Snow Never Came - An Alternate History for the NY Islanders

In the late summer of 2006, Charles Wang shocked a lot of people by naming recently retired goaltender Garth Snow to be the new General Manager (for life!) of his NY Islanders.

With this series, we’re going to create our own alternate history, by taking over control of the team at this pivotal point.

We’ll be using Franchise Hockey Manager 4, by Out of the Park Developments, to undertake this mission.

The game is set to have us take control as both GM and head coach, so that we may control the strategy used, set lines, set roles, sign free agents, draft and trade.

Drafts will be held each year using the game’s standings, so players will likely end up on new teams. The AI will be allowed to make trades with itself and with us. Injuries will be on, and may not match up to the real world. Players will be re-rated each year based on their previous year’s performance. Development is not guaranteed. The only setting that will remain is retirement at the historical age for the player.

We do have the benefit of hindsight, so we can see an undrafted free agent Antii Niemi sitting there, waiting for an offer, knowing he will develop into a very serviceable goaltender.

Welcome to the Islanders Family

Congratulations, you’re the new General Manager of the New York Islanders.

You’re on board for a 2-year contract, making $490,000 per year.

The Islanders owner is Charles Wang, and for the upcoming NHL season, he’s given you the following goal: Rebuild.

You have a $55,650,000 budget to work with and the current team payroll is $28,495,537.

We suggest you have a look at the team’s roster, depth chart and personnel to get familiar with the organization.

The NHL trade deadline is on February 27, 2007. The salary cap is $44,000,000 and the salary floor is $18,000,000.

We take over on September 20, 2016, the day of our first pre-season game. We have 39 players signed to contracts (50 limit). We hold the rights to 6 other players who are not signed. Rick DiPietro’s legendary contract is on the books.

There are no assistant coaches, scouts or training staff signed. This is our highest priority.

The pre-season games aren’t historic, but the regular season schedules are. We are facing off against the Avalanche in Colorado tonight, before flying home to face the Chicago Blackhawks.

Our minor league team is the Bridgeport SoundTigers. Games and results for them will be simulated. We can recall / re-assign players as needed.

Coaches

We need to find, stat:

• Goalie Coach
• Defensive Coach
• Offensive Coach
• Skills Coach
• Medical Trainer

We are not limited to 4 assistants. We have a non-player budget of $2,790,000 of which only our $490,000 is being used. We have $2,300,000 available to hire coaches, scouts and a trainer.

Coaches are rated on their abilities to coach their positions (O, D, G), coaching prospects, and coaching skills (Off and Def). The trainer is rated on his ability to help prevent injuries and get injured players back as quickly as possible.

One of the current limits of the game is that staff is fictional. It will take researchers getting accurate staff into the game. As you get into the pre-internet days, accurate information isn’t always available.

Ratings fall into the following ranges:

Excellent, Great, Very Good, Good, Above Average, Average, Below Average, Low, Poor

Goaltending coaches

There are 4 candidates listed as great or very good:

Name; Age; From; Reputation; Goalie Coach Skill; Prospect Coach Skill; Salary Request

One quick note on contracts. The prospective coach will sign one of 3 deals, ranging from a higher cost 1 or 2 year deal, to a lower cost 3 or 4 year deal. Only the shortest term requested is listed.

We don’t have any goalies under contract or in the pipeline that qualify as prospects, so that may not be an important requirement now. It may be in the future, though.

Defensive Coaches

Defensive coaches are rated on their abilities to coach defensemen, coach prospects, and teach offensive and defensive skills.

There are five candidates listed as Very Good at coaching defenders:

Name; Age; From; Reputation; Coach Prospects; Def. Skills; Off Skills; Salary Request

Offensive Coaches

Offensive coaches are rated on their abilities to coach forwards, coach prospects, and teach offensive and defensive skills.

There is 1 coach listed as Very Good at coaching offense, and 4 listed as good.

Name; Age; From; Reputation; Coach Offense; Coach Prospects; Off. Skills; Def.f Skills; Salary Request

Physical Training Coaches

Think Strength & Conditioning coach. Rated on their Physical Training and Prospect Coaching skills.

There is 1 coach listed as great, and 4 as very good at Physical Training.

Name; Age; From; Reputation; Physical Training; Coach Prospects; Salary Request

Scouts

We currently have no scouting staff at all. We need to scout draft-eligible players from around the world, as well as free agents and players on other teams.

Scouting works on a confidence level basis. A scout rated ‘A’ has been seen at least 5 times, possibly by different scouts, and the ratings reported by them should be pretty reliable. They won’t always be perfect, but will be accurate much more often than not. This progresses down through lower confidence levels to ‘E’ level, where our knowledge of the player is based on outdated and/or unreliable information. The only thing reliable about the information is that it is unreliable. Sign or draft at your own risk.

Scouts can work any region of the world, but have ‘home’ regions in which they are much more efficient. Scouts can be assigned to geographic areas, or to specific leagues or even specific players. There is also Central Scouting, which provides baseline information on players.

Here’s a sample scouting report on Jason Blake, provided by Central Scouting:

Personality: Blake is a pretty middle-of-the-road guy, nothing about his personality really stands out as a big asset or liability.

Strengths: The strongest part of his game is his playmaking ability. Blake has a pretty good ability to read the play and has some hockey smarts.

Weaknesses: The weakest part of his game are his intangibles. Blake tends to get hurt a bit more than average.

Ability: Blake is approximately equal in value to Chris Simon. Blake would be one of the better players on most teams in our league.

Current Role: Blake profiles as a second line player in his current league. Blake and Mike Sillinger are fairly similar in terms of their approach to the game. Blake’s game resembles that of Kris Draper of the Detroit Red Wings.

Potential: Don’t expect any significant improvements from Blake

We’ll go over scout hiring during the live stream, which will start before the game against Vancouver on Monday night.

Trainer

There is one trainer listed as Great at his job; Ty Julseth, 50, of Fermont, QC. He is known internationally and I am hiring him at a cost of $130,000 a season for 4 years.

Breaking News

There has been a trade. Minnesota traded Manny Fernandez, G, 32, to Ottawa for Ottawa’s 6th round pick in the 2007 draft.

Also, based on reports from training camp, Rick DiPietro reported in as unfit to play. We must choose a response to this situation:

Criticize him publicly, Criticize him internally, or Ignore the incident.

Our choice may have an impact on his morale, and the team’s morale. We won’t know the effect until after we choose.

The Stream

I am going to go live Monday, March 5th, starting around 8:00 PM ET.

https://www.twitch.tv/torgonius/

We’ll get the coaches hired, we’ll get the scouts hired, we’ll look at strategies and set up lines and roles. Then we’ll see how badly we get beat.