Farm Club: Luxembourg Castles
GM: Andy Rolling (4th GM in team’s history)
Coach: Mike Babcock (replaced Brent Sutter after Season 9) (Sutter replaced Guy Boucher after Season 6, who replaced Darryl Sutter before Season 6, who replaced Joel Quenneville after Season 3)
Last season: 4th overall. (In playoffs, defeated Lisbon, lost to Berlin)
Ins and Outs (Season 9 to Season 10)
Out: Frederik Andersen (free agent), Keith Yandle (free agent), Alexei Kalyuzhny (free agent), Rick Nash (free agent), Dan Girardi (free agent), Marc Staal (free agent), Matt Read (free agent), Dennis Wideman (free agent), Stephen Weiss (free agent), Mikhail Grabovsky (free agent)
In: Jack Johnson (trade), James Neal (trade), Eric Gelinas (free agent), Jamie McBain (free agent), Mike Richards (free agent), Ondrej Pavelec (free agent), Ty Dellandrea (draft), Kirill Maksimov (draft)
In Place (Key players signed past Season 8)
Nazem Kadri, C: Colton Parayko, D; Dylan Larkin, LW; Valeri Nichushkin, RW; Eric Gelinas, D
Three Questions
1. Are the Generals one of the Cup favorites? Not quite yet, in our view. If Frederik Andersen was still their goalie, we would say you should seriously consider calling that guy you know in Las Vegas and putting some money on them. But even without Andersen, this club is stocked from head to toe with solid players. The lowest OV rating in the whole lineup is 73, which is quite respectable and sported by Brandon Carlo, their 6-5, 23-year-old defenseman with a bright future. The lineup features a lot of speed, puckhandling ability and hockey sense. Bobby Ryan was a key player in the Generals’ excellent Season 9 performance and he and linemates Nazem Kadri and David Perron will carry their confidence into another season, although trade acquisition James Neal looks to be replacing Perron on the top line. Kadri, by the way, is one of the league’s most underrated players. Since coming to Geneva in a trade with Belfast in Season 6, he has led the team in scoring each year. Perron joins Dylan Larkin and free agent pickup Mike Richards on the second line, with a solid third line being formed by Riley Sheahan, Valeri Nichushkin and Bud Holloway. We expect very good plus-minus ratings from those three guys. And when your fourth line is Victor Rask, Connor Brown and Rickard Rakell, you know you’ve done something very right during the team-building process.
2. Are fans upset that Coach Sutter left? Last year’s coach Brent Sutter did an excellent job of driving the Generals uphill. He was really smart to take his second-leading scorer from the season before and demote him to just 10 minutes per game. Alexei Kalyuzhny had just come off his best-ever goal scoring campaign (21 goals) and he scored 57 points. But he was 35 years old and Sutter wisely didn’t push Kalyuzhny too hard. That move turned out really well. Riley Sheahan filled Kalyuzhny’s spot and scored 29 goals and 60 points. Fans are hoping new coach Mike Babcock can make similarly prudent decisions this year. The Sutter-to-Babcock change isn’t the only one that could affect what seemed to be winning chemistry in Geneva. Two-thirds of the starting defense – that’s four veterans – have left. So have three starting forwards. The starting goalie is new. Geneva’s fans fell in love with the Generals last year, but this year’s Generals will have to put on their best clothes, comb their hair, buy a nice bouquet and start a brand new courtship with the fans.
3. Where will most Geneva fans’ eyes be focused? At the beginning of the season, most of the focus will be on the players behind the forward lines. With so many new faces on defense and in goal, fans will be anxious and interested in seeing how they perform. Ondrej Pavelec is certainly a step down from Frederik Andersen, but let’s see what the guy does before declaring him miserable. Generals fans remember that he was the backup for their club from Season 4 through Season 6 and in his last Geneva year, his goals against average was 2.82 with a stellar 90.9 save percentage. In the years since they last saw him, he worked as the starter in Prague and he celebrated enough birthdays to become 33 years old. The new defense is in general, a big puck-moving machine. There will be the occasional defensive gaffes back there for Pavelec to deal with, but once they gain possession, players like Colton Parayko, Eric Gelinas, Jack Johnson, Patrick Wiercioch and Jamie McBain are all capable of stinging the opposition with their passing and shooting. Fans and coaches will also have their eyes on a less tangible aspect of the team. There aren’t many guys on this team who will take charge in the dressing room and on the bench. Valeri Nichushkin, with six years of service to the team, was given the captaincy at age 25. Leadership could be an issue for this Swiss club.
