LW. I already have Kaliyev and JVR at LW, so no real upgrade there.

When I was resigning players last season, Nick Bjugstad wanted over $5M. Now, in free agency, he's asking for a little over $2M. I can do that! I would have given him $3M last season, but he got greedy.

I put in offers for RW Cole Bardreau (2.5/2.5) and C Nick Bjugstad (2.5/2.5). I still have space for one more contract and I will start considering buying out some players if both these guys sign.

Received several national team offers, declined them all.

Bjugstad signs on the 5th, 3 years, $2.04M a year. After a bit of a bidding war, I sign Bardreau as well, 2 years, $1.85M a year. I shop RD Eric Jeremiah (1.5/1.5) and am offered a FOURTH round pick for him. This is an easy accept, especially since the few other offers were players that were old or bad or both. I tried to shop around 1.5/1.5 Center TJ Tynan, but somehow he has a no trade clause, so I put him on the trade block. I also add a couple of 27+ minor leaguers to the trade block. I may shop more later, but I should be good with 2 spots open.

[ZootMurph]

So let's start Preseason '21...

2-5 in preseason. Not really much to talk about. I had a LOT of players on the roster to give them a chance to play, and things ended up about the way I expected. No injuries.

Here's our opening night roster...



We have 5 back to backs in October. End up 9-4-1. Pretty good. Don't know how, but really happy with our start. A couple of small injuries, nothing to get on the IR.