[788 words, ready for grading]

I was quite surprised to see all the trades go down with Edmonton, and something didn't sit right with me in my mind. I knew I wanted to say something, but I wasn't sure how it was going to come across. Let's just go with this and see how things go.

My first reaction to seeing the trade news was shock - these were people that I had gotten to know throughout my time as GM of Edmonton (and for some people starting even earlier in Vancouver) and they would now be dispersed across the league. Granted, I was traded earlier, but these are still great people and I know the teams they're going to are getting great players and users. My next reaction, and I think the more persistent one, was frustration. Not frustration that the core had been broken up, those things can happen, but seeing the trades felt like the death blow to my entire tenure as GM there. Starting as an advisor in the olde days of 2020, and then working my way up to co-GM right after Keygan's great S59 draft class, I saw the team go from a Challenge Cup contender to a team that was good but in need of a retooling. Keygan stepped down to recreate and I oversaw the interim period. The expected bottoming-out period while the prospects matured was delayed by an aggressive offseason in S61 which gave us an unexpected division title. Afterwards, things fell back to where we expected to be while navigating the awkward transition period between the vets aging out and the prospects being good enough to carry the load. The Blizzard had a couple subpar seasons in S62 and S63 (we're just not going to talk about the disastrous Talls experiment), but in S64 we rebounded back to 28 wins and it felt like the team was getting somewhere, especially after taking two games off the eventual finalist Panthers in the first round. Unfortunately, I had to step down due to ongoing real-life matters, but it felt like the core Bfine, myself and Hordle were building was good enough to become a Challenge Cup contender by staying the course and adding complementary pieces. Overall, I was probably on the GM team for roughly a year and by my last season, about half the team were people that had been added during my tenure on the GM team, including several core pieces. I believe with all my heart that the team was on the right track when I left it.

It's not even just the trades that hurt, it's who got moved. Leon Athanasios was a low-risk move made by Bfine and I during the aggressive S61 offseason that turned out to be a great depth winger who broke out in S64 with a 52-point season, punching above his weight in TPE. Sven Svechnikov, Makrus Jager and Lev Lebedev were all players that I drafted or signed in Vancouver and were key pieces of the Blizzard. Kaapo Kampainen was the 1C for most of my tenure as head GM, and consistently one of our best players. Seeing all of them get moved hurt not just because they were pieces of the Edmonton core, but because as the former GM, seeing them get traded feels like everything I did while GM was immediately punted for a "roll again and see the results in seven seasons" kind of move. I know this is going to sound like sour grapes, and I'm on another team now, but seeing the team get blown up makes it feel like my work in the last year was all for nothing.

Ultimately, this is probably just a philosophical disagreement at its heart. I know that I've generally been one of the more conservative GMs in the league and have a bit of an aversion to big splashy moves myself, but I would not have blown up the team like this. They're still very young and I think had this core been kept together they could have done some great things. As well, I fundamentally try to do whatever I can for my players and put in every effort. I don't like tanking in general, but if the team was old with little future I can acknowledge when it needs to be done. This wasn't that - Edmonton had a young, hungry core on a team that was visibly getting better. What happened in Edmonton feels a bit like rerolling a team that didn't need it for the sake of building a roster under the image of a new GM, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Feel free to yell at me in the comments, but that's my take on it.