History
Season Place PTS PP % PK % SPG SAPG GPG GAPG PIM
Season 9 4 102 18.3 85.3 29.22 31.41 3.51 3.04 8.43
Season 8 13 87 16.9 83.3 26.72 30.84 2.89 2.90 7.61
Season 7 19 70 15.6 78.3 27.17 31.44 2.90 3.61 8.06
Season 6 17 77 17.5 83.8 27.05 32.67 2.61 3.02 6.61
Season 5 18 80 15.0 85.1 27.22 32.49 2.85 3.28 6.67
Season 4 18 80 15.5 83.4 26.29 32.51 2.72 3.28 9.46
Season 3 17 82 17.1 83.8 29.01 30.28 3.15 3.38 8.83
Season 2 10 96 18.9 82.8 31.94 29.30 3.39 2.99 10.68
Season 1 1 123 21.4 83.6 32.16 27.72 3.99 2.77 8.85
Top Draft picks
Season 1: Kari Lehtonen, G, current age 37. Games played: 427; Save Pct. 89.5
Season 2: none
Season 3: none
Season 4: Frederik Andersen, G, age 30. GP: 353; save pct. 91.0
Season 5: Sergei Mozyakin, C, age 27. GP 388; Pts 297; -20
Season 6: Victor Rask, C, age 25. GP 177; Pts 55; +9
Season 7: Colton Parayko, D, age 25. GP 246, Pts 100, -11
Season 8: Connor Brown, RW, age 24. GP 160, Pts 23, +1
Season 9: Alexei Bereglazon, D, age 19.
Season 10: Ty Dellandrea, C, age 18.
Trade History
Season 1 (picks without years listed are from initial draft)
Traded Round 15 pick (used to draft Ryan Ellis) , Round 25 pick (Ben Lovejoy) and 2013 Round 1 pick (Jason Krog) to Paris for Dennis Wideman
Traded Round 8 pick (Olli Jokinen), Round 10 pick (Petr Sykora) and 2013 Round 2 pick (Ryan Murray) to Dublin for Round 7 pick (Chris Kunitz), Round 22 pick (Bryan Allen) and $250,000
Traded Round 17 pick (Tomas Kopecky) and 2014 Round 1 pick (Michael Stone) to Bratislava for Round 8 pick (David Desharnais) and Round 19 pick (Greg Zanon)
Traded Round 13 pick (Marcus Kruger) and Round 14 pick (Mark Scheifele) to Athens for Round 9 pick (Nick Foligno)
Traded Alex Chiasson to Minsk for Vernon Fiddler and $1 million
Traded Brian Dumoulin to Minsk for Round 21 pick (Raffi Torres)
Traded Matt D’Agostino, 2014 Round 2 pick (Andrei Loktionov) and $250,000 to Oslo for Justin Williams
Traded 2013 Round 3 pick (Scott Glennie), 2014 Round 3 pick (Tommy Wingels) and $1.5 million to Bern for Nicklas Backstrom (goalie)
Season 2
Traded Justin Williams, Ryan Malone and Jeff Woywitka to Prague for Thomas Vanek and Mike Weaver
* seem to missing one trade in this period
Season 3
Traded Michael Del Zotto to Minsk for Valeri Nichushkin, Ilya Nikulin and Sergei Kostitsyn
Season 4
Traded Kari Lehtonen to Edinburgh for Ondrej Pavelec, 2016 Round 1 pick (later traded to Bratislava – Morten Madsen) and 2017 Round 2 pick (Michael Hutchinson)
Season 5
Traded Chris Kunitz and 2016 Round 1 pick (Morten Madsen) to Bratislava for 2016 Round 1 pick (Bud Holloway)
Season 6
After Season 6 started: Traded Sergei Mozyakin to Belfast for Nazem Kadri, Vladislav Kamenev and 2020 Round 1 pick (Niclas Almari)
Signed Chris Butler (free agent)
Season 7
After season started: signed James Reimer (free agent), Andrej Sekera (free agent)
Season 8
Season 9
Season 10
Traded 2021 Round 2 pick (Bode Wilde) to Helsinki for Jack Johnson
