The Untold Story of a General Manager Trying to Make It Part 3

[chavelski]

Tonight we sucked! Okay, we didn't have our regular lineup and had a couple of players borrowed from the community but still. You know those nights you don't get any bounces, you do stupid mistakes and everything you do turns into a failure. Well, tonight was one of those nights. I wouldn't recommend to right away when you've stopped playing EASHL to go directly to HUT, don't do it, it literally makes you wanna cut your PS4 into two pieces and you are quickly reminded why you don't play Hut in the first place. I mean you control the game, have over the twice of amount of attack nevertheless shots, but because your still in that EASHL mindset you won't remember that Hut is about the glitches and other kind of scoring that a human goalie never lets in. So writing this i'm pretty annoyed, maybe i'm taking the game too seriously or maybe its just human nature but oh boy this game is truly a love/hate relationship. 

Lets get back on track. This series of posts isn't supposed to be whining about other game modes or the game. I mean, we are at a NHLGamer forum, it means somewhere deep down everybody has a passion for the game which is truly nice to see. Oh, I wish the community would have been this big when you grew up, well there wasn't internet in the beginning so that explains a lot but still, wish I would have found myself here about 7-8 years ago. Maybe it would have changed my life in some way, maybe there was a weekend when there could have been sixes lined up but instead you went out with your friends and met new people and those people changed your life so you maybe moved somewhere where you normally wouldn't have thought of. Funny how life works. Still I would say i'm happy for the 95% of my time, those 5% thats missing i'm playing NHL and getting smoked with my friends when your thinking you shouldn't be losing this game. But again, if you were happy all the time and winning all the time, wouldn't it take away the good feeling when you actually surprise a team or something works out what you didn't expect to happen? 

Okay lets try one more time. 
We have had some roster changes. First of all I kicked a player for inactivity. I mean if you can't engage to play for more than one night every other week then your not seeing the game I see it. So I had to make a cut. It was difficult because this player had been a part of my team a longer time and always been a guy I could count on, but now there was something missing, maybe it was the passion for this game because he had the time to play other games. Maybe it was the new players on the team that made him feel uncomfortable, I don't know. Its stupid to speculate but in this case I had to make a decision to cut him, the inactivity wasn't fair against the other members and for every day that went by it was harder and harder to insert him in your plans. I don't know how you other GM's do in these kind of things where you have a player, he is clearly not in it by full heart and the times he is available to play you kind of feel that no, he is going to take our gaming down a notch and that is not the thing you want to do when your preparing for the upcoming league. But then again you need backups, hell, I felt it tonight where I had to take in two players only for to get some games going. I really don't like that, because they don't count as "your wins" when you win against a good team because there was that one guy that shouldn't have played for them and he was a difference maker. Weird, I just always get that feeling when you have a freelancer jumping in. Still though, on the other side you get games going and by playing you get better, but its not a team thing you know. 
After a short while after I cut the player, I found him getting active again for another team, it kinda pissed me off, I mean, where the hell were you all this time? But then on the other side, i'm happy for him, good that he is playing again regularly and don't know, maybe our paths will cross again. So the designated backup forward wasn't there no more, well time to move on with the guys we have and maybe with some passive searching well find someone perfect for the designated role.

A few days after I woke up with a message. Our defender has decided to quit the team. God fucking damnit. He explained it with that he feels we don't play him the puck often because we are scared to share him the puck so that he doesn't mess anything up. Okay, I understand him on that point because unconsciously we weren't playing him the puck when he was open because we felt that he is going to do something that is going to hurt the team in that game. I feel kind of shame but on the other side I don't. Of course there is the aspect of being left out and the team not trusting you isn't a fun environment in the long run. But in other hand, isn't the most important thing that the team wins? I know for a fact there is players who just loves racking up points game after game and i'll admit that I love having a hattrick instead of the famous "kiikarit", "ugglorna" or any other terms there is for being left out of the scoresheet. But I really don't care as long as we have won the game and I need to have five other guys in the lineup with that mindset or else we can just fold straight away. But thats only human too, it doesn't matter is it on the ps4 or in the real NHL, there is players who live for points and that is basically just a mindset. And of course, if a player racks up points it means your getting goals and that helps your team to win. But still, we need to be on the same page to make it work. 

Funny how this business here on NHLGamer works. Your sitting with a open spot in the lineup and for a few days, maybe weeks, nothing. Nobody is interested or the players you are getting contacted by aren't interesting enough.
So you try out some players for a while, but you still have that suspicion that is this going to work when the going gets tough? So after trying out a couple of defenders a interesting person came to tryout one night. I made a party with him and boy, we clicked right away. We talked, we laughed, were on the same page how this game is supposed to be played. He seemed like a good guy, I like him. The only thing is that he speaks english and the rest of us speak swedish, but we were desperate and we needed to fill the spot.

