Minnesota Chiefs

The Minnesota Chiefs are a team in the Eastern Conference of the SHL. They entered the league in the

second ever SHL Expansion alongside the Los Angeles Panthers. The Chiefs have won two Challenge Cup Championships in S10 and S12 while appearing in two other Challenge Cup Finals in S6 and S18.

History
The Chiefs' inaugural season was S5 and while Minnesota was only able to win eight games in their first year ing the league, things started to look up soon after. Fueled by their S5 and S6 draftees as well as a good expansion draft, the Chiefs were already much improved in their second season when players such as Brodie Witzel, Robert Spezza, Kyle Derringer, Zach Miller and Christoph Klose lead them into the playoffs for the first time. In one of the most memorable playoffs the SHL has ever seen, the both most recent expansion teams Minnesota and Los Angeles made it to the Challenge Cup finals in only their second year of existence. The series went all the way to game seven overtime, where Jeff Dar won it for the Panthers with a powerplay goal. It took the Chiefs a while to stomach that bitter game 7 loss and they missed the playoffs in the following season, but the team was far from broken.

From Season 8 on Minnesota made the playoffs six years in a row, winning two cups in the process (S10 and S12) and making it to the Eastern Conference Finals another three times. The best generation of Chiefs players to date includes names such as Zach Miller, the franchise top-scorer, Nick Fisher, David Winter, Brodie Witzel, Niclas Wastlund, Reggie Williams, Christoph Klose, Ja'Far Dar, Jackson Turska, Gene Parmesan, Jon Doran and maybe the best playoff goaltender in SHL-history, Brandon Sawyer. Not all of these players were on board for both cup wins, Brodie Witzel for example left the Chiefs via free agency the off-season before the team won their first ever cup, while Reggie Williams wasn't brought in until after that first win. Others such as David Winter or Christoph Klose were traded between Season 10 and 12 but still rank highly in the franchises all time player statistics.

After this "golden generation", things started to take a downward spiral for the Chiefs though. In Season 13 they made the playoffs for the last time in many years and entered their first rebuild, which proved to be a rather rocky one. The team went through multiple GMs and neither Toast nor HabsFanFromOntario or Banjo Kazooie were able to turn things around. The Chiefs poor draft record since Season 11 started to hurt the franchise tremendously and in some of the worst years of their rebuild, the team didn't even have its own first round selection. Not a lot of players from this era stayed on the team for long and even though the Chiefs made it back to the playoffs in Season 18 and even all the way to the finals, they didn't make it back to the playoffs until Season 22. The Chiefs have recently gotten a new General Manager in one of the very rare open application processes held by the league, experienced member JayTee took over and began the rebuilding process to make Minnesota a contender again.

Captains

 * Brodie Witzel (S5)
 * Kyle Derringer (S6)
 * Jackson Turska (S7-S14)
 * Sergei Zherdev (S16)
 * Tom Sawyer (S17-S18)
 * Ryan Sullivan (S20-S22)
 * Alonzo Garbanzo (S23-Present)

First Round Draft Picks
S5 - Brodie Witzel (4th OV) S6 - Zach Miller (4th OV) S7 - David Winter (3rd OV) S8 - Niclas Wastlund (4th OV) S9 - Ja'Far Dar (7th OV) S11 - Emma Watson (12th OV) S12 - Reinhold Deitrich (10th OV) S13 - Christian Bauer (1st OV) S16 - Tom Sawyer (3rd OV) S17 - Walter White (2nd OV) S17 - Saoul Commeunebotte (7th OV) S17 - Gustav Grimm (12th OV) S19 - Ryan Sullivan (1st OV) S19 - Jonathan Kane (7th OV) S20 - Jamie Hawkins (6th OV) S20 - Pedro Sarantez (12th OV) S21 - Alonzo Garbonzo (2nd OV) S22 - Chernika Banananov (7th OV) S27 - Scotty Reay (3rd OV) S27 - Lord Vader (5th OV) S30 - Jon Ross (6th OV) S32 - Samee Iqbal (8th OV) S32 - Terrance Nova (9th OV) S33 - Lochlann O'Rourke (7th OV) S33 - Eero Hämäläinen (10th OV) S35 - Scotty Steele (8th OV) S35 - Cam Oullette (14th OV) S36 - Isak Ødegård (1st OV) S38 - Dick Skillstedt (3rd OV) S39 - Jon Tellofsen (11th OV) S40 - Radovan Hudec (14th OV) S41 - Muhammad McLovin (13th OV) S42 - Geoff Moore (9th OV) S44 - Derek Bohne (8th OV) S45 - Sanyi Kocsis (11th OV) S46 - Mathias Seger (5th OV) S46 - Jerry Mander (13th OV)