This media piece is late as fuck, a whole season overdue even. I always thought about doing it but just never got to it due to various reasons. I'm going to talk about what really happened when i left and why i wanted to leave.
Mid-June, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Summer had started in Sweden, but the hockey season was still in full effect in the SHL universe. Dick opened up his eyes slowly and just laid there. Getting out of bed wasn't as easy as it used to. Is life supposed to be like this for a 20 year old? On paper he had a great life, Great salary, fame, winning the challenge cup in his rookie season with a great team. On the other hand he didn't really have anyone to really talk to on the team. He knew they weren't serious, or at least hope they weren't when they made fun of him talking about anime and stuff like that. In fact he knew a couple of them actually watched it regularly, but he still felt out of place. His idol and now friend Robert Andersson played his entire professional career with the Chiefs and had a great HoF career despite never winning the cup.(I was supposed to write about his career too but that is way too late now). When talking to him about that he actually learned that Andersson at one point had decided on leaving the team. He changed his mind last second though and it worked out as the team
got competitive and had some good vibes.
Dick would go another route though. It got more and more difficult to find motivation to train and he started missing practices. It just wasn't fun anymore. Nothing really happened that lead to this, he just felt out of place. So together with his agent he wrote up a letter to management to let them know his feelings. The letter was the following, written on July 9th.
Code:
I've been losing my SHL interest more and more over the past couple of seasons, to the point that i've contemplated retirement and recreation. Just wanted to give you the heads up that i want a change of scenery to try to get the motivation back.
I've decided that i'm going to go to free agency after my contract is up, and so i wanted to tell you this in time to make sure that you can get some value out of me and that i don't walk away for nothing. Of course there is a possibility that i would just re-sign once the FA opens up but my feelings right now are simply that i want to try something else out, at least for a while. I've been here ever since i joined the league and got drafted in S27 and i don't have a problem with you GM's or the team as it is, but i feel like it's time for me to experience another part of the league.
I don't know what the plans are right now with the team and what return you'd want with the Reddit draft coming up, but i'm sure someone would offer a piece that could take my place. I wouldn't be against staying on the team for the remaining 2 seasons of my contract but i wanted to let you know ASAP so you can decide on what you want to do. I won't go public with it or force my way out in any way to lower my worth, i want what's best for this team too,
But know that i won't go into any sort of negotiations over extensions before FA opens up after S43.
So if you're looking for a pick/multiple reddit picks then perhaps now would be the time to sell to get the most value out, and you would still get a chance to negotiate in FA with me after S43 if i thought it was a mistake and i wanted back, because if you trade me in S43 then i cant sign back the same FA according to the rules.
However, before he could give this letter to management, the news came out that Joseph Lombardi had announced that he would go to Free Agency once his contract was up, causing a bit of a panic in the state of Minnesota, with management having to work out a deal with someone so that they would not lose Lombardi for nothing. So Dick felt that this wasn't the right time to trouble them with another player wanting out. Perhaps it wasn't the smartest decision for the team, as they could've sent the two youngsters away together and perhaps get a greater return. That was however the decision Dick and his agent made.
Life in the sim league continued, and not much happened. Dick got out of bed, tried to motivate himself to progress himself in the game of hockey, did fairly good in the sim and waited for something to happen. And in early august it did.
Lombardi( @bluesfan55 ) was traded away, and Minny got a good return for him, considering how he was going to leave anyway. For Dick personally it didn't look too good though with role player Wuma Duce coming to the team. There had been some drama between Minnesota and Texas a couple seasons back and he was in the middle of it. It didn't do to much though as Dick had already decided to ask out. He had @wumaduce on mute on social media so he couldn't see what he wrote anyway so life continued without much change. Wuma didn't say much anyway and Dick got a message both from him and another teammate that we don't need to mention by name here as he really has nothing to do with any of the rumors going around out there. The messages both were pretty straight forward, we should work out the kinks between us for the good of the LR, we were on the same team now and a team can't have this type of tension, it will only divide the team even further. At first Dick got irritated by this, it wasn't his "fault" that they traded for someone that had shit talked the team for a couple seasons, so he ignored them both. So he talked with some friends about it and finally told his agent to send the letter he had earlier wrote to management. The Lombardi situation was solved and that is what he was waiting for anyway.
The management were glad that they got the heads up and promised to see what they could do. They had apologized about not checking in with him about the Lombardi/Duce trade but he told them as it was, that this letter was wrote almost 2 months earlier and had nothing to do with the Wuma Duce "situation". They asked him if he had any teams he wouldn't go to, but seeing how he wanted the best return possible for the team he said he'd go wherever they could get that. He wanted nothing bad for this team, they took him in and traded up to get him in the draft. He owed them a lot.
Nothing happened for a couple days, about a week later they got back to Dick and asked him what he thought about Edmonton and Seattle, so he imagined they had the leading bids. Edmonton was starting to look dangerous and Seattle with @Samee as GM was on the upswing after seasons in the cellar. He replied that he wouldn't mind going to any of them, and he wouldn't. Both team could be good destinations for Dick as he was starting to become a relevant player in the league. Another couple of days went by and by now Dick was just pacing around his apartment, when he got a message from his agent that he heard a rumor about Dick going to Hamilton. Hamilton was an absolute force of a team with a bunch of great players that was definitely a cup team on paper, they just hadn't gotten it to work yet. This got him really excited, they had a couple of people he had gotten to know and enjoyed talking to, like Zanarkand Abes who he had hit it off with since day 1. Playoffs were in full effect though so people weren't really talking trades, so he kept his cool as hard as he tried, though he couldn't stay away from it and kept asking for updates.
A news article suddenly popped up about a potential trade between Hamilton and Minnesota becasue of Locker room disagreements, involving Dick Skillstedt and Noro Wozy, as well as other assets. There was a ruckus in the reply section of the article about how it was destructive to the negotiations to leak that to the public, and it didn't take long before the article was updated that the trade had fallen through because the players involved had "expressed their distaste for their new locker rooms". Which only fueled the rumor that Dick asked out because of Wuma, which again, he didnt. So he replied with a joke to cool down the speculations.
It didn't take too many hours before the Minnesota management called Dick personally and told him that they had managed to work out a deal with the Hamilton Steelhawks, despite the rumors saying that it had fallen through. Dick thanked them for his time and whished them all the best. It felt a little weird playing for another SHL team, but this was for the best. It didn't take too long for the Hamilton management to send Dick a link to their discord, but it wouldnt take long before disagreements between Dick and Management would cause some problems. But they worked it out.
The plan all along for Dick was to finish this contract and take a long hard look at his situation and decide on what to do, but when management contacted him mid season about an extension of his contract it was a no-brainer to sign a long term contract with this team, keeping him there until the end of S49. This team really feels like home and has been the best experience of his 6 years of online sim leagues, and despite not doing as well as they should've in the playoffs, this team is a real family and that is what matters.
So, to clarify. I had no problem with the Minnesota LR that triggered the trade. It certainly wasn't because of the Seattle trade, as i had already written the trade request long before that. i just felt i needed a change of scenery to get my motivation back, and it certainly did just that.
Tagging some of my cuties on my new team to tell them that daddy's gotta tinkle
I know you've told me before it wasn't because of me going there. I know the GM's all told me that, too, but it always did feel like it. Thanks for writing this, Sweg. I feel a bit better now. Still miss you, too.
Samsung virtual assistant
boyes and girls who were my teammates for a long time, hope all is well @ArGarBarGar @Baelor Swift @Rich @DonutDefender @sarmo @dnL @prettyburn @Shmurph @MrPrime @Leppish @spooked @Confusion @EuroCap![[Image: 41373_s.gif]](https://signavatar.com/41373_s.gif)
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