Press releases

After a quick start while starting to manage the now defunk Nagoya Ice Dogs, Robert Bouchard was able to have the team make progress from a bottom table team to third in IV6 after losing the League Championship late in the season.

Early promotion to III.13 and almost three years later nothing much to report but a team that continues to finish mid-table and under perform.

The truth being that Robert Bouchard in his first season had the team over perform in III.13 to finish as high up in the table as they did as they won games that they shouldn't have won thus it looked promising heading into the second season were the team was stronger and would be able to compete a lot better, But this was not the case and loss after loss started to pile up.

The team at the time and currently is built around youth players developing to make the team strong but this means that these youth players need to out develop the players being bought at higher prices by the other teams. At this moment this strategy is not working. While Vancouver Evil Jokers remain one of the younger if not the youngest team in the division; they are starting to fall away in the talent pool.

So the Question now becomes do we switch strategy from a youth team with long term great potential to buy our team or do we look at combine bought players and youth?

To continue down the youth aspect continue to make sense as players are developing at a high rate and if they don't fit the teams needs they can be transfer listed to collect a profit but is long term effort really worth the sort term pains?

To buy players to add them with the youths that are developing means one or two line staked with purchased players that have no longer term future in the club at the cost of youth players that are developing; also add in the fact that players over the limit that we currently require are hard finds and are often very expensive. So wouldn't our hard earned cash be better spent building up our facilities and arena so that we can increase our cash flow and training potential?

The fact remains that we have made the right decision to build a youth team with the fact knowing that we will not win anything in the near future as we build up the facilities and arena to the levels that will really start to push the cash flow and development back into our favor. How long will this take? We don't know as it could be a five or ten year plan as we started building wrong when I started managing the team thus it is taking longer to get the cash that is need to build the arena to get the extra fan base and cash to build the facilities.

To much has been spent on staff and players that we have no long term future with our team.

So I am going to make a promise for the next season as many managers know that I have not been around my team that much in the last two season that I will be more active thus giving my team more of a chance to win games and making better decision that will see the team progress at the rate that we should be!!

Thanks,

Robert Bouchard
Vancouver Evil Jokers team manager

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