It'll work though was my thoughts, I mean i'd prefer he spoke swedish but this will do. Then there's the little suspicion, okay, he checked on the part of being a good guy and the other guys are going to like him to, what about his gaming? How is that gonna be, so I begged, please let him be a player who can play this game, even a little bit, the rest we can work on was the thoughts going through my head. So the night of gaming, he joined the party a bit before and clicked straight away with all of our other members. I messaged some of my guys and they thought the same thing, what a nice fella to have around. So we started playing. Okay, he is not Paul Coffey but he is not Marek Malik either, okay so he is somewhere in between, we can work with this.

The first night he played ok. Then came the second night and he played even better. Nice, this is going to be a nice "unknown" pickup. So then after we got done gaming I asked quickly my guys "what you think?" "Should we sign him?" and all the members were for it. So he asked me in the party, should I still try-out with some other teams or? So I told him that no, we like you and we want you to be a part of our team. So we signed him.

Then came the next day. I heard some buzzing about a team that were going to fold and a few hours later I got a message. "Yo, so my team disbanded...". THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!!!!

The guy who messaged me was a original member, he was there when we first started it back in the summer and I played on that team that disbanded, were over at his house a month ago partying so I know this guy very well. And of course, I like the shit out of him. So there I am with my new defender in one hand, just told him that yes we are going with you welcome to the team. And in the other hand I had a friend, of course playing the same position, active as hell and of course speaks swedish..........

Because that's what you want right, friends in a party hopefully speaking the same language playing video games. So I talked to a teammate, I felt I needed to do this quickly and not drag this out. My fellow member said hell yes but what about the defender we just signed? "I know, I said." So I went to the new guy, told him, listen, there is no easy way to say this but here is the facts " a original member has decided to join....".

So I kicked the new signing before the press conference. Damn, what a shitty move by me but it had to be done. In the long run it had to be done and then there was the fact I couldn't say no to this guy, he was everything we had searched for the whole damn time. I told the new signing after I told him the bad news that I am really sorry it had to go this way and were hoping to get a polite response, well I didn't not get that I can tell.

The first reaction was "What the fuck? You kicked me out of the team?" Yes, I am sorry, it has nothing to do with your playing skills or your personality because I really liked you on both fronts.

"Fuck you", he wrote. Then I said I understand that you feel that way but it was not personal and I am sure you will get a new team in a heartbeat because your a good player and a even better guy.

To that he responded "Fuck off" and theres that. 

I know this might change my perception to some of you guys out there but sometimes you have to make the tough call, even though this turned out really shitty I still find pride in that I let him know straight away instead of dragging it out and not confront this guy.

Just be honest, tell whats on your mind but do it with respect to the other person and try to be polite, don't take it too personally if he thinks your a complete asshole in the heat of the moment but if you can be the "bigger person" and still answer it with a polite answer, someday that person might look back at the thing and say he is sorry he overreacted as it turned out in this case also.

The next day this guy messaged me and told he was sorry. I said I understand. Things happen in the heat of the moment. I also told him that I will try to get him a new team and wrote a recommendation to a couple of teams about this player. 

I started writing this post about 44 minutes ago and damn I feel better again. The bad results tonight don't seem so bad after all. For me, talking about things works and I am sure there is a lot of people who are the same way. Ive seen at least 5 teams that have been created and folded only during this break between ECL 5 and ECL 6 and a lot of the response I have gotten has helped me understand that is about the daily grind, no matter if you don't have success every night, come back tomorrow and try to make the most of it. A lot of things happen very quickly in this industry but don't let small things get in your way.

[I_Alex28_I]

Fuck off Calle! 😂 Jk nice story again and interesting to read. Keep going as a gm and as a writer. Maybe u should make a book out of this somewhen.

[loimmu]

6 tuntia sitten, chavelski kirjoitti:

So writing this i'm pretty annoyed, maybe i'm taking the game too seriously or maybe its just human nature but oh boy this game is truly a love/hate relationship. 
 

🙂

[ICappeI]

Chavve, if you’re feeling down just buy some packs on HUT. That’s all you need bro! Works every time 😎

[FreddeSwede]

Good post. If you take a short pause and view the EHL-community players from above you’ll find that it’s a small pond of fish swimming there. There’s so much prestige involved. And for me, who’s not playing EHL or barely even EASHL, it’s even easier to see this.

I can relay to that defenceman who felt like he was obsolete and not even involved in the games since he never got the puck. It’s incredibly boring even if the team wins 7-0. Hopefully people play because they love the game and because it’s FUN. It’s not exactly fun to play D if you never get to touch the puck during three periods. 😄