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BarnabasCollins · 10-15-2020, 11:57 AM

The Trade That Broke The SHL

In the offseason of season 27 two teams, the Texas Renegades and the LA Panthers got together to make a trade that was declared to be the trade that broke the SHL. Several big names changed hands. GM Deener in Texas was desperate to get a cup and bring the Renegades back to their glory after winning back to back seasons in seasons 20 and 21. In order to do this he decided to try and stack the Renegades as best he could. The team already featured Liam Kinsler, Maxim Horvat, Jackson Weekes, Chara Brojled, Jed Lloren, Geoffrey Allen and Vlad Lidstrom. STHS notoriously has not given stacked teams much of an advantage if actually making them worse so making this trade was a gamble as Deener gave up a high draft pick and 3 budding young stars including a former first overall pick. Let’s look at the actual deal here.

Texas received from the Panthers:
Yuri Boyka
Valterri Bottas
Kristoffer Ruud
Sterling Knight

The Panthers received from Texas:
Asbjorn Alexanderson
Wyatt Wollker
Travis Kudleychuk
S30 Texas 1st
S30 Texas 2nd (conditional)

So how do you determine who wins a deal? Well I decided to look at a couple different angles. First off, did it improve either team. So, let’s look at the records of the teams in the 3 seasons prior and 3 seasons after the trade. We’ll start with LA.

Panthers:
S25 25-20-5
S26 26-22-2
S27 26-20-4
Trade
S28 26-17-7
S29 16-31-3
S30 22-25-3

The Panthers did not qualify for the playoffs in any of the three seasons prior to the trade or after the trade. You’d think acquiring good young players and being able to do well in the draft should see the Panthers on an upward swing here but it turns out just the opposite effect occurred. The Panthers actually got worse in the couple of seasons after the trade. What looked like a very promising haul for LA really didn’t turn out to make much of a difference on the team results.

Now we take a look at the Renegades and see if Deener accomplished his goal of stacking the deck and getting the Renegades back into the cup hunt.

Renegades:
S25 25-20-5
S26 25-20-5
S27 30-16-4
Trade
S28 34-12-4
S29 26-18-6
S30 29-19-2

Texas playoffs records during this period were not qualifying in S25 and 1st round exits in seasons 26 and 27. The team certainly improved it’s record in S28 after the trade and continued to make the playoffs in the 3 seasons after. However, S28 was a huge disappointment with another 1st round exit. They made it to the 2nd round in S29 and S30 again saw a first-round exit. It would take the Renegades until S36 to get the cup they so desperately wanted from this deal. The Panthers would not see Cup action until S39, losing in the finals that season. So, I guess in the grand scheme of things looking at the records while Texas improved, the trade didn’t accomplish the end game of being the deal that brought the cup back to Texas.

Is there another way to determine if any team actually “won” this deal? Well another way I looked at it was to take the individual players involved and see how many seasons they spent with their new teams and how many points they scored during that time. It’s pretty rudimentary stuff but gives us a look at if the trade was more favorable for one side than the other. So I looked up the careers of the players involved in the trade and also those of the players they were directly spun off for in a bunch of the player’s cases.

We’ll start with the Panthers. Asbjorn Alexanderson played 1 season in LA. Wyatt Wollker played 2. Travis Kudleychuk played 1. And the player they got eventually from the first-round pick Sven Karlsson played 5. The 2nd rd. pick was eventually moved back to Texas in a pick swap. In Later deals Travis Kudleychuk spun for Ben troy for 2 seasons and Sebastein Strange for 7. Wyatt Wollker for 2 seasons of backup goalie Jacob Andrews, 6 seasons of Hans Moleman and 6 seasons of Chris Crutchfield. Sven Karlsson brought 8 seasons of Chester Cunnigham. The original players in the deal didn’t last very long in LA at all and in total the Panthers got 40 seasons of service time on their side of the deal. Point wise they got 47 from Alexandersson, 49 from Wollker, 32 from Kudleychuk, 170 from Karlsson, 9 from Troy, 271 from Strange, 52 from Moleman, 233 from Crutch and 173 from Cunningham for a total of 1036 or an average of roughly 26 points a season.

On the Texas side we have Yuri Boyka with 6 seasons, Bottas with 2, Knight with 4 and Ruud with 7 for the original players. Bottas brought the Carl Mountain for 1 season and Conklin Owen for a whopping 18 seasons. Boyka brought Andris Bukss for 2 and Vasily Horvat for 12. Ruud brought Winston Windsor for 3. All totaled the Renegades got 55 seasons of service from this trade. Points wise Boyka had 247, Bottas 66, Knight 182, Ruud 117, Carl 0, Owen with 571, Bukss with 21, Horvat with 348 and Windsor with 108. The total points for Texas are 1660 over 55 seasons for an average of around 30 points a season.

So what can we conclude from all this? The main reason on the Texas side was to win a cup with a loaded team which they failed to accomplish. I believe LA wanted to grow a solid young team and progress into a solid playoff team and they also failed to accomplish this goal. As far as who got the most bang for the buck, you’d probably have to say Texas basically “won” this deal getting 15 more seasons and 600 more points for 4 points more a season from their players in the deal. Was it truly the trade that broke the SHL? It’s really hard to justify that title but it sure was a huge topic of conversation that offseason and there was a huge anticipation for the season to see if Texas was truly going to run away with the title. And by the way, lakes have beaches.