Persberichten

Good evening everybody. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the inauguration of the Incredible Network News. Our news platform will sometimes be referred to as "INN".

We thought the Incredible Foes deserved a place in the media, so here we are now. Our broadcast team will talk about what interests you. I certainly hope you'll enjoy the show.

For our first press release, we tried to do some catch up with the fans. For this reason, we met with the General Manager of the Foes. We asked him some general questions about the team plans for the future, and we sought some insight about the most recent roster moves of this Incredible team.

1. What kind of team are the Incredible Foes ?

First of all, the Incredible Foes are a team that invests in their players. We have a development facility that provided us talented players over the years. Let's just think about Correy Cox. This player worn a jersey to represent our country, and we developed him since his teenage.

Our main strategy is to rely on homegrown players but we do not hesitate to invest in foreigners if need be, or if a good deal shows up. Let's just think about Sykstus Blok, our main goalie for all those years. He did a wonderful job until Jodie Farrow, another farm player, was ready to take the lead. Since we do not spend too much to attract star players from other countries, we can invest more money on our arena and other facilities. That's our identity.

2. What are your expectations for the next few seasons, saying everything is going according to plan ?

We are aware that we are battling with a lot of well managed teams in this league. A couple of teams are knocking at the door of the elite I.1 league here. Let's not forget that the Incredible Foes were in the elite league for the seasons 5,6 and 7. We have a long term vision, and we felt we needed to rearrange a couple of things to be able to compete with the top teams in the country.

We needed to construct state-of-the-art facilities for all our staff, we needed to react to the ever growing number of fans by building larger stands. More importantly, we needed to evaluate with which players we felt we had the most chances of winning. We feel really good about our chances to climb back to I.1 in the next 3 seasons window. Until then, a couple of regular season championships would be nice, once Royal City Redshift will leave for I.1

3. A lot of the fans were unhappy to see pillars like Logan Salmon, Sykstus Blok and Leonard Kerschbaum leave the team in the last 3 seasons. What it a hard decision to part with players that contributed to the success of the team for all those seasons ?

First of all, I would like to thank them personnally for all they've done for the Foes. They helped to build a winning culture and they are the first generation of stars for the Incredible Foes. I still keep in touch with all three of them and they know how high I think of them. Sometimes, decision are tough to make and to depart from them has surely been one of them !

Young players like Jodie Farrow, Conrad McCollum, Brendan Hoskins, Stuart McVeigh and Corry Moore, only to name some of them, need some more ice time to develop. It just shows how great our development team is. Some of them are contributing to our success even at the early age of 15 or 16. I'm amazed myself !

4. About Sykstus Blok leaving, you left the responsability of the backup goaltender to a contested Rod Kane for a season and a half, a player who didn't show great promise. What do you have to say about this precise roster move ?

It's always easy to criticize when you only have a view from the outside. I guarantee you that any general manager would love to have two elite goaltender on their roster all the time. Thing is, it's impossible for a couple of reasons. First, a goalie, to be on the top of his game, has to play a lot. Sykstus was unhappy with his declining number of starts, and Jodie was showing he was hungry for more.

At that time, I was discussing with some other countries managers and I had a couple of leads about where to find a suitable backup for Jodie. I had in mind an experienced goalie. Things out of my control happened and I could not seal the deal with any of the goalies I was talking to. So when Sykstus was gone, I was forced to put my trust in Rod Kane, who's a fine little man by the way, for the goaltender position. One of my scouts watched him play a couple of friendly games against moderate teams, and he thought he would do the job. I trusted him and brought him in.

I realized we were in a tough spot when Jodie burnt his hand on the oven. He was hurt for one day and Rod was so nervous he didn't stop one puck during the pregame warm up. Sadly for him, the game was a disaster and I had to look elsewhere for replace him. I did a mistake but I fixed it by hiring Yevgeniy Kuzmin. This russian knows his role, and has the experience we need. So now, we are looking forward.